Untouchable: A Greek Myth Retelling, Part 2

By the time I stumbled home with still-tingling skin, it was at an hour I would have never willingly traveled through town. Using my fingers for eyes, I navigated by scraping them along the edges of familiar structures with all the speed of a turtle. As I had to cross one of the major streets, they passed over the elevated stones we townsfolk used to jump across when the floodwaters rose in storms, it occurred to me that if I were born in this body I may have taken the risk of bruising or braining myself in taking those darkful leaps now. I felt half a coward for not trying.

There was no way home other than past almost a dozen pubs, lit with raucous laughter. Every step past, I felt bitterness at the back of my throat. Occasionally, a door opened and vomited out a trio or more of men. To my surprise, not a single one so much as glanced at me. I wondered myself invisible.

Finally, I made it home and used the knocker to rap on the door in the rhythm Lys and I had assigned only amongst ourselves so we knew it was the other returning. Lys, dear her, opened it n her precisely trimmed night tunic and veiled hair, her eyebrow lifted just enough to offer a quizzical expression.

“It’s I,” I said, startling myself with my voice’s new depth. I sounded like someone I once knew in my family. I wasn’t sure I liked that.

“What did you do?” Lys wanted to know. She always was so straight to business. My love was a pharmakis and other than having a related scientific mind, conducted her trade largely in poisons for the women of the area. Unlike myself, she didn’t have much time for sentimentality, although if you knew her for as long, and deeply, as I did, she would eventually allow you to discover some sensitive spots.

In the kitchen candlelight, I looked at the back of my hands, which had grown thicker and sprouted new, virtuous veins. Coarse black hair started just underneath my knuckles and cascaded downward like a fresh pelt over my whole body, refusing to stop until my feet. I noticed next that my tunic had shorted several inches and now came up well above my knees—broadened shoulders had lifted the whole clothing upward.

I was quite overwhelmed by this, as you can imagine, so I asked Lys if she could bring me my house robe, which was normally large on me. She did and fetched hot fennel water from the fire as well. With shaking hands almost dwarfing the small chalice and in clothes still blessedly a little loose on me, I told her about my meeting with Poseidon.

She listened with her usual attention, the lines on the corners of her mouth deepening. When I finished, she said, “Well, as they say, those Gods have a wicked sense of timing.”

“What d’you mean?”

She folded her lips and leaned slightly backward. “Representatives from the emperor’s army came here while you were gone, looking for your father.”

Every bit in my body turned red hot, chased immediately by cold. If the space underneath the floor a few paces from where we sat had a voice, it would surely moan.

Tightness in my throat blocked my question, but Lys knew I had it. She said, “Seems like they are recruiting for that new war.”

I found use of my new voice again. “Naturally, you told them that he’s in the islands somewhere and last we heard, he was elated at how the lifestyle was good for his health?”

“Naturally. But they then asked after his children and I said she’s—“ She corrected herself, always quicker than anyone else I’d ever known, “—he’s out. They said they were to return tomorrow in the morning for their own thoroughness.”

I supposed I could be out of the house in the morning again, but that wouldn’t be the last time they’d come around. I downed half the fennel water in hopes that it could clear my mind, now twice as exhausted as I was a moment ago. “So Poseidon had an intelligence in the changing of me tonight of all nights.”

“This is why I worship so little of them,” Lys said in her common bitterness. She unpinned one side of her veil and covered her eyes with it.

I reached out and caressed the small knuckles that braced my love’s lovely face. My gentle dovey. Out of learned necessity, she could go so far with that inner strength of hers. But she could so rapidly lose all the courage she needed to go on.

“It will be alright, sweet thing,” I said.

“I don’t think it will be this time,” she cried, finally allowing herself to cave into me. Despite the sadness of the situation, a secret joy flickered in me about how my body now curved around her in a soft blockade from the rest of the world. I did feel stronger, more able to protect her like I’d always wanted. If only it was a good moment to share that with her; up until today, I’d shared every other of my loves, wishes, damages, and fears with her. There was scarce a part of me she didn’t know.

“You smell different,” she mumbled into the hair on my chest. I also liked that that was there now.

“Worse?” I asked.

“Kind of,” she admitted. Against all odds, we both laughed. “The musk of a real man. What are we going to do?”

“Follow the Gods’ will,” I said. “There’s no other choice.”