Page 50 of After the Fall
The Fates had found me out here.I didn’t know if I believed them or not, but I could feel them, and right now I began to see them.The shadows glided around me in clean other shapes.
What have you done?one of them asked me.
I ignored the question.There was no other person here who could have asked it.
Do you not know what happens when a mortal tries to reach the realm of gods?
The temperature dropped.Overhead more clouds gathered, dark clouds.Storm clouds I should have checked the weather before coming out here.
Arachne decked herself in raiments worthy of the divine.She pronounced herself their equal.
A spider tiptoed in front of me on the sand.I pushed the words I heard to the back of my head and told myself not to buckle in my excitement.
Icharus made to fly like an angel.
I turned my head away from the voice.I saw a black crow’s feather embedded in the sand not far away.
Sisyphus believed he could lie and cheat his way to the top.
Still I wanted to ignore the voice.Or voices.I couldn’t number them.I looked down and reached into the sand at my side, reaching down and digging deeper until my right fingers landed on the smooth surface of a small, round stone that I pulled up.
These things happen to people who reach for the heavens, the voice continued in a smooth tone against the be-ware, be-waaare of the ocean.
“Just leave me alone,” I said out loud, my voice charged with an energy that felt foreign to me.“I only wanted to write a good book.I did nothing wrong.We should let time be the judge.”
Time already is and has been.History is your witness.
A series of images came to my mind unbidden.I saw things that Aster witnessed in his past, or rather in the shared history of the muses.
A young woman in red and violet strode down the stalls of a crowded market.She looked clear as day, more distinct than anyone I had seen in my earlier given memories.She posed before a crowd, displaying a fine cloth draped over her arms, and everyone pressed forward to see it or touch it.Then the crowd parted.Another woman, taller and plainer, slapped the protagonist of the vision over the face.Then the first woman screamed and shriveled, falling further into herself until she took on the form of the spider I had just seen, spindly legs piercing the skin of her back and eyes growing round and bulbish as she fell to the ground.
Then the vision changed.A man with a streak of gold in his otherwise rusty hair spread out what appeared to be eagle’s wings, only larger and of an intentional construction.He posed himself in the sky, stretching his arms outward for propulsion, and he ascended higher and higher until he became nothing but a speck, and then the feathers fell down to Earth alone.
Then I saw a man I assumed to be Sisyphus, fat and jolly, sitting behind a giant oak trestle.He sipped and spilled a drop of wine from a large goblet of what appeared to be wine and sending away a thinner man who accused him of cheating his goods.Sisyphus bit into a hunk of lamb meat and choked on a bone, and even as his body keeled over at the dinner I could see the Fates gather like vultures around his soul, sentencing him to push the same rock up a hill for eternity to pay for his misdeeds.
I didn’t care anymore if I was alone at the beach.I didn’t care to pursue a normal day.I didn’t see how that could happen after the voices.I stood up and shook the sand off my feet before scrambling back to the house.
Everything here was still and silent.I ran up the stairs, up to the bedroom where Aster still slept in my bed.I crawled onto the bed with him and wrapped my arms around one of his.“Aster,” I said.
He inhaled and rolled over to face me.His eyes looked darker than usual.
“I believe you now,” I said.“I believe everything you said.”
First his fingers tangled through my hair playfully, and he tried to smile.Then he stiffened.What happened?he asked.
“The shadows,” I said, too scared to call them by their other name.“The ones you kept seeing.I ran into them today.I think it had something to do with what we did.”
Aster’s facial expression didn’t change as I spoke, but he pulled himself into a sitting position.He grabbed me and pulled me closer to him and then he wrapped his arms around me.I’m sorry it came to that.Stay out of their way… if you can.
Even now he wasn’t comforting me.Reassurance was beyond his power to give.
THE TREMORS
Aster slept until almost noon.When he came down the stairs after showering, he massaged a sore spot on his lower back and glanced around the living room carefully until his eyes settled on me.I had my laptop on my lap while I sat on the couch, scrounging through emails and news headlines in an effort to tune out my anxiety.
How are you doing?he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at my hands and pushing my cuticles back.“Somewhere between relaxed and lounging about and scared for my very existence.”
