earth song
The lyre grew into Sirius’ body like another layer of his heart. Every pluck of its seven strings rang in tandem with the flowing of his mortal blood, containing, in its purest essence, every song and every poem there ever had been, and all that never would be again. Music alone was the sole thing that fed him; he needed neither food nor water, save for flecks of wine-sweet honey melting on his tongue. In the years that followed Apollo’s offering, he did little other than learn, blood dripping from his slender fingers to water the covetous earth.
The world was a beautiful agreement of sound, and Sirius revelled in it, listening each day to the songs spilling like laughter from the thrumming bounty of the earth. Rivers rushed, silver and loud-roaring; winds sighed, soft and life-giving; trees rustled and swayed, growing their aching fruit in the never-ending warmth of the watchful sun. Nature was neither quiet nor still; it moved as constant, always hectic, always generative, alive with its own soul and song. There was nothing passive in this young, growing world. Everything had a voice, a melody.
The lyre had seven strings, the space between them nearly as significant as the strings themselves. Each string had meaning: hypate, the string closest to his body, rang out the deepest, deliberately slacker than the others, resonating with a strange, dark sound not unlike a winter he had never known. Nete, the highest note, was a string of summer, furthest away and gleaming, white-shining, like the moon. Yet everything returned to mese, the middle, from which the song burst forth. The lyre was a harmonic instrument, a perfect solution of ratio. Between the strings, in even space, all the world was known, a mimicry of heaven and earth. And so he played to the tempo of the gods, the rhythm of creation.
Sirius knew the gods as intimately as he knew the earth; in this age of myth, the gods were everywhere, as fleet-footed and contradictory as gods ought to be. They were in everything, as much a part of nature as the woods and the rivers, giving order and chaos in equal measure to the gentle pacings of the world. He knew them by many names and many faces, and sang sweet songs of them in endless worship. Sirius was nothing if not devoted, and to none moreso than shining Apollo. Each stroke of his lyre was a prayer, an offering, a font from which the son of Leto drank greedily.
Apollo, however, was not the only god who sought his affection. Beautiful and shining though he was, he was a sky-god, and did not often stray to earth, save for moments of violence, cruel and passionate. There were others closer, nearby, who walked with him through the soft-petaled grass that clothed the ground. Rhea, Physis, the mother, motive and subtle; Demeter, flaxen-haired, wise, warm and all-nourishing; Artemis, white-armed and light-bearing, lovely in her endless hunt. And Dionysus twice-born, soul of the world.
Calliope had warned Sirius of Dionysus and his followers; they themselves were madness, and through their revelry they communed with all the chaos of the world. Yet they were natural, too, symbolic of the cycle of things, the endless swell of life and death through which all things flowed. Dionysus was as much a god of nature as he was of passion. He understood more intimately than others what it was to be reborn, to take one’s place in the wildness of the world. Only through him could the cycle continue, in this frenzied acceptance of the divine.
It would start like this: first, the drumbeats, low in the body, calling out to the wild young things of the woods. Then, the cymbals, brass-sounding life, shattering the earth. Vines would burst upwards from the ground, tangling among the footfalls, as pipes howled their frantic songs through the trees. The noise was deafening, a din of creation, raw and terrifying in its maddening intensity. And at the centre of it all, the god, violet-eyed and bloodied, at one with the violent worship of the earth.
Wine became blood and blood became wine, and the noise of the lyre, that inimitable thing, would be lost among the roaring of the crowd. Sirius would play anyway, sitting at the god’s knee, letting his voice rise up as the nymphs and fauns leaped and danced, tearing at their clothes, their eyes, their skin, the flames licking ever higher. His song drowned out, heart pounding in frantic rhythm, he, too, would join in, surrendering to the pulse of creation: throat tipped back to the wine-dark dew of heaven, blood dripping from his lips, whirling around and around to the raucous harmony of nature in the arms of a feral young god. And when it came, the climax, the apex of frenzy, he would sing as no one had sung before, shouting with joy as it all was torn to pieces, the flesh, the bones, the blood flowing hot and red upon the ground.
Then he would fall, returning to the greening earth, dreaming of a boy who slipped away from him through the trees.
––
It was on a night like this that Sirius first saw him, and knew, somehow, he was doomed.
Long-limbed and graceful, dressed in emerald cloth and crowned with leaves of oak, Sirius moved through the forest, seeking out the wild god and all his wild things. The midsummer air was soft and heady, alive with the intoxicating rush of sound and promise, the sun a golden glow above the trees. Anything could happen here, in these woods, in this place. There were no rules, just madness, and the delight of song.
There is a moment, sometimes, when one feels so clearly and intimately as if they have met their destiny. It comes slowly, first, then all at once –– a thrill creeping up the spine, a thrumming beneath the skin, as if they had been tiptoeing on the outskirts all this time, and suddenly, irreparably, come into their own, a stasis where everything, all of it, is known and understood. Sirius was no stranger to destiny, nor to fate; in this world of myth, he knew only too well what it was to be part of something larger than oneself. Yet this, this was different. There was no grandeur, no prophecy, no curse, just a warmth beneath his skin and a pounding in his heart. Something will happen tonight he thought to himself, knowing this in the way that all intuitive people know, feeling, with mounting excitement, that chill upon his neck, that swooping in his belly, the blood singing in his ears. Something will happen. Something will happen. Every step, a promise, inching closer to some unknown point, that place of no return. Something will happen.
I’m coming.
The scene, one he had seen a thousand times. The woods unfolding before him like a river to the sea, the clearing alive and glowing in the possessive light of the setting sun. Dionysus twice-born, seated on a throne of oak and ivy, a leopard-skin draped over his thick, muscled thighs. Around him, the revellers: satyrs, centaurs, maenads, and dryads, their state of passionate undoing at once both intoxicating and dangerous, moving in tangles of limbs and rendered flesh, the steady beat of drums pulsing through his head with wild abandon. Flames, licking higher and higher, the scent of blood and wine and sex heavy on the balmy summer air.
Dionysus beckons, and Sirius goes to him, his lyre clasped in his hand, a natural extension of his arm, his body, his very being, settling to kneel at the feet of the young god, eyes cast upwards in sweetest supplication.
“Drink, little lyre-player.”
That voice, rich as honey, dark as night, rumbling through the cacophony of the evening like wildfire. In his hands, he holds a chalice, brimming with wine just as dark and sweet as him, those violet eyes gleaming in the flashes of flame.
A hand grips his chin, and Sirius trembles, parting his lips before the god.
He drinks, and warmth floods though his body, igniting his very blood with a sensation so heady, so alive, as if the very rhythm of the earth flowed with him in tandem, in harmony, a pulse so strong, so overwhelming there is nothing to do but to drink, to feel the way the world roars in pleasure, overcome by passion, undone by the necessity of movement, the feeling of skin against skin, the aching, hot rush of blood warm and wet in his mouth. It is like no other, an absence of the mind, a succumbing to nature, an acquiescence to the wonder of thoughtlessness, just feeling, and being, at one with the raucous pounding of the earth. Slightly dizzy, his knees buckle, and he gags, head pulsing with something warm and winsome, the taste of Dionysus thick and cloying on his tongue.
The god grins, swift and cat-like, as if pleased with this, in the way that larger things are often pleased with the weaknesses of smaller things. His thumb brushes over the edge of Sirius’ lips, tender, possessive, catching the droplets of wine on the indent of his tanned skin and bringing them to his own mouth, savouring them, sucking on them, violet eyes bright with laughter.
“Good.” he purrs, and Sirius shivers, at once more alive than he had ever been before.
“Will you sing for us, songbird?”
Sirius’ eyes flicker between the god’s fingers and his lips, a flush building on the delicate arch of his cheekbones as the heat thrums and howls beneath his face. “If you’ll have me, my lord.”
Dionysus throws his head back and roars, the muscled power of his form flickering with the metamorphosis of change, a god, a man, a lion, a leopard, a dolphin breaking over the crested waves, his followers screaming and shouting in the echo of their devotion, beating their chests and tearing at their skin, blood falling to the earth in frenzied, wild waves. Settling, his hand grasps Sirius’ strong shoulders, pulling him up to his feet, and Sirius stumbles, head rushing with the force of the aching, branding touch.
“Sing.” Dionysus whispers in his ear, his voice low and needy against the soft skin of his face, the sound of it like all the wild things of the world, uncontrolled and wanting. “You do it so well for me.”
Sirius trembled, and began to sing.
It was like no song that had ever been sung before, at once both wild and raw, untamed and gentle, a growing, flooding harmony in tune to the very turning of the world. If you had asked him to sing it again, he could not –– the notes came unbidden, falling from his lips in a melody unrecallable, ancient and older than anything he thought he knew. His hands, those beautiful, long-fingered things, flew like wings across the strings of the lyre, and though its sound was muffled by the manic howling of the crowd, it was felt , as if it was something just as alive and aching as them. A shudder ran through him, raven-head tipped back towards the dusking sky, and the earth shuddered with him, the world itself moving in time: flowers sprouting from the trampled ground, vines tugging on the trees, birds and stags and lions creeping towards the man that ruled them all.
It was power.
It was madness.
It was….
Life, flowing through him, returning to the earth, immortal and divine.
The world was spinning, he was drunk, a beautiful mess of blood and melody, unable to do anything but continue, to sing and sing as if there was nothing more he was made for, a conduit of sound, of harmony. If time passed, he did not know it –– all there was was the burning of his slender throat, the stench of sweat, cloying in the air. Around him, the world a blur: sounds of sex, the roar of flame, and––
And—
A man, emerging from the bark of an oak tree.
Something will happen. Something will happen. Something will happen.
Sirius knew the gods as intimately as he knew the earth, and, as the song died on his lips, he was sure he had never seen anything so beautiful.
He was tall, and strong like the tree he came from, his limbs long and in perfect proportion. Taller than Sirius, perhaps, and beautiful in the way that all wild things are: tanned and tawny-haired, with a gleam in his shining amber eyes, feral and wanting like the wisps of clouds that float across the moon. Full, rosy lips parted in a lopsided grin as the man, the man, joined the madness, howling his ecstasy, that pure delight of living, his muscled body bare save for the verdant skirt slung low on his hips.
And Sirius, who had never wanted before, knew, as all intuitive people do, that he would spend the rest of his life wanting him.
Across the clearing, he felt gleaming, amber eyes meet his, and stepped forwards, hands trembling, unable to see anything but his future ahead of him.
“It’s you.” he breathed, a grin turning up the corners of his wet, flushed mouth.
“It’s me.” whispered Remus, and the night, alive and aching, roared in wanting.