Chapter 2
Entering the creaking inn, light poured in beams from the boards holding up the roof, ground wet and rotting, but at least now, of course, the warrior thinks, it’s stopped raining; the mucky slush clinging to Gabrielle’s feet and ankles—her looser, lighter wear made her faster, better for simple hiking, but when conditions become severe, or even, as now, inconvenient, she felt silly she felt silly she felt silly but normally a quick approving glance from that great love would ease her, now impossible, for she must play the caretaker, a tear off her wrap tightly swathed applying pressure to her friend’s wounded hand, her leading the still near-paralyzed warrior—legs moving, feet following Gabrielle’s guidance, face betraying nothing, hand held firm against infirmed hand, looking forward—traveled now in silence where once there was laughter, smiles, and banter—all of which had been shaken from Gaia with a shuddering yawn. Those beams of light had slanted to such an angle so as to, within moments upon entering, shine right into the warrior’s eyes. She squints, ducks below the light (where, Gabrielle notes, she would have once stood taller), and quickens her pace to the barkeep, moving past the glances of ogling patrons, the sounds of whom reflected utter contempt for their foreign visitor—an attitude the couple had been accustomed to but now in the ungraceful afterward of recent events, the eyes and the powers they might as well cast had become burdensome baggage. The warrior, attempting to regain composure, rolled her shoulders back, before speaking to the keeper with the tattooed face, “I need wine, vinegar, and a pot of boiling water with a fresh, clean cloth inside, and a room for the night,” but Gods, how tired she sounded, the two women thought together, and likely anyone else listening in, laughing.
The tattooed man looked them both up and down, scanning, appraising, scrutinizing, “What’s yer names, strangers?”
The warrior dropped her head and mumbled, whispered, “I don’t…” too low to be heard, a cry to whoever would listen, too quiet for anyone to listen.
Her companion jumped in, announcing, “I’m Gabrielle, and don’t tell me you haven’t heard of the great warrior princess, destroyer of nations?” Bragging on her friend’s behalf, a risky move, usually said with a self-satisfied smolder, but now, more than ever, Gabrielle felt like a sidekick, fanfare, a ward, under her thrall, and don’t I wish I felt less silly today? she rhetorically chastises herself.
More faces turn, each face mumbling, seeking a name, the keeper grinning, “The great…” a small, almost imperceptible pause, indicating the name was on the tip of his tongue, but effortlessly, without a stutter, someone gifted at gab and verbal cruelty, he continued “warrior needs her girlfriend to make reservations for her?” The inn laughs, clearly seeing this man of some kind of great leader, a ringmaster for their carnival.
Gabrielle’s pride hurt for her friend (and herself), though she had no problem performing tasks for her, caring for her, or being called a girlfriend; she was hurt by the way the keeper would sneer, and the way those tattoos would tangle up in his scars and wrinkles (it was almost handsome, Gabrielle admitted to herself, but which made it so much worse, for were it not for his venom, she could imagine this man smiling kindly, sharing stories, even…), so despite her feelings of smallness, of auto-debasement, she continued, “she has been out in the forest fighting witches and bandits, protecting your village, show a little respect!”
“Gabrielle…” she groaned in protest.
Neither hurting nor helping her cause, the tattooed man responded flatly, hardly looking at either of them, “No witches here… killed ‘em all,” voicing “killed” as though it ended with a “t,” percussive like a drum, throwing “‘em all” like the strike’s natural recoil back into the mouth with a breath, without malice, just as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if it were so because it had to be.
“Well…” Gabrielle starts, with a smile, leaning her body forward, as if bowing, yet speaking fully, appearing obsequious while sounding insolent, “you missed at least one!”
“Gabrielle!” she responds harshly, quieting the room, the strength of her voice genuinely chilling to the weaker-willed patrons, no longer a joke, each one knowing, deep down, that this woman could murder them in cold blood.
The barkeep took a second before it dawned on him, “Alright, let’s see that hand.” Tepidly, reluctantly, the warrior offers her wound to the tattooed man. He takes her wrist forcefully and brings it close, leaning over the bar, under his gaze, revealing something of that, not warmth exactly, but some breed of kindness that Gabrielle had been envisioning.
The cut was already to starting to heal on its own, the warrior, not one to make herself vulnerable to attack still somehow healing at a blessed rate, the body favoring her where the Gods did not (well, except…), all this despite the fortunes unafforded to her like those such as Achilles, Atalanta, and Hector, real champions, and though she knew she could hold her own, she had no longer thought of such glory and favor—the Gods’ indifference and antipathy something she was sure of, a battle that brought her closer to real people, people in need, to their quotidian lives, and her many skills just that—skills—meant to destroy and build, to protect and preserve (vainly, she thought of the Trimūrti and wondered if she may be blessed of a different pantheon altogether, and when her bones and body are naught but ash and fire will she return, will she find Gabrielle again (and again and again…?))—looking over the house of fools could she be blamed for flicking that part of her on that says what if I am better, stronger, smarter, do I not deserve to be? Unfazed by her line of thought, the keeper rolls his eyes, “don’t have nothing clean, but the rest I can get yous.” He sort of throws her hand back to her as though pitching a lucky roll of dice, like Palamedes to the Goddess Tyche though with less reverence (but should he not treat me with some respect, if not reverence? she asks herself shamefully), “Fairly certain you’re not fae, it’s Grannan, but don’t go throwing it around.”
Fae? Gabrielle is unfamiliar with the word, but her puzzlement turns to chills when her friend’s face doesn’t budge, that stone-chiseled look formed from biting down hard on her own teeth, tension without release, without plan. Gabrielle looks around the room and finds it strange that everyone has gone back to what they were doing immediately prior to their arrival, and a deep wave of panic flows once over her—that everything may be the same after she dies—but isn’t that exactly why she writes? is that not why the scrolls exist? to leave something so that even when the two of them can fill a room no longer, their essence may remain, and they may forever be spoken to by the living, first as eulogy, then as study. (She imagines herself dead for centuries before hearing the utterance, who were you, Gabrielle? and she wants to scream back, I don’t know, but I am here!) Her gaze turns to the window, a gray portrait at first, but soon a father and mother-to-be walk hand-in-hand, in and out of view, just a moment from Gabrielle’s perspective, and she wants to cry, as she thinks does Aphrodite’s love touch even here? as she lets herself drift fondly over the Goddess, her shoulders peeking through straps and shrouds, her neck and the way it tightens when she’s excited, her exposed belly and the way it elegantly folds just so slightly over her covered sex, as if to give sculptors and fresco painters a bit of grace to capturing her perfection, her absolute beauty, as if they ever could, as if Gabrielle didn’t know the real thing (didn’t wish for the real thing…) Her mind wanders and wanders as the warrior disinfects her simple wounds, scrubbing and coating her hands as the sting bites at her, but the hot water does feel nice, the slickened red shine of the wine rubbing candied coating atop her skin like a shell to be licked clean—the scent an aromatic bite of nostalgia, like drunken lover’s kiss at the end of a too-late night, a prelude to wonder, to forceful pushing, to silencing gestures, sickening sweetness, overwhelming, her heart races and races as she rubs those hands together and feels herself and imagines this is not my skin feeling me, hoping it to be true, and she brings those hands to her face and covers it as though she were shocked but only pauses, not to scream or moan as she wants to but to breathe, breathe this kiss, breathe the memory back—please, Gabi, say my name…—and she turns toward her gorgeous companion (her sweat-slicked arms in need of a wash, a bath together perhaps?) and finds her looking not at her drunken display but out the window, toward nothing at all.
“What happened…” Grannan interrupts, starting Gabrielle back to attention, “...was you gave your name to a fairy. Happens to the best of us around here. They live in the forest around where yous came in from.”
“But I didn’t—” the warrior starts.
“Doesn’t matter, they’ll take any name they hear. Us in the villages here have wised up, so they stopped playing fair.” She looks to Gabrielle again, not with malice exactly, but a sort of pointed dread, and her companion reflects a grimace, the lines puncturing her cheeks holding up the world and the spheres and the stars above (darling, I’ve hurt you… she thinks but cannot say, could not eke out, not to the warrior (not now.)) “Don’t act so glum, happens to the best of us,” he repeats, “we’re a village of men with new names, women with new families… you think Grannan is my given name? That the Dagda spoke to my pa and whispered Grannan? You’ve heard another with that name? I bet not; mixed it up myself—it’s blessed now, blessed by me, purified by me. A lot of power in giving yourself a name, yeah, you’ll forget the old one, you’ll see it in writing, and it won’t look like anything to you. You’ll think no way was that ever me.”
Grannan continued to ramble but at the mention of writing, Gabrielle runs out of the building towards the stable where they had tied up Argo. The horse had a way of making itself hardly present, like a phantom it haunted her friend, seemingly without need, without want, it was just a fundamental thing for her to be in the vicinity of her owner—like instinct, like a familiar (that same panic hits Gabrielle again, will Argo still be there if her owner were to…)
(But, of course, Gabrielle always assumed she would die first, so it isn’t worth the worry.)
Inside the stable, Gabrielle fingers through the leather saddle bag and grabs one of her own scrolls from her most recent journey alongside… there! But… Gabrielle reads the scroll over and over again, just that first line, and each time she sees that name it’s as though the name became just a word, unattached from any person, and that word just a string of characters, none of which imbued with inherent meaning, and those characters slide off her brain, suspended, not fully mixing, like olive oil over water, bubbles on the surface, finally disappearing, leaving the brain with only the impression that it had accepted the information, a word she pretended to understand: X, E, N, A? No, what is that? Frustration turns to despair, she knows how to read, and damn it all she knows what she wrote! But would anyone understand this person, this collection of letters, this great hero, and her dearest friend?
From the aether, in between the air and Gaia, not from nothing, but from a distinct other emptiness, truly there, burning in, fiery, energy, as if to insist on its own existence, a being burst into the stable behind Gabrielle. She felt him before she saw him, his presence casting an aura of power and familiarity (almost like…)—Ares. While the burst had jolted her enough to recoil, she no longer felt fear, exactly, at the God’s presence; his smoldering eyes and imposing frame not quite a façade, but merely a fraction of what Gabrielle knew of his depth—where once a hard gaze from the God of war could have brought Gabrielle to her knees, now she feels a sort of tense camaraderie, the trust in herself to stand tall, to not buckle, the trust in him to fire first with warning shots (every interaction had had a level of respect—not respect enough to play fair every time (hardly any time), but the respect that every fight was winnable, every conflict gave each of them the opportunity to prove themselves worthy, even if he was the only one who thought so (weirdly, this mattered to Gabrielle a great deal, and when she got the chance to prove her light in the face of war she resolved to clear the fog (Ares always seemed to Gabrielle to be like this; this infinite natural occurrence that could be cleared, but seemed unfathomably present—sand, fog, darkness))). As soon as she recovered and turned to meet his eyes (a flicker of fire—is that for me?), he had already crossed the stable to grab her by her wrists. She immediately started twisting and tried stomping at his feet, but he backed up and kept her center of gravity off-base. “Stop thrashing, you’ll break something.”
“Yeah, you!” She continues to struggle until Ares pulls her back suddenly, making her lose her balance and drop down, her knees scraping on the dirt and loose hay beneath her.
“I’m just here to talk.”
“This is how you start conversations?”
Ares considers for a second, “Only when the person I’m talking to tends not to listen. So far, that’s only been you and…” frustration warps his face, “and that’s what I need to talk about.” His grip was strong, her arms stretched out above her head, giving Gabrielle the impression of a forced prayer—despite her now ceasing to struggle, Ares held on strong, which Gabrielle registered as fear of her strength (did she have a shot in a fair fight? she wondered). “Our favorite warrior has been stricken with a curse that I am as yet unfamiliar with.”
“Tell me something new, Ares.” The sound of his name flowing out of her mouth like sweet fruit, the harsh sour bite of tension, fear of mess, only for the release of juice to calm the worry, to coat the inside calm.
He rolls his eyes and raises his hands higher. “Up!” he commands, and Gabrielle obeys without a word or a thought. When she reaches her feet, he slowly lets go (her arms suddenly felt too cold; she felt untethered, a kite released and doomed to the current of the sky). He continues, “The problem here is not about the warrior but about me. You’ve written dozens of scrolls about her, and her exploits with the God of war, Ares—that’s me—and when you and your friend are long gone, you’ll be survived by what people remember about you, what they write about you.”
“So?”
He holds his hands up, gesturing as though trying to make his point visual, “There is the possibility that nothing will survive, so I am trying to have as many stories starring me as possible, or I will disappear just like you mortals.”
“Oh boo-hoo, you’ll become a man like the rest of us.”
Ares coughs out a chuckle, a filler syllable to mask his hurt, frustration, to obfuscate her indignance, irreverence, “no no no no, a GOD who isn’t immortal is below any man—to have this power and to perish in the mind like a common villager—hardly a God, not even a king—I might as well be a beaten puppy, kicked around and thrown to the hawks and snakes!”
Gabrielle watched Ares turn from a mountain of resolve, of command, into flickering fiery frenzy, a bonfire in a tornado, playing with its own extinguishment. At least her pain is dignified, she thinks, but can’t help wanting to ease his anxiety; it was unbecoming of a foe—or whatever he was—to lose himself so fully.
“It isn’t just about me, of course…” he says, in a lower, prouder voice, “storytelling is noble… I would hate to see your hard work become illegible. You may as well cast all your stories into the sea—maybe Poseidon will read them because no one else will.”
She stalls, “What do you need me to do?”
“It’s a spell, right? Just go find who cast it, and get it undone!”
“And why don’t you help?”
“Oh, ah…” he inhales through his teeth and cocks his head, “I don’t play around with these new Gods. Don’t fight with Gods unless you know you can win.”
She scoffs, “coward.”
“Hey, if what happens to them happens to me, I’m dead on impact. Not gonna happen—at least you can fight to change it back or live the rest of your mortal life trying.” His tone is angry, but she felt a hint of playfulness, the two of them smiling at each other, their banter jubilant if confrontational. “And by the way,” he concludes, “you and I both know you could have fought out of my hold if you really wanted to,” before dematerializing in a flash, back to the world between, his absence a punctuation mark thus far unwritten.
Gabrielle blushes an orange-pink at the space where Ares was, too proud to wipe and clean the stinging scrapes on her knees.
She runs into her friend as she exits the stable, scroll held limply in her hand. “Hey,” says the warrior. Toneless, a neutral greeting, expecting Gabrielle to offer what had happened without prompt.
Unable to explain herself, her strange mix of feelings, her pain and sorrow, her gentle excitement, her dread and adrenaline, her need for a bed and to have her hands underneath a blanket for modesty’s sake, Gabrielle just gives back, “Hey.”
The warrior searches for anything on Gabrielle’s face to give her some comfort but finds nothing, wanting to tell her how abandoned she felt in the tavern, how angry she was that she would run off without explanation at a time like this when it felt as though the ground had opened up and imprisoned her in some kind of oubliette, an isolation chamber, and all she needed right now was that (her) companionship—she restrains herself. It isn’t worth it, Gabrielle always knows how she feels, and always knows what’s right (at least, what’s supposed to be right). She sees the bags under Gabrielle’s eyes, the dirt down her legs, the sweat, the chill… “Come on,” she says, “let’s take a bath.”