Chapter 4
Grannan hiked the night with them, after insisting that by the first light of dawn he would return to his home, which he said before explaining that even were the curse to be broken he would not take back his old name, as it held none of his strength and but a comforting a weakness of nostalgia—“it ain’t a weakness to have a weakness,” he said, with his accent removing the i in “it,” making the first words sound like “taint” (an opinion acknowledged by Gabrielle, who shared a glance with her companion, and who mouthed the word “taint” with sophomoric glee, to which the warrior smiled and shot a mirthful breath from her nose)—“for even Brilliant Achilles would die, but nostalgia and bitterness shall not be mine.” The warrior quietly wondered what her weaknesses would be and immediately looked to Gabrielle in search of an answer, admiring her body as though to scan it for that which she lacked. She found nothing apparent on the surface of her skin—now clothed, covered, and warmed—but looking at her gave comfort, and so she smiled wider before looking away, for fear of becoming too sentimental, an undeserved detour, she felt, along with a fear looming, that somewhere in Gabrielle her weakness lay. Gabrielle, for her part, searched the topography of her psyche high and low for weakness and found none—only finding former weaknesses she was assured she did not have anymore. Regrets? Sure, a ton, but each regret a mistake she had overcome, her guilt for former jealousies, rashness, sentimentalities she had trained to let her wash over her. Her past was now a strength; all of her weaknesses had become strengths in time.
The two met eyes again and each saw upon the other invisible markings, Gabrielle’s scars and her lover’s tattoos, each coated in a pus-like æther, crystal-clear liquid bubbles without edge, each knew the other’s past, each saw the future in the other’s eyes, hoping they shall have skin untouched to spare.
“Tired?” asks the warrior, looking only at Gabrielle, but Grannan would answer before she could.
“Aye, and here would be a great place to camp, just a short bit thataway in the morning; tucked into the mound lies the city.” He stops as the two of them begin setting up camp, following intuitive directions spoken wordlessly—no, no longer spoken, beyond gestural, acknowledge known, belonging to them, as natural as touch, as natural as reflex-breath to fingers dragged down the abdomen—ritualistic wood-gathering, clearing a site to lay softly upon, hanging their food from the trees; his presence was redundant, a longer-than-usual pointed finger, but no more useful. He could have left hours ago. With a sigh, he says, “let me know if there’s anything I can do here, I’ll clear a space past the bushes for privacy.” The two nod at him, Gabrielle uttering a soft (and genuine) “okay,” but Grannan isn’t entirely satisfied, hasn’t warned enough. The capable allies still don’t know that what they’re dealing with—Gods among us; monsters, even!—but he doesn’t want to insult the proud women. He lands on something more sorrowful, a tone unsure, “Hey,” he says before leaving, to the warrior, “you should pick a new name, just in case. I don’t know anyone who’s gotten theirs back before so… maybe just… consider.”
Gabrielle would later write how the grass breathed, how the wind-chilled bark would crackle a sigh, a prayer spoken to Nyx from the serene wild, a prayer for everything to preserve, a monolithic voice of the living all, everything alive, every living thing feeling and feeling unsure of the next moment, and Grannan must have felt it too, right before he felt it in his chest and his back—the warrior, far too quickly, had him pinned. Her breath heavy, a rage she kept contained, a bitterness, (a soreness, Gabrielle would note) normally below the surface. Stupidly, proudly, like his hero Brilliant Achilles, Grannan’s hand had begun unsheathing his sword. She looked down at his hand and shoved him hard before releasing him. “Don’t be an idiot.” She mutters. “I can fight!” she yells, with such a massive spike in amplitude, the nervous energy filling the air, a frothing spit-bubble in the corner of the mouth.
“Keep your voice down,” Grannan replies sternly. (Gabrielle had wanted to warn her companion of the same, but could only think in this moment to say her name, only, of course…)
In a whisper like the screech of a single cicada before the brood awakens and joins in the blood-curdling death-whistle of the chorus, she hisses, “I have too much memory with this name…” A pause. She surveils the area, before raising her chin and locking eyes with the man. “Maybe you did nothing with your name, but I’ve done everything. I’ve toured the world, I’ve destroyed nations; I’ve slain the Gods—I’ve fucked the Gods—they’re nothing to me. I have changed the course of history more times than you’ve witnessed it. Your monsters and myths are stories you’ll tell yourself to cope with how you can’t survive in the mystery of fate. I have seen fate. And I know that everything is knowable, and I know that everything that can be done can be undone. I’ve reversed death itself, and I can get my name back from some magic trickster bitch. And if I can’t I will burn the city of the fae and let them fall to Tartarus—I’ll let the demons of the deep sort out who is undeserving of their imprisonment. And maybe I’ll rescue those innocents later because that’s what I do with my name!” Her voice now a frenzied staccato, wood-splinters falling on the ears from cannon-strike yet raised now only slightly from simmering to first boil.
Gabrielle only watches in horror.
“I’ve had great loves! I’ve met—” she looks to Gabrielle with a shameless expression, stopping herself only for a second before continuing to the captive Grannan. “I am more than all those great men, the Gods you may worship, more than ‘Brilliant Achilles.’ I am more than Zeus, I’m the fucking lightning bolt.”
Nyx obliges the grass and the trees, the bugs and the flowers, the rocks, the wind, and the muck, and allows night to continue, to return to equilibrium. The warrior shifts her foot, back to relaxed position, gummy-stretching and severing a lobworm in the dirt. Grannan looks to her feet and lowers his shoulders slightly. Gabrielle doesn’t even conceptualize Grannan until he next speaks, watching her great friend with a sort of deep helplessness, for as lost as she becomes, she knows she could never face her and survive—not with all the favor of all the Gods in the world, all the armies in all the lands…
“Aye,” he starts, confident and unrestrained, “I believe it all. I trust in what you are bound to do…” and he collects his belongings from the ground, “only, I would add but one thing. Perhaps everything that may be done can be undone… but not unchanged, warrior.” He turns and starts his nighttime journey back, protected by inertia, “Farewell, warrior princess. Farewell Gabrielle,” he emits in hardly a whisper.
Gabrielle does not say goodbye or farewell, she does not wave, she does not remember him—and when later she would write of their story, she would forget his name, and make up a new one, a moniker of great strength, sturdiness, and wisdom—a name from the earth, a name respectful (but not his own…). Instead, she watches the warrior with nostrils flared, the warrior continues preparing the camp, idly stoking the fire though it need it not. Squatting with face obscured by flame, warped by oxygen suck and smoke, her daggersharp icicle eyes at last dart up and the warrior at last breaks the silence (yet again) with a “what?”
With permission (Gods, she hated her reluctance when it came to her (HER AND HER ALONE)), Gabrielle approaches the fire. “Why did you do that? He was leading us to the city of the fae!”
“You heard him, right? He wasn’t gonna go any further; he just wanted to sleep next to us.”
Gabrielle throws her hands up and nervously chuckles out, “don’t you think we owe him that much?”
The warrior crawls closer before standing, suddenly erecting herself as the taller, more formidable of the two. “I don’t owe anything to those who doubt in me.”
Gabrielle’s eyes turn glossy as though she were about to cry, but she doesn’t quite know how she feels—remember how you lost yourself and needed me? do you no longer feel that way? do you forget everything we have together? do you forget me?—a mix of rage, a mix of disgust, a mix of sorrow, nostalgia, and as her friend stands above her, her nose at neck height, something else entirely. “You don’t really think that, do you?”
After a moment of quiet, the warrior softens and laughs. “No, of course not. I just didn’t like him. Pessimistic know-it-all.”
As her companion laughs, Gabrielle surprises even herself—an attack which, in the past, she’d hardly have made even in jest, but now she doesn’t know, doesn’t know what it is, something done to hurt, not in play, but to cause pain, to cause shock, her strength she had forgotten (her strength even the warrior had forgotten—yes, how strong she has become), a quick shove, but not slow to the chest as though to protect from impact and only push, rather a harsh slap (her armor already removed and so to looser clothing underneath, a space left raw, a spot to be bruised anew even though it had been bruised so often before, and then a shove, Gabrielle’s back tensing and shoulders flaring, her arms showing their definition, the muscles a sculpture under small frame, skin stretched, sweat dripping from the fire, the nervousness, the excitement (a pheromone—a permanent gift given to us by Aphrodite), and the warrior falls back, nearly catching herself, but a root raised hooks her heel and forces her over. Never one to leave herself stunned, she rolls over and props herself up on arm and knee before relaxing once she assesses that there is no more threat—not immediately—only Gabrielle covering her own face.
The face underneath is not one of guilt, though it is true that that’s there as well, an initial curiosity of guilt, the guilt that accompanies shock, a bafflement so strong that it must have been your fault, for the Gods do not behave so spectacularly in such small matters. It is shame, shame for seeing the toppled warrior, fallen by her touch, and feeling pleasure, shame for the joy that comes with violence. (is this how it feels when you lose yourself to Ares? [LOSE YOURSELF TO ARES]) This power and fear on the cliff’s edge of hysteria, and manic twists like vines growing up the trellis, fields of poison ivy in the brain—memories of asking what will tomorrow bring? and the sickness of not knowing was the rainwater keeping this grotesque garden healthy, asphyxiating what flowers may have been left behind after all this time. Witnessing the princess on the ground was like the end of a drought, after all this time—something new. An uncertain future. A break. Everything was new. And the warrior lifts her hand coolly, asking for a return to normal without asking but everything was different now—she was looking up at Gabrielle, she’s looking up to me.
And for no other reason other than the fact that she could, she raises her bare foot and pushes the warrior’s hand away with a quick tap, and without lowering her foot to the ground she places it upon her shoulder and slowly lowers the warrior supine. The two keep eye contact, neither revealing a thought—no yes, no no; no destination, no plan—but the body unravels as it always does. As she glides the foot over her lover’s chest, Gabrielle could feel the warrior’s heart beating, faster and faster, and felt her own match, briefly imagining that it was the same heart, beating faster to get the blood to its new appendage; and then she imagined the warrior’s heart was nothing but soil, and she was her sunflower, growing tall above her, connected, and grateful, and towards Olympus she shall grow, and grow, and grow, almost astonishingly above the ground, like there was nothing at all below her.
Broken by a hot hand to the ankle like sand in the summer sun, Gabrielle moves her raised foot to the left side of her companion, her other foot remaining on the right side. Maintaining the gaze without any change besides blinking, Gabrielle legs spread above, holding her in place, the warrior is the first to finally break the eye contact, looking down Gabrielle’s body, to her side, to her leg, and then the fire, focusing on the licking flames and crackling wood. A thin piece of stovewood falls outside the architecture of the bonfire, severing its connection but for the flame above, plasmatic matter bringing together the city of burn even through cataclysm; fire will unite it all.
With her attention momentarily elsewhere, the warrior is caught off-guard (how) by Gabrielle once again, as her face is grabbed whole-palm and turned back up, to see Gabrielle’s face once again, close, just for a fraction of a moment, before she’s pulled into a deep, possessive kiss—the warrior’s face warming, relenting, and for one of the first times in recent memory, relaxing, giving in to the moment, not quite joyous, but feeling a part of something, rather than existing as an exception to it. Gabrielle releases her hold, first in her lips, then in her hands, and raises.
With a gravelly voice, not unadorned with sparkle, the woman on the ground says, “You didn’t have to do all of that for me to kiss you, Gabrielle.”
Gabrielle smiles and shakes her head. In a whisper, “For me to kiss you.”
The woman’s eyes soften, her gaze no longer hard, no longer a challenge.
Gabrielle continues, “I wanted to kiss you, like you kiss me.”
The woman ekes out a soft breath from the nose with a smile and turns over on her side, facing the fire. Gabrielle steps behind her and lays down, resting one arm over her companion’s waist, propping her head up with the other arm, and they both watch the flame annihilate the errant twig, totally apart, into nothing but lonely ash.