The horror and fear on his face caused her to soften but before she could speak again his expression transformed to one of defiant hatred. And she understood what had happened to him and where all the pain he carried came from. The scars on his body but especially all those on his heart and soul were carved there by the gods.
And her love grew deeper.
She wanted to reach out to him and break through the hatred and disgust but she couldn’t. Didn’t know how. How to find a path to him and show him that it could be his path as well. That the two of them could walk together, hand in hand, forever. Here in this paradise she made, a haven from the gods, from humanity.
But he turned away instead. Took a step. Then another.
Her fragile heart threatened to tear apart. The tension roiling in her chest made her want to scream and double over in agony.
She needed him. Needed him to stay. To come to her.
To run to her.
To love her.
“No.”
He didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow down.
Tears in her eyes, heart rending, body shaking, she could not accept his abandonment.
Not again. Not more of this.
She would not lose him. She would not live only with loss in this paradise.
And so she sang. She sang her song and watched the threads reach out through the air to weave round his chest and arms and legs and though she felt him fighting against her voice she did not relent but reached deeper into herself to find new strength to hold him still.
To keep him here.
And he turned at her song and returned to her, every step dictated by her melody. His handsome face twisted in fear and despair and hate but she could not lose him.
She would not lose him.
Her hand on his cheek like fire radiating up her arm to her shoulder and all the way to her heart. She drank him in and told him that he would love her, that he would learn, that they would be together, be one forever.
And together they returned to the cave.
He did not look at her the next day or the one after. When he thought she slept, he left the cave.
She did not follow him as he scoured the beaches and perimeters of the island. She did not chase him or call his name but let him discover the edges of his world. And as the sun rolled away from the sky and the stars peered out to watch her and him, she sang to him, drawing him home.
To her.
“You hate the gods. I understand. I hate them too. The pains they’ve given to you and the ways they’ve torn your life apart—they’ve done the same to me. You don’t trust me. You don’t believe me. I know it. I feel it. But I see you. I know you. I am you.”
The days became weeks and he wandered the island. His flesh fell away and his cheeks hollowed. He had stopped sleeping after the fifth night together.
She sang to him, wrapping him in sleep.
He left her each morning before the sun was up but at least he slept. It was what he needed if he was going to live.
But she could not force him to eat. This surprised her for she knew all men must eat or they die. She never considered the possibility that a man might choose to starve himself to death and even when she watched him attempt this she still could not believe a man would be able to.
But he was unlike any other man. His willpower defied all expectation and assumption. She wondered why he did not instead try to swim to some distant shore or build a raft or boat to escape her.
She would not have stopped him. At least not at first.
But he seemed to fear the water. She found this curious and baffling. For how else could he have arrived if not by sea and ship, especially without the intercession of a friendly god.
She could not believe that a god would have given her a gift.
And though she did not follow him, allowing him his privacy and peace, when he slept she went and sang to the stones and the trees, to the birds and the beasts, and they recounted his day in paradise for her.
He wandered the forests studying the plants. He cupped the black lunar flowers in his broad hands and smelled them. His eyebrows shot up in surprise and he breathed the scent deeply once more. He did not pluck the flowers or even the petals but let them grow untouched and undisturbed.
It brought her joy to know how he loved her creations. She believed it would be only a matter of time until he came around, returned to her by choice.
When the lynx came down from the hills, he did not attempt to run or fight or even frighten the beast. Rather, he let his hands fall to his side and he called to it.
“What did he say?”
“He told me to end this.”
That would not do. “What did you do?”
The lynx was quite rightly confused and left him alone and she told her that was well done.
She sang to the wind who told her of the hours he spent at the shore staring out into the seas with tears in his eyes. The waves could tell her nothing for they knew nothing of this man, this stranger, but that he kept his distance and that the tide was always upon his face.
“Who were you before you came to my island?”
He feigned sleep but she listened to his heartbeat rattling in his chest and the way he held his breath. She let him have his space and she did not climb atop him that night. Rather, she left the cave and sang to the moon and the stars but they could tell her nothing for they cared little about the comings and goings of men, especially sad, broken ones like hers.
She heard him leave the cave and this time she followed. She kept her distance, fearful of being seen, of being caught, but she could command the leaves and the stones of this place to be silent as she passed. And so silent as night itself, she followed him through the trees and back to the beach where first she found him. In his weary, starving state, he scrabbled over her island, running into trees, stumbling over roots and stones, bumbling along so loudly that the birds shouted at him to quiet down.
Being a man, he did not understand.
She found this one of the more curious aspects of men. They seemed incapable of understanding others. Her anger flashed for a moment at the way he refused to consider her or how she might feel, and how he had never asked her about herself, her happiness, how she came to this lonely place of sorrow and beauty.
As he made his way down towards the water, he kept looking back to ensure she didn’t follow.
She did not allow herself to be seen.
At the edge of the water, he stared down at the lapping waves and the low tide. His ragged breath battled the seabreeze and the waves but she heard it all the same. That rattling sickness in him. His suicide by hunger robbing him of his life more and more each day.
It hurt her. It angered her.
He hated her so much that he would choose this miserable, foolish death rather than happiness or even friendship with her.
What had she done to deserve this? She’d given him only love. Every night, she soothed him and gave him release. But rather than knitting them closer together, it became like a canyon between them. Each night, her singing grew more insistent and his resistance more persistent until he abandoned himself to her touch, to her love.
Every night, it felt like victory, like he would finally look upon her with love and friendship, but instead it turned him cold and bitter, his hatred frigid as the underworld’s ice.
He spoke to the waves, to the tide, though she could not hear. For a moment, bitterness and resentment rose within her and a fear that he may be speaking to some nymph or oceanic god who would give him passage away from here, leaving her alone once more.
But she heard no response to whatever he may have said.
And he sat there in the sand where she first found him.
His shoulders slumped.
His head drooped.
His body trembled and she heard him weeping.
“Have you ever considered why I am here alone? Have you ever wondered why I hide away from the other gods? Have you even once thought about me or how I feel or why I am here or why I want you here? In all this time, have you given even a single thought to me?”
He turned to her, his eyes draped by his long hair, and he spoke with a depth of bitterness she could not understand, especially because he said, “I think of you constantly. You’re nearly all I think about.”
She sensed the anger but she soared on his regard. Her chest warm, her body loosened, and desire blazing once more. She placed a hand on his arm but he recoiled.
“I love you.”
“You do not know love.”
“But I do,” she laughed. “I love you.” And she touched him again.
He pulled away.
And so she sang to him, to ease him back to her.
This time, he did not resist. She smiled and hoped he saw how happy she was in the darkness, how much their closeness meant to her.
The weeks marched on and still he did not eat. Each day, he studied the plants, the flowers, and even the fruits and nuts growing for him, but he denied himself all of them.
He walked weakly, barely able to stand without leaning into a tree or bending over to support himself. When finally he collapsed, she was not there and so he lay in the dirt for hours, until the moon opened its eye and she looked for him.
Her song wove through the air, seeking him, but he would not come.
Could not come.
Panicked, she ran through the trees demanding answers from the birds and insects and they led her to where he lay. She threw herself down to him and lifted his head onto her lap.
Fear gripped her with icy claws, strangling her, and she wept, begging him to live, to stay with her. She felt his chest and the weak thrum of his heart, the shallow breathing.
His eyes opened and she wept in relief, in hope. “You scared me so, my love.”
He only watched her for a moment before sliding back into sleep, into the current pulling him towards death.
She would not let him go. Would not allow him to leave her.
Would not let the gods take him away.
And so she sang a new song. One she had not known before. One pulled from her very heart and soul and she used the melody as a tether to keep him on this side of that infinite river, to keep the gods of death at bay, for she would not let him go.
“I will never let you go.”
And over the days that followed, she fed him broth and wine and mashed peas until he began to recover.
“Why did you do it?”
“Tell me something.”
“Anything, my love.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“You were lying out there in the dirt. I feared—”
“No, no. Why here, to your island. Why did you bring me here?”
“I didn’t.”
“You said no one can come here. No one can find here.”
“Yes.”
“How am I here then?”
“I dreamt of you. Dreamt of someone arriving for years. Nearly a century, I dreamt of someone coming to find me here. To find me and love me. And then there was you.”
“You dragged me here with your power.”
“No.”
“You did. Your goddess power. You pulled me here to be your captive.”
“My heart, there is so much you do not know or understand. My power here is near absolute but I have no power over the winds and seas beyond my island. If the other gods knew of this place, if they found me here, they may be able to even overpower me and take hold of all that I’ve built and created here. I am a goddess, yes, but my power only seems inescapable because you are a man.”
“You hate the gods.”
“Just like you.”
“Why?”
“Because they despise us. Because all they know is their own wants and desires. They think nothing of me and you or anyone. They use their power like weapons to control and demean us. I was a subject to their wrath and anger for so long but I found a way out. And now that you’re here, they cannot hurt you any longer. We both found a way out. Don’t you see, love. We can be free here.”
Each day, he grew stronger. He ate what she fed him and lay with her through the nights but in the mornings he returned to the beach, to the edge of the sea, and he wept.