This Immortal Heart: A Novel of Aphrodite(94)
I lean down to kiss him. “I do.” My mind is alive with possibilities. When he says anywhere, he has no idea how true that is. I can spirit him to any corner of the world that I choose, and, if this lasts, there could be a future for us. Zeus took a mortal boy once and brought him to the heavens, gave him immortality and made him his cupbearer. Apollo made his mortal son Asclepius a god of healing. It has been done before, when a god has loved a human.
I’m getting carried away, it’s too soon for fantasies like that. He’s young and there are years ahead of us still to enjoy…but there’s nothing to say I couldn’t keep Adonis for eternity, if that’s what we wanted.
At the very least, I can get him away from Artemis. I can take him to Cyprus, where he’ll be under my protection. “Tomorrow,” I say, “when I come back—be ready to leave.”
He nods, intent and serious. “I will be.”
* * *
—
I’m reluctant to tear myself away from our tryst, but I’m not going to neglect my responsibilities. The Horae and I have left Lemnos now, but I sense Dysis returning to the island. When I pass overhead, I see her with Kedalion down among the volcanic rocks, their quarrel forgotten. My altar in Paphos is piled so high with offerings, it’s set to topple over entirely. That night, the world slumbers peacefully; Hypnos and Pasithea are reconciled, and the God of Sleep is happy once more.
I come back to Adonis as dawn breaks. He’s waiting for me, dogs at his feet again.
“You don’t have much with you,” I say.
He shrugs, disarming. “I don’t have much,” he says. “Only my dogs and my bow. That’s all I need.”
His dogs rush into the woods, intent upon something.
“That’s all?” I ask, my tone a little arch.
He laughs and takes me in his arms.
I let him kiss me, but then I pull back, taking a deep breath. I’ll tell him now who I really am. But his lips are on mine again, sure and confident as he slides my dress down over my shoulders and I surrender to the moment. I’m in no hurry.
We sink to the ground together. Somewhere in the distance, I hear the sound of rustling branches—the dogs no doubt.
But then it gets louder, whoever it is close by, and I sit up, breathless. “What’s that?”
“Who cares?” He pulls me back to him.
“I think I can hear other hunters,” I say. “In the trees.”
“So long as they stay there.” His head blocks out the sun above me, and the noise recedes. I wait a moment, listening for it to return.
“Adonis,” I say, “wait—”
But I can’t finish my sentence before a tumult of thundering paws erupts, and his dogs hurtle past us in a panic, scattering in opposite directions. In an instant, Adonis leaps to his feet, his eyes on the gap between the trees from which they ran while I’m still staring after the terrified hounds. A terrible mistake.
The boar bursts out from the forest, barreling toward me, and Adonis flings himself to intercept its path. I’m not fast enough to stop him. Its hooves pound the earth, foam bubbling from its snout, tusks curving sharp and lethal into the air. It charges for him, tossing its head upward, and its tusks pierce Adonis before I can even move. They plunge into his navel and his beautiful face contorts. There’s a sickening moment where everything stands still, and then the boar jerks itself free and flees across the meadow, swallowed up in the distant sweep of the forests. I’m speechless, unable to comprehend how it could appear so suddenly and then be gone, and how Adonis can be stretched on the earth, his blood trickling onto the flowers that are crushed and torn beneath his body.
It happened so quickly. A brutal, mortal ending.
I drop to my knees, cradling his head in my lap, but his shallow breaths quickly dwindle to nothing, and the light deadens in his eyes. I could have made him a god when he was still alive, but now I have nothing, no means to summon his life back from the Underworld.
The birds have fallen silent. What sounds like a hollow wind circling through the leaves belies the stillness in the air, and I realize it’s the lamenting chorus of the Dryads, a soft and eerie sound.
I’m tensed for the emergence of whichever hunter pursued the boar this way, but no one comes.
Almost as though the prey wasn’t the boar at all.
The Dryads emerge from their protective trunks, each of them slight and delicate, ethereal in their flowing dresses and leafy crowns. They usually shrink from sight, only ever glimpsed fleetingly as they dart between their beloved trees, but this tragedy draws them out. Averting their eyes, they advance cautiously toward Adonis.
I lay his head down on the grass and kiss his forehead. Then I stand, taking a shaking step back from his body, and then another.
The Dryads sink down around him, a circle of nymphs clad in shades of green, joining hands with one another.
One of them, Kraneia, lifts her head to me. “We’ll bury him,” she says softly. There is no rancor or recrimination in her voice, only gentle sorrow.
I nod, trembling. It’s better that his body stays here, in the woods that he loved, than returned to the family that he came here to escape.
If I’d told him who I really am, he wouldn’t have leaped in front of the boar. It was a misguided attempt to save me, never knowing that I couldn’t be harmed. Not realizing that I was the one who should have jumped in its way.