It didn’t happen. I knew as surely as anything I had ever known that Apollo was there that day. I had felt the grip of his immortal hands on me. I had felt the burn of his venom in my mouth. The memory of it flowed in my bloodstream; the echo of his touch imprinted on my skin; the visions he had given me flickered and twisted in my head, all of them fighting for supremacy, never settling into one clear picture. But for the sake of my anxious parents, I tried to push down the memories and to master my words, to hold in the tide of unwelcome prophecy that I knew no one wished to hear, that would only be taken as evidence of, at best, my madness and, at worst, my impiety.
But when a powerful vision came, it would split my mind with a roaring chasm of light and there was no way of holding myself in one piece. When Apollo’s gift set my senses aflame and blinded me to everything but the revelations he showed me, I rolled upon the floor and screamed with the agony of it. It was better to keep myself alone as much as I could.
Even in my own bedchamber, there was no peace for me, no safety. There was no escape from Apollo’s invasions into my head. I had no sanctuary in the city; not even my mind felt like my own. Even in the respites between his attacks, I felt afraid, never knowing when the visions would seize me again.
In an hour of calm, I lay awake in the soft, silver moonlight. My eyes ached and my body was exhausted, but everything was quiet. A tray of food lay untouched on the table, where the slave-girl had left it earlier, her eyes lowered as she backed out, desperate to be away from me. A pile of olives gleaming in brine, the rich tang mingling with the salty scent of the crumbling cheese, made me think of the dark tangle of seaweed down at the shore where I used to walk. The sweetness wafting from the jug of wine carried the memory of the temple, the silent hours I had spent there in dedication. The only place in the city that had ever really felt like it was mine.
I was still his priestess. I’d sworn my oaths. I was bound to serve him for the rest of my life. The idea of going back there made my heart quicken in fear, but I couldn’t banish the thought that perhaps that was the only hope I had of ending my suffering. In the peace of that night, I could reason with myself. If I returned, if I showed him my loyalty and my obedience, then maybe he would grant me his mercy. Maybe he would end this punishment for my defiance and quell the visions. I quaked at the prospect of setting foot on those stones again, of kneeling before his statue. But he had inflicted this curse upon me, and only he could take it away again.
No prophetic agony split my head apart that night, and by the morning, I could see no other choice but to return to the temple. It made my parents relieved to see me dress once more in my sacred robes, to put on the semblance of the girl I had been before. If the others didn’t want me back there, they didn’t dare say it to the king’s daughter. I took up my duties again. I laid offerings at the feet of Apollo’s statue, as I had always done. He remained impassive: silent, motionless stone.
When I was not in the temple, I fled to the shore, leaving the walled city behind me. It was better to have nothing but the waves as company, to mutter my truths to the empty wind and the water, where the clusters of seaweed would wave in the froth as though in agreement with me.
I was used to being misheard and misunderstood. I had been a timid child and an awkward young woman, always striving to make my voice clear and brave. I was no stranger to struggling with my words, feeling them die in my throat when people looked at me. And I could see with bitter clarity that everyone thought this new manifestation of madness that had come upon me was just another part of my oddness; that I had always lived in a dreamworld, and it had only got worse. Whilst the world saw my encounter with Apollo as further proof of my strange mind, I saw that the day he had come to me in the temple was like a lightning bolt shattering the centre of my life, the cracks in the earth spiralling from it in every direction. I knew that the madness within me had not been building to that moment, but rather that the echoes of his devastation had rung back through my years as well as forward. Such was the power of Apollo: he could shatter my existence from beginning to end.
The night before Paris came back to Troy, I slept even more fitfully than usual. The next morning, I could feel the tenderness around my eyes, the gritty soreness that told of the hours I had spent awake in the bowels of the night. Everything that day seemed like an illusion, as though the city itself was made of rippling cloth; as though the ancient foundations of the mighty walls could sink at any moment into quicksand and disappear. I longed for the fresh salt of the air outside the walls, for the quiet murmuring of the breeze and the soft surge of the seawater staining the sand dark. But my duties at the temple took so much longer than usual, my fingers fumbling as I tried to light the incense and melt the scented wax to oil, to crush the flowers and create sweet fragrances to please the god who tormented me. If I could appease him, perhaps he would let me use what he had given me to help my fellow Trojans, since he loved us so dearly. I felt the stifling darkness of the room close in about me at Apollo’s altar; the eyes of his statue narrowed in silent contempt, making me drop the blooms across the stone floor.