Chapter 25: The Nature of Paradise
Day three on the "Isle of Women."
The beach was quiet. No women came to tempt them. No Argonauts stumbled back from the city, bleary-eyed and sated. It was as if the sand and sea had swallowed everyone but the three of them. The silence was heavy, broken only by the cry of gulls and the relentless whisper of the surf.
"Any ideas on how to get them to come out?" Heracles asked, his voice a low rumble. He was sitting on a driftwood log, cradling a massive slice of watermelon like it was a fragile artifact. He stared at the distant, silent city gates with the intensity of a man trying to see through stone.
"Kick every single one of them squarely in the balls," Cyd said around a mouthful of his own watermelon. He swallowed. "Make sure you really put your back into it. Shatter the pelvis. Leave no hope of medical intervention. That'll get them moving."
"That's… not a solution," Heracles said, a pained look crossing his honest face.
"I think it's an excellent solution," Atalanta remarked, studying her watermelon wedge before taking a vicious bite.
"Isn't there a way to get them to leave on their own? Without… permanent damage?" Heracles pleaded.
"Not everyone is you, Heracles," Cyd said, stretching his arms over his head with a groan. "They're just following their base instincts. But that's the thing about instinct—it's fickle. A relationship built on nothing but raw desire is like a cloud. Pretty from a distance, but it dissipates with the slightest change in the wind."
He gestured towards the city with his half-eaten fruit. "It's simple. They'll get bored. Eventually. And when they do, they'll come swaggering back to the ship talking about 'greater destinies' and 'not being held back by temptations.' Their hypocrisy will be breathtaking."
"Hmph. Men," Atalanta sniffed, though her eyes held a flicker of grim agreement.
"The problem," Cyd continued, lying back in the warm sand and staring at the sky, "is scale. How many women are on this island? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Even if a man managed five a day—which is a heroic feat in itself—it would take years to work through the roster. And by then, the ones at the start are 'new' again. No storms. No monsters. Just an endless, willing buffet. What sane man would ever want to leave?"
"So… it's impossible? They'll never come out on their own?" Heracles's shoulders slumped. He looked from Cyd to the city, his expression shifting to one of grim calculation. Maybe the pelvis-shattering idea has merit…
"Only if this paradise is as perfect as it seems," Cyd said, his voice taking on a different tone. He sat up in one fluid motion, sand cascading from his tunic. A slow, knowing smile touched his lips. "And nothing made by gods or men is ever perfect."
"What are you planning?" Atalanta asked, her interest piqued despite herself.
"Just doing a little reconnaissance," Cyd said, brushing himself off. He rolled his shoulders and began walking towards the city, his pace deliberate. "You two stay here. Hold down the fort."
"Wait!" Atalanta called out, her hand half-raised. "Today, I still haven't—"
"Stay," Cyd cut her off without turning around. His voice was calm, but it held a note of finality he rarely used with her. "That's an order. You don't want to waste any more time here than we have to, do you?"
Atalanta's jaw tightened. Her hand hovered in the air for a second before she let it drop, clenching it into a fist at her side. She hated taking orders. But he was right. Every hour on this beach was an hour stolen from her own goals.
"I understand," she ground out.
---
The city wasn't a city in any normal sense. It was a sprawling, open-air pleasure palace. There were no markets, no smithies, no temples—just courtyards filled with silken cushions, fountains flowing with wine, and an overwhelming press of beautiful, laughing bodies.
Cyd found Jason easily. The man was the center of a riotous, naked game of catch in a central plaza, wearing nothing but a wreath of flowers and what looked suspiciously like a leopard-skin codpiece that left little to the imagination. The queen was draped over his back, shrieking with laughter as he spun her around.
"You look like you're having the time of your life," Cyd muttered from his perch on a low, flat rooftop. He watched the scene with a clinical detachment that felt alien even to him. No wonder Athena showed up. If left alone, he'd die of sheer hedonistic exhaustion before he ever thought of a fleece again.
With a sigh, he dropped lightly into a shadowed alley. He needed information, not a view of Jason's pale backside.
He moved like a ghost, using the skills Chiron had taught him for stalking prey—not to kill, but to observe. He spotted a woman who seemed less frenzied than the others, maybe a servant fetching more wine. As she passed the mouth of his alley, he moved.
One arm snaked around her waist from behind, pulling her smoothly into the shadows. She gasped, but didn't scream. Her body went pliant against his. Of course, he thought with a flash of disgust. She thinks I'm just another hero looking for a quick tumble.
"Shhh," he whispered, his lips close to her ear. He kept his grip firm, preventing her from turning around. "I just want to ask you a few questions."
"Y-yes… anything…" she breathed, her head lolling back against his shoulder. Her scent—jasmine and musk—was overpowering.
Gods, these women are desperate.
"Where are all the men?" Cyd asked, keeping his voice low and even. "The men who used to live here. Before we came."
The green crystal on his bracer, the gift of Hermes, began to glow with a soft, emerald light. It didn't compel truth, but it made lies taste like ash in the mouth. He felt the woman in his arms stiffen slightly.
"They… they left. They're gone," she said, but the words sounded hollow, rehearsed.
"Why?" Cyd pressed, his thumb tracing a light line along her jaw. "Tell me why they're gone."
Her resistance crumbled under the twin pressures of physical proximity and divine influence. "They… they wanted to leave. We couldn't let them. We… we made Aphrodite angry. A long time ago. She cursed us. Any man who tastes our love and then tries to leave… he dies. So we made sure they never tried. We… we killed them. To keep the others from getting ideas." The confession spilled out in a hushed, shameful rush.
Cyd's blood ran cold. A curse of Aphrodite. A gilded cage with death for anyone who tried to fly away. This wasn't a paradise. It was a beautifully decorated prison, and the Argonauts had just volunteered to be the new inmates.
"Good girl," he murmured, his mind racing. He released his hold on her waist. "You've been very helpful."
As soon as she was free, she turned, her eyes wide and hungry, her hands reaching for him. "My reward…" she whispered.
"Of course." Cyd's hand shot up in a blur. The edge of his palm connected with the side of her neck in a precise, controlled chop. There was a soft, wet thock.
Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed in a heap of silks and limp limbs at his feet.
He looked down at her, then out at the shrieking, cavorting crowd in the plaza. "A 'gentle embrace,'" he muttered to himself. "Right."
He could walk away. He should walk away. Let Jason and the others enjoy their final party. They'd chosen this. They'd leaped into the trap with both eyes wide open.
Why do I have to be the one to help them?
No answer came. Just the memory of Athena's storm-grey eyes, and the weight of the un-earned blessing he needed.
"Because nothing good is ever easy," he sighed. Then he raised his voice, pitching it to carry over the general din. "HEY! OVER HERE! FRESH ONE, STILL WARM!"
He looked down at the unconscious woman. "You wanted a reward from a hero," he said, not unkindly. "You get to be a distraction."
Then he was gone, scaling the wall and melting across the rooftops like a pale shadow, leaving the aroused shouts of the approaching Argonauts behind him.
---
Back at the Argo, the smell of roasting fish greeted him. Heracles was at the fire, his brow furrowed in concentration as he turned skewers.
"Intel acquired," Cyd announced, clapping the big man on the shoulder.
"Are they in danger?" Heracles asked immediately, his worry for his friend cutting through his simple focus.
"Danger?" Cyd stripped off his light outer tunic, which reeked of jasmine. He tossed it aside. "It's less 'danger' and more… poetic justice."
"Hey. What is that smell?" Atalanta's voice was sharp. She'd emerged from belowdecks and was sniffing the air like a bloodhound who'd caught a foul scent. Her nose wrinkled. "It's disgusting. Take it off."
"It's just perfume. From the… reconnaissance," Cyd said, sniffing his own arm with a grimace.
"I said it's foul. Get rid of it." She glared at him, then spun on her heel and stalked back towards the stern, as if the very air around him was contaminated.
Cyd stared after her for a beat, then shrugged. He pulled the thin undertunic over his head and tossed it on the pile with the other one, standing bare-chested in the afternoon sun. "Anyway. About the danger."
Heracles politely averted his eyes, his cheeks slightly pink. "Right. The danger."
"Like I said, it's not that they're in danger," Cyd explained, accepting a fish skewer from Heracles. "It's that they've built their own gallows. Those women… they're not just lonely. They're cursed. By Aphrodite, apparently. Any man who 'knows' them and then tries to leave gets a one-way ticket to Hades. So, historically, they've made sure no man ever gets the chance to leave. Permanently."
Heracles's face went pale. "Jason—!"
"Relax. If they wanted Jason and the others dead, they'd be corpses already. The curse only triggers if you try to leave. As long as the boys are happy to stay forever and be their personal stud farm, they're perfectly safe." Cyd took a bite of fish. "Honestly, it's hard to blame the women. You sleep with someone, give them everything, and then they try to walk out on you? In their position, I'd be pissed too."
"But… Jason has a quest! He has to leave!" Heracles protested, though he looked deeply uncomfortable, as if wrestling with the morality of it all.
"And that's the problem," Cyd said, pointing his skewer at Heracles. "They won't leave. They're having the time of their lives. We can't force fifty men onto a ship against their will. You and I can't sail the Argo alone."
"So what do we do?" Heracles asked, running a massive hand through his hair in frustration.
Cyd finished his fish and tossed the stick into the fire. A slow, cunning smile spread across his face—a smile that would have made Hermes proud.
"We use the one thing we have going for us," he said. "The fact that they're, to put it bluntly, complete and utter bastards."
Heracles blinked. "I feel like you're insulting them."
"Am I wrong?" Cyd asked, raising an eyebrow. "Think about it. If they really did 'sample the local cuisine' for a few years and then just… sailed off into the sunset, leaving behind a city of heartbroken, cursed women, what would you call them?"
Heracles thought about it. He thought about the villages they'd "liberated," the trophies taken, the boasts made. His shoulders slumped. He covered his face with a hand, a groan of acknowledgement escaping him.
"You're not wrong," he mumbled through his fingers. "They really are a bunch of bastards."