Chapter 30: Blessings, Burdens, and a Voyage Held Close
The sea was a marvel.
Beneath Cyd's feet, the water wasn't liquid but a solid, shimmering plane, like walking on a sheet of polished blue glass. Schools of fish darted in the sun-streaked depths below, oblivious to the impossibility passing overhead. The rhythmic chime with each step was the only sound besides the wind and the distant cry of gulls.
"Ah… it really is incredible," Cyd murmured, a genuine smile touching his lips for the first time since leaving the Argo.
"It is," Atalanta agreed, her voice tight. Her arms were locked around his shoulders, her legs cinched around his waist like a pair of living belts. "Now could you please move a little faster?"
"Huh? Are you in a rush?" He glanced back, catching only a glimpse of her tawny hair as she kept her face turned away from his.
"No… I just think we should reach Calydon with all due speed. We've been walking for half a day. I see no islands. Are you even heading in the right direction?" Her voice had an edge to it, a forced casualness. She couldn't very well admit that her legs were going numb and the intimate, unchanging position was tying her insides into complex, flustered knots.
"Probably…?" Cyd said, sounding utterly unconvinced. He lifted the small, ornately crafted bronze compass in his left hand. Its needle wasn't pointing; it was spinning in a lazy, continuous circle, as if trying to decide between a hundred different norths. "Why can't you just give me a straight line?!"
The compass, a gift from the gods (probably Hermes, the smug bastard), was supposed to point toward his heart's true destination. In theory. Right now, his heart seemed as confused as the spinning needle. Go to Calydon. Slay the boar. Don't get Atalanta killed. Get off this damn ocean. Find somewhere quiet. The conflicting desires turned the compass into a useless, twirling toy.
"You brought us out here following that thing?!" Atalanta's patience, already frayed by physical discomfort and proximity, snapped. She released one arm from his shoulder and wrapped it around his throat in a half-nelson, shaking him. The motion made them wobble precariously on the water's surface. "What kind of gods-cursed navigational aid is that?!"
"W-wait! It's divine! It points to where I truly want to go!" he choked out, clutching the compass protectively.
Atalanta stopped shaking him. The silence that followed was heavy, pregnant with furious realization. "...So it's spinning," she said slowly, her voice dangerously calm, "because you don't know what you want."
Then she tightened her arm. "Which means this is your fault!"
"I'm sorry!"
"Give me the compass," she ordered after another moment of fruitless throttling, breathing heavily against his neck. "I'll navigate."
"Uh… okay." Cyd blinked, his fight-or-flight instincts subsiding into cautious relief. He twisted his wrist, offering the compass back over his shoulder.
"Should have done this hours ago," she muttered, reaching with her right hand to take it.
The moment her fingers closed around the cool bronze casing, three things happened simultaneously.
A sharp, electric jolt—not painful, but profoundly startling—shot up her arm. Her entire body went rigid for a split second, every muscle locking. And in that instant of involuntary paralysis, the grip of her powerful legs around Cyd's waist slackened.
"Hey—!" Cyd's eyes widened.
Atalanta didn't fall so much as she peeled away from him, gravity reasserting its claim. In a flash of pure reflex, Cyd pivoted on the water, his right arm shooting out. He didn't catch her arm or her tunic; his hand slid under her thighs, his arm hooking behind her knees as he hauled her back against his chest in a clumsy, secure carry. His left arm came up automatically to support her back.
For a long, breathless moment, they were frozen. Cyd, standing on the sea, holding Atalanta bridal-style. Atalanta, one hand still clenched around the now-strangely adhesive compass, the other dangling limply.
The shock of the fall—and the catch—faded, replaced by a hot wave of sheer, unadulterated mortification. And rage.
"...I am going to bite you to death," she hissed, her voice trembling with fury. She tried to raise her left hand to claw at him, but the strange, lingering numbness made the gesture weak, her fingers merely brushing against his tunic.
In his mind's eye, Cyd saw it clearly: Hermes, giving him a blinding thumbs-up and a cheerful wink. I can only help you this much! Go get 'er, champ!
"This is a misunderstanding!" Cyd yelped, his face heating up. His right hand was acutely aware of the firm, smooth muscle of her thigh where he held her, the warmth of her back against his left forearm. His brain, treacherously, started supplying details he did not need right now—the scent of sun-warmed skin and leather, the way her hair tickled his jaw. He fought to keep his grip clinical, respectful, terrified of the promised throat-biting. "A divine prank! I swear!"
"This… thing…" Atalanta grunted, going limp in his arms not from submission, but from focused effort. She shook her right hand violently, trying to fling the compass away. It didn't budge. It was fused to her palm as if welded there. The needle, however, had finally stopped its dizzy spin. It now pointed decisively toward the northwest horizon. "It won't come off!"
"Probably… uh… it'll release when we reach the destination? Probably…" Cyd offered a weak, strained laugh.
The reality of her situation settled over Atalanta like a net. She was immobilized, being carried across the ocean by a man she… trusted, admittedly, but still. Her guide. Her charge. And now her literal means of locomotion. A flush crept from her neck all the way to the tips of her ears, clashing gloriously with the fury in her green eyes. She bared her teeth at him in a snarl that was more flustered than fearsome.
"If your hands wander even once before we reach land," she whispered, the promise deathly serious, "I will bite through your throat. I don't need my arms to do that."
"Noted! No wandering! I'm not one of those heroes, remember?" He tried for a reassuring smile, then remembered his wrist. He shifted his hold on her slightly—eliciting a warning growl—to raise his left arm between them. The bracer glinted, the pale grey crystal of Hermes glowing softly. "Blessing of Hermes. No one can lie to me. Not even myself. So you have my absolute, sworn word: I will behave."
Atalanta stared at the crystal, then at his earnest, slightly panicked face. Her anger seemed to deflate, replaced by a strange, pensive tension. "If it were any of the others from the ship… in this situation…" She trailed off, then her eyes snapped wide open as a memory connected. "No one can lie to you? At all?"
"Um… that's the gist of it, yeah," Cyd said cautiously, wondering where this was going.
Atalanta fell silent. He could almost hear the gears turning in her head, reassessing past conversations, his evasions, his occasional startling bluntness. After a long moment, she simply lifted her compass-bound hand, pointing the unwavering needle northwest. Her voice was flat, devoid of its earlier rage, but simmering with a new, intense emotion he couldn't name.
"Walk. Faster."
"Did I… say something wrong?" he ventured, adjusting his grip to a more secure, less intimate hold—no small feat when carrying someone.
"Shut up and walk!"
"Okay, okay! I'm walking!"
---
High on the sun-drenched slopes of Olympus, in a secluded grove favored by the huntress, Artemis leaned over a large, shallow basin of impossibly clear water—a scrying pool forged by Hephaestus. The surface showed Cyd's progress in perfect, if miniature, detail: his strained expression, Atalanta held stiffly in his arms, the determined compass.
"Ooh, this looks fun! I want to join them!" Artemis chirped, resting her chin on her hands, her silver eyes sparkling with childlike delight.
Cyd, I'm sure, wouldn't find it fun. But I do. So, by all means, go!" Hermes, who had been lurking behind a column, muffled a laugh into his hand. The compass had been his masterpiece of minor divine interference.
A hand, strong and sun-bronzed, clamped down on Hermes's shoulder.
"H-Hey… A-Apollo!" Hermes stuttered, the familiar, radiant aura of his brother making his nerves jangle. "Shouldn't you be… composing an ode or something? Plucking your lyre?"
"I have no interest in your questions," Apollo said, his voice as bright and merciless as the noonday sun. His smile was all perfect teeth and promised pain. "But you have an appointment. For a run." Before Hermes could protest, Apollo grabbed the back of his chiton and started dragging him across the marble floor.
"A run? Where? Why?"
"Tied to the back of my sun chariot," Apollo clarified cheerfully. "You need the exercise. And I need the laughter."
As Hermes's squawking protests faded into the distance, Artemis sighed, her breath rippling the pool's surface. "Atalanta's having all the fun without me…"
"Then go."
Artemis turned. Athena stood at the edge of the grove, her silver-grey eyes thoughtful, a faint, knowing smile on her lips. Her aegis was absent, her posture relaxed. "If you wish to go, then go. He would be… delighted to see you." She infused the last word with a gentle, teasing irony.
"Really? But…" Artemis's initial excitement wilted. She slumped, poking a finger at the water, distorting Cyd's image. "I don't want him to be happy just because he might get a blessing from me."
"Then what kind of happiness do you want from him?" Athena asked, tilting her head.
"I… don't know," Artemis muttered, frustration evident. She was a goddess of clear, simple things: the hunt, the moon, the wild. Mortal emotions, especially her own, were a tangled forest.
"Then," Athena said, her smile widening, "go and find out. You're bored here anyway. He will need your blessing eventually. Consider it… a field assessment."
"I've been assessing him for three years," Artemis grumbled, but her eyes were locked on the tiny figure in the water. She reached out, her fingers nearly brushing the image.
"Ah, the virgin goddess isn't developing a… soft spot, is she?" Athena's tone was light, teasing. She flicked a fingernail against the water's edge. A ripple cascaded outward, scattering Artemis's reflection and Cyd's image into shimmering fragments.
Artemis drew her hand back, a rare solemnity in her expression. "It's like that prophecy from the Moirai. The one that speaks of things beyond the gods' reign. 'The Pale Child of Man shall…' Ugh, never mind." She ran a hand through her silvery hair. "He's just… different. From other men. Interesting."
"Oh dear," Athena said, pinching the bridge of her nose in mock despair. "That is the precursor. Remember your oath."
"I remember!" Artemis shot back, standing up, her form radiating a powerful, wild beauty. "I swore to remain a maiden goddess. That doesn't mean I can't… appreciate someone. Have a… companion. Hold hands, maybe."
"For most men, that would be a special kind of torture. They'd go mad," Athena said dryly, her gaze flicking over Artemis's undeniable, athletic figure. The desire would be there, with absolutely no hope of consummation. A truly divine tease.
"Cyd is different," Artemis insisted, lifting her chin with supreme confidence.
"Then go and see your 'different' mortal, Artemis," Athena said, waving a hand. "Just try not to break him. We're all rather invested in how he turns out."
With a final, determined nod, Artemis turned and vanished from the grove in a swirl of moonlight and the faint scent of ozone and wildflowers.
Athena was alone. She looked back at the pool, now calm. The image had reformed. Cyd was still walking, Atalanta still rigid in his arms, a look of profound, comical suffering on his face as he stared at the unwavering compass in her hand.
Athena leaned closer, a soft, genuine laugh escaping her lips.
"The Pale Child of Man… Cyd," she murmured, the name tasting of curiosity and a strange, distant hope. "You truly are a most improbable creature."