She’d discovered a maternal affection towards the nymphs over the last decade, but there were more uncomfortable implications in their makeup that still rubbed her the wrong way. The fact that they ‘played’ with her husband wasn’t one of them. Such was a partnership with a cultist of Dionysus. No, it was the fact that the ideal beauty as of 200 BC was… younger than was appropriate. Or legal. Not distressingly so, but still true.
But appearances were only that. She knew as much. Technically, most of them predated the bible.
The bacchae, on the other hand, were living allegory, the dangers of drink given form. Alluring on the surface, they had adapted better to modern convention and ideas of attractiveness, and they had changed in terms of the dangers they posed as well. She wasn’t fond of them the same way she harbored a reluctant fondness for the other beasts, but she understood their place in things.
Her husband sat at the top of the stairs leading up to the burgundy pond, a bottle sitting on a step between his knees.
“You’re back,” Jerry said. He slurred his words slightly. “Any trouble?”
She sat down beside him. “Some violence, was nearly killed three times over just before I left, that I could tell. I cut right through any other murder attempts by dealing with all Faerie I could get Hildr’s hands on. That, and all of the trouble that comes with stepping into the Faerie’s realm.”
“Did they have the satyrs?”
“They did,” she said. “I’ve brought them back. They’ll take time to recuperate and return to normal. Right now, they’re hazards more than anything else. They’ll need to be kept separate from the rest.”
Jerry nodded. “Thank you. It’s appreciated.”
“How was the council meeting?”
“I’m very nearly drunk and physically spent,” he said. He gestured at the servants. “They’re drunk and spent, and you know how much effort that takes. Make of that what you will.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice soft. She felt her heart sinking. A slow drop, as she took in the magnitude of the statement.
Jerry Meath walked a fine line as a cultist of Dionysus. To be inebriated was a part of his worship, but to be drunk senseless, it was the sort of vulnerability that the bacchae preyed on.
For him to be ‘very nearly drunk’ was the equivalent of another man being in the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Treading a dangerous line. He usually played things safer, smoking and eating things he couldn’t overdose on, things that wouldn’t rob him of too much in the way of faculties.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Ah, right. You haven’t heard.”
“Heard?”
“Some men in service to a far less entertaining god have done something very ugly,” he said. “Just a year and nine months into the new millenium, our Lord of Conquest gets his second wind. Our city and our nation has already committed forces.”
“No,” she gasped. “Every time. We were close.”
“I don’t know what will come of it, but for the time being, he’s keeping his throne. I’m sorry. I don’t think your gamble paid off.”
“We’re fifteen years into our marriage,” she said, “And you still haven’t learned to distinguish between my family’s interests and my own.”
“You’re not interested?”
“I am, but not so much as you like to imagine,” she said. She reached out and put a hand on his knee.
Odd, that a man who worshipped a god like he did could never allow himself to be drunk, and the only physical contact between them would be perfunctory and strangely disappointing on both ends.
But then, that was the trap, wasn’t it? The price? She’d known right from the start that she would never be able to live up to what he enjoyed daily. She was only human.
They played different roles in each other’s lives.
His hand settled on hers, gripped it. It was the smallest contact, but she could see how his body language changed. Easing.
That was what she offered, such as it was. To be a man was a lonely existence. Friends, family, they couldn’t reach out to share feelings or find refuge. Even with the chilled and complicated relationship between her and her family, she had always been able to seek out a measure of support from them.
Not so with men, with Jerry. It was only with a girlfriend, with a wife, that they could invest themselves.
He had all of the nubile, willing women he could ask for. An abundance, even, but he had no validation, and for a long time, he had been in freefall. He had allowed himself to believe he didn’t need anyone.
That was where their marriage had begun. In the end, she’d found that all he really needed was a touchstone. Once she’d centered him and given him an outlet, he’d come into his own. From there, they’d worked their strategies, divided tasks between them.
Now he believed it was all for nothing.
“I’m here,” she said.
“I’m not sure what that means,” he said. “We were going to make a play.”
“We still can, sometime, somewhere. But I’m okay with things as they are.”
He looked out at the landscape of white tile strewn with burgundy blankets, pale flesh and body hair. “Really?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I won’t ask if you love me,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a point.”
“We work well together. Balance each other out,” she said. They’d never had infatuation, but again, how could he? How could she offer intoxication of emotion and spirit that his god couldn’t? “We’re better together than we are apart.”
“This… it’s not what a marriage is supposed to be.”
“So?”
“It’s fragile.”
“Let it be fragile, then,” she said. “Weren’t you always the one who lived more for the present than the future?”
“Fifteen years spent plotting demands a kind of vision for the future,” he said, glowering a little.
“Even so,” she said.”
He seemed to deliberate for a few long moments before he asked, “What’s the point?”
She didn’t have a ready answer for that. She had an answer, but it was a hard one to bring up.
She sat with him, instead. A distance separating them, but the simple holding of hands more meaningful than all of the joys that his servants could bring him.
Sandra was almost certain.
Still, that one note of uncertainty was enough to make her nervous.
“Something came up, while I was tracking down your Satyrs,” she said.
“A good something or a bad something?” he asked.
“That’s the question,” she said. “But you asked what the point of us was, didn’t you?”
“That sort of something?” he asked.
“The Faerie figured it out before any of us did, I think,” she said. “They wanted to let a select few individuals leave their domain.”
“And?”
“I think there was one more member of the group I wasn’t aware of at first, they wanted me to leave her behind.”
“Her?”
She touched her stomach.
He looked, then his eyes widened.
“Those bastards,” she said. “I might have a bit of mother bear instinct in me after all. I was more vicious than I should have been.”