Alcestis by Katharine Beutner Read Free Book Online Page A

terrible luck to be in a grave circle during a wedding. The grave spirits will eat me. Not every word that comes out of the head maid’s mouth is the truth of the gods, you know.”
    I had hoped to provoke her into yelling, but Pisidice just closed her mouth and smiled a bit. “I know,” she said.
    “I don’t see why I can’t come visit her whenever I want.”
    “On a wedding night?”
    “Father’s wedding night,” I said. “Where else should I be, in the bedchamber with him?”
    “Don’t be disgusting,” Pisidice said, but there was no heat in it. She scrubbed her hands over her bare arms; she was shivering a little, like me. I wondered what she’d been doing in the palace to cause the slick of sweat on her forehead. Had she been tucked into a corner with one of the cheering boys?
    “I just wanted to tell her about it,” I said. “You know she loved tales.”
    Pisidice came closer. I could smell the thick flower scent the women had soaked into her clothes. There were creases forming by the edges of her mouth and the firelight deepened them until she looked like an old woman. She bent down, a lock of hair tumbling from her careful braid, and drifted her fingers over the dirt of Hippothoe’s grave. Then she rose, and her face was smooth as the gravestone, the line of her mouth straight as the join of two blocks. “You’d have lost her anyway,” she said. “In a year or two she’d be married and you’d never see her again.”
    I lifted my eyes from the grave, coldly angry. “That’s not the same. This way—she doesn’t miss me. It’s better. You don’t understand. I’m glad she’s dead. She’ll never have to be pawed by one of Atreus’s stupid sons just because Pelias wants a good match.”
    “You’ll—you’ll never see me again.”
    “You want to be married,” I said, though I knew she was right. I didn’t like to think of her actually wedded to some distant, unknown man. “Hippothoe didn’t.”
    “Hippothoe was a child,” Pisidice said, and there was the bitterness I had expected, the sour grimace. “She never grew up. I want to get out of this house. I want to live somewhere where I can eat food that doesn’t crunch with sand in every bite. I want to live in a palace that isn’t ruled by a Mycenaean cow.” She spat the last word.
    “She’s not a cow,” I said, startled. “She was pretty, I thought.”
    “She lows like a beast, though.”
    For a moment we were both silent, equally shocked by the cruelty of Pisidice’s words. Then Pisidice snickered, slapped her hand over her mouth, and began to laugh hard against her palm. I stared at her, and then the laughter caught me too, clenched my throat, and tightened my stomach until it felt like crying, like one of Hippothoe’s attacks, and I wheezed with each breath.
    “Oh, by the gods,” Pisidice whimpered. “Oh. I can’t stop.” She threw out a hand and I caught it reflexively, leaned against her for balance. Then Pisidice pulled her hand away, wiping delicately at her eyes, still trembling with laughter. She looked at me and shook her head to clear it. “Stay still,” she said, and reached out to brush tears from my cheeks without ruining the lines of paint around my eyes.
    I took a deep, shuddering breath. “I pity her,” I said. My voice was rough now, like Hippothoe’s. “Don’t you?”
    “Wait three years,” Pisidice said. “See if you pity her then.” She turned to look back at the palace. Her arm pressed hot against mine through the slightly damp fabric between us, and then she shifted away just when I would have leaned into the touch. Air sneaked between our bodies again—cool, impermeable space. With Pisidice, I always had to consider what I wanted most: to accept the bits of love she gave or to push her for more, to gain another tiny crumb of affection and then be shoved away.
    I remembered what it had felt like to snuggle against Hippothoe’s side, to have my sister’s skinny arm wrapped around