Wicked Circle

CHAPTER FOUR

Eris Alcmedi saw her daughter stumble and she laughed—until the torch fuel exploded in a blast of white light. Seph lay in the water, and she wasn’t getting up.

Stunned, immobile, Eris thought, Get up, Persephone. Get up.

Beside her, Demeter started forward, then halted. “My knees,” she said. “I can’t get her. Go!” She pushed Eris forward, panic in her voice as she commanded, “Go, the river’s taking her! She’ll drown!”

The alarm in Demeter’s tone triggered Eris into action. She charged down the slope in her slick-soled cowboy boots and immediately lost her footing. Without two arms to pump and swing for balance, she lurched and fell on her behind. She scrambled up too fast, tripped over her own feet, and then dropped to her knees. Momentum pitched her forward. She thought to catch herself on the heels of her hands, but her brain forgot what her body was missing and she toppled to the right, smacking her face and shoulder into the rocks and mud. Cold pain shot over her cheek and she saw stars.

Stunned, she found her thoughts speeding in circles; she was strangely unwilling to make the usual instinctive self-recriminations.

“Get her, Eris! Quick!” Demeter shouted.

Eris scrambled up, keeping the white of Seph’s dress in sight as she plunged into the river, but the mist was determined to obscure her view. She sloshed in up to her knees. Her boots filled with water—So cold!—and her feet became leaden weights. Each step was a burden. Why am I doing this anyway? She’s the Lustrata. The goddess won’t let anything happen to her.

Eris halfheartedly pressed on. When the frigid water was thigh-deep, she stretched and groped for the dress hem. I can’t do this. I can’t dive for her. . . . I can’t swim one-armed! I’ll be lost.

Without warning, she slipped on a slimy rock and went down. She heard Demeter call her name just before the water closed over her head. The current tugged at her, impeding her effort to stand. She fought with the current, kicked her feet into position and planted them.

Finally, gasping, she broke the surface only to hear Demeter screaming. Eris wiped her eyes and searched around for a sign of Seph’s white dress.

Persephone was yards away now, so far out of reach. Eris stared in disbelief as the powerful flow of the river swept Seph away. The mist closed in.

Seph isn’t the Lustrata. This wouldn’t be happening if she were. She’s going to die. . . .

Eris turned and struggled back to the shore in a panic. “I couldn’t get to her, I couldn’t get to her! I couldn’t!” Demeter was sitting on the shore. She tried to get up, grimaced, and rubbed her knee.

“Mom? Are you okay, Mom?”

“Where’s Persephone?”

“I couldn’t get to her.”

“She’ll drown!” Contempt, blame and disappointment flashed in Demeter’s eyes.

“The river carried her away.”

The lap of the water taunted Eris, laughing at her weakness. The silence between them was a crushing weight.

Demeter pushed her fingers down into the mud on either side of her and chanted. “Poseidon, naiads, hippocampi! Protect my granddaughter and bear her to the shore . . . that she may come to rest where she belongs. Bear her to the shore. Bear her to the shore.”

Eris felt useless. Seph, her daughter, was out there right now in the water. She could imagine her sinking, drowning. She isn’t the Lustrata after all. Eris had wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe that she’d done something right, that she’d brought someone special into the world. Her tears spilled.

“Knock off that crying,” Demeter croaked.

“I lost her!”

“Crying won’t help right now.”

Eris sniffled and wiped her nose. “I can’t even put my will into the ground, like you just did. I can’t create the circle of energy you just created.”

“You have feet, don’t you?”

It’s just like Demeter to sit there all imperious and tell me what to do after I’ve ruined everything. Eris glared. “Feet?”

“Your feet aren’t as good as your hands for focusing and directing energy, but that’s what you have, Eris. So buck up and start figuring out how you’re going to be a one-armed witch.”

Eris turned her back on her mother, but that left her looking at the water that had just swept Seph to her doom. She choked on a sob she didn’t want Demeter to hear.

“Your feet have carried you all your life,” Demeter said. “You just need to figure out a new way of walking.”

Spinning back, Eris shouted, “Don’t lecture me! Persephone is”—she swung her arm and pointed, and it was so not normal to do this with her left arm—“out there!”

“And you couldn’t—”

“Don’t you dare lay this on me!” The tears sprang up again. “I tried. I did the best I could.” But she hadn’t. She hadn’t believed this could happen. She hadn’t believed the goddess would allow it to happen.

Eris saw her mother’s pained face. “You’re lucky you didn’t break a hip.” She reached out to Demeter, ready to lever her up.

Demeter accepted her hand and tried to stand, but she cried out, “Let me sit, let me sit!”

Eris noticed the shallow trenches in the embankment mud. “You didn’t scoot over the edge and ease down. You fell.”

“Everybody else did tonight. Why not me?”

Eris invoked the Norse healing goddess. “Eir’s sweet mercy, Mom!”

Demeter rubbed at her knee. “I could use some of Eir’s attention right now, but I’d settle for an OxyContin.”