Ghost Queen in the House of Love

11. Hedone

Warily, I head downstairs, opening the front door. The wind tickles my face, and the garden swayed. I look to my left.

Under a tall cypress is a little red wicker table and chairs. There Melinoë sits with someone else, a woman. Stola gray, face lightly lined. Her hair is the color of hay, eyes rimmed pink, belly swollen.

Across the table, Melinoë holds her hand, speaking in a calm, even tone. In the sunlight, silver streaks the witch-goddess' hair almost gold.

"Thank you, thank you," the woman says, voice ragged. "Ever since my husband, the—I've been so terribly worried, but now, at least I know we'll make it."

The woman's grief ripples through the air in waves. A sharp pang prickle in my chest. My eyes sting. Not noticing me, the woman stands shakily and walks away into the trees.

I approach cautiously, not speaking until Melinoë, at first staring into the distance, acknowledges me with a guarded look. "Should she go alone in the swamp?"

She replies, "Those who live here know this land well. She'll be fine. Besides, if she is ever lost, the hounds will guide her home."

I startle. "She isn't frightened by them?" The underhounds, the alligators, all sprawled out here. The ghosts, too. They gave the impression this place was meant to be secret.

"Nay."Melinoë sets her back straight against her chair. "They look different to mortals than they do to us."

By the trees, the woman is gone. "May I ask why she was here?"

She folds her hands in her lap. "Sometimes women come for assistance. She found me while I was collecting milkweed." Milkweed, yes, I know that; it grows in the boggier parts of the island. That explains the waft of vanilla in the air.

"And you help them?" I ask her. "I didn't think . . ."

"Didn't think someone like me would help a woman in need," Melinoë finishes coolly.

I sit where the woman was. The chair is hard against my spine. "I hope, I don't mean to be so forward."

Melinoë replies plainly, "I think you do."

I swallow thickly. "I just—how do you get used to this decay? The death."

"In the Underworld?"

I survey the pale outlines of ghosts in the air, along the mossy manor walls.

Melinoë gestures in a wide arc. "The flowers, the grass. I did it all myself from the bones of the beasts that came long before. Not death. Life." She pauses as she withdraws her hand. "Well, not only death."

We sit in silence. The sun hangs high above us, a distant promise.

Melinoë asks me, "May I ask what disagreement you had with your parents?" I wonder what possessed her to ask, whether this is a trap. Before, a year ago, I might've never let such distrustful thoughts slip into my head.

I force my words to be slow and deliberate. "Only if you tell me the one you had with yours."

She makes a noise, hissing through her teeth. For a second, I thought she'd refuse to speak at all. "Very well, then. It's nothing."

"What was it?" I ask softly, having to keep herself from reaching out and trying to offer a comforting hand. My distaste of her coldness sloshes uncomfortably with my pity. How lonely she must be.

Except, as I've learned, not as alone as I thought.

She unflinchingly meets my eyes. "I suppose it's little to anyone else. We had a disagreement about how far my duties could go. I was tired of being confined to either languishing in the Underworld—being dismissed and forgotten—or only roaming at night. That was the length of it, so I left and forged my own territory. The ghosts aren't all especially hospitable, but they have a home." Melinoë tilts her head. "And the people who know of the strange witch in the wilds, they have someone they can trust, too."