Cassandra and Apollo

Chapter 5

Winning a god's favor was no mean feat, but Cassandra had done it almost without thinking. She didn't know what had drawn the god to her, but it was obvious he was smitten. Ten years passed and his passion never wavered or faded. Perhaps his cruel nephew, Eros, had pricked him with a silver arrow. Or maybe he simply saw something novel in her, in her understated beauty and quicksilver mind. Whatever the reason, Cassandra would not gainsay it. She basked in his attention as a lizard might sun on a flattened rock.

Apollo was widely considered one of the quieter, more circumspect gods. He did not coddle his mortal lovers like Dionysus or Aphrodite. And, thankfully, he did not pursue sharper passions like Ares. He might not have been effusive in his affections, but he was patient and tender with her. He'd bring her all kinds of writings from his travels: tales of adventure from the great poets; observations from philosophers of the east. With a flick of his wrist, he gifted her the ability to read and write every language in those scrolls, too many for her to count. But dearest of all, etched in his own scrawling hand, were his poems, which he read to her before bed.

He brought her more books and scrolls and tablets than she could read—papyrus and vellum and clay filled her tiny adept's room. That is show she came to start her own library within the temple.

Once her youthful hauteur subsided, she learned that the other adepts were not nearly as venomous as she'd thought. They were lost, castaways from wrecked families and starving villages. There were other nobles like her, but they were misshapen pots unfit for display. This, she understood all too well. And they came to understand her as well.

Eventually, she taught Briseis to read Hittite and speak a little Greek. They became friends. Good friends. So much that their past jealousies and petty squabbles seemed distant memories, part of another life.

They did not speak of Apollo, the god of warm flesh and golden blood, but of Phoebus, patron of Troy. Phoebus was a figure etched in marble, his great deeds carved in high relief all along the temple's outer frieze. But they did not have to speak of Apollo for him to exist between them. Every time Cassandra disappeared for days only to come back hollow cheeked and puffy eyed, Briseis knew the cause. When Cassandra sported a new bracelet of lapis, or a gold filet so fine it shamed rose petals, Briseis knew. Apollo the man.

Briseis worried that the god was becoming too focused on her friend, too willing to give her everything she might desire. Tales abounded of mortals who had drawn a god's eye, the marrow sucked dry by divine desire. Their history was woven tight with such tragic threads, gold weave choking cotton. She gave no voice to her fears, however, worrying that Cassandra would mistake her concern for that old flint of jealousy and competitiveness that had separated them so long ago.

**

Cassandra and Briseis were lounging on a flowerbed, shielded from the midday sun by fragrant fig trees. It was spring and everything was in bloom. Plump-bellied bees nosed from one flower to the next and birds called each other as lovers whispering in the night. And sat above it all was bright, shining Apollo. Her Apollo.

"Will you come with us to the festival tonight?" asked Briseis, adding one last rose to a flower coronet and placing it over Cassandra's sable curls. "Us," now included a half-score of adepts because, for the first time in her life, Cassandra had friends. As it turned out, those exiles, those broken, imperfect vases loved stories, and her books were teeming with them.

"Oh, is that tonight?" she chewed her lip. They'd reached an understanding over the years: don't talk about Apollo. Which brought her to a kind of crossroads. How could she explain that she already had plans that festival night, and every festival night thereafter, for the rest of her life?