Lead Down - 1,500 words
A little piece I did for my final project in one of my classes. I was given the option of writing a short story on a poem read in class. I chose to reinterpret Yeats' "Leda and the Swan."
TW for discussion of rape and victim-blaming.
Lead Down
A Reinterpretation of the Story of Leda
It was not supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be her wedding night. It was her wedding night. The wedding was over, it was done. There had been a feast and flowers and perfumed dancers, and her husband, her wonderful, gentle Tyndareus was waiting for her in their bedroom. Their bedroom. The thought made her smile.
She had only wanted to bathe herself. Prepare herself.
Instead, she was made a bride again, by a god. But this marriage was unwanted.
Tyndareus, she had met long before. And her heart had quickened at the sight of his leather-string arms, at his wine-green eyes, and the way his voice held her when situations kept his fingers from joining with hers. She had wanted him from the beginning.
But this beast-god-and she knew it to be a god from the size of it and the sheer intimidation that radiated from it like hard ribbons around her joints; from the drunken-gold gleam that did not belong in animals’ eyes, from the marble-white wings and her heart quickening in fear.
She had not wanted it.
This meant nothing to the god. Nothing meant anything to the god.
She had only wanted to bathe.
It did not even stay to provide her some semblance of comfort, once it was done with her. There were no tender hands smoothing over her tender flesh, no tender words assuring her that she would be all right.
Just a great god in the form of a bird taking off into the night and disappearing.
She crawled back home, naked, her limbs aching, the place between her legs burning with a torn-paper fire. She wanted Tyndareus, but the servants found her first.
The priests caught word soon after. And they invaded her home with their bodies and their questions and their is-it-trues. They learned of the swan, of the circumstances.
She had been chosen by a god for his lover, if only for one night.
They called it a blessing.
She did not feel blessed.
But the words dribbled out of her house and into the public, about how Leda’s beauty had enchanted Zeus-for it was most obviously Zeus that was responsible for this act-and how he had made love to her in the form of a swan, and how very beautiful it was, how very blessed she was to have been chosen. They held another feast for her, for her second wedding.
Privately, she allowed herself to weep, with Tyndareus as her only witness.
She wept for herself, but also for him.
She could not even go to him for comfort, especially not after that first night, when every human touch to her felt like a damnation, like a punishment.
But he had told her, across from the bed and its white sheets, that there was no need to consummate, not until she was ready. He was the king, and she was his wife, after all. And his word was all the public needed. They were married.
Even though, before that night, she had wanted so badly to finally go beyond his kisses, below his neck and his polished-skin chest.
She wanted to, but no longer. The swan had left too much of itself with her.
She still belonged to it, and she resented this.
But she belonged to Tyndareus too. That was the bond she would not harm, whittling away at the feather-chain with whatever she could lay her hands on, even if it bloodied her palms.
In time, it came to be a problem. Tyndareus was king, yes. She was his wife, yes. But his people were still his people. And they had servants, and the servants had words.
What a pathetic thing, everyone said, in time. So she’ll only open her legs for a god, is that it? She was said to have had discerning taste, but that was just cruel.
It made a bog-fire begin to grow in her throat, hearing those words.
She had not wanted this. She wanted Tyndareus. She wanted no other.
But she just couldn’t. Like she could no longer bathe outside, like she had always done, instead calling for bowls of water to be brought to her so she could wash herself indoors, and wearing as much as she could all the while.
Which of course, only stoked the words, and the fires.
She did not want this.
Still, they talked. They questioned.
And, in time, they finally stepped forward. The priests, again. They raised concerns about the validity of the marriage. After all, if she had not yet been with him… As blessed as she was, surely she understood her place.
Surely she understood that gods rarely took human lovers for very long.
She breathed fire that night, in the great gasping breaths that punctuated her plea to her husband for him to lay with her.
She just wanted for them to stop talking. Surely this would sate them? Surely?
Tyndareus was so gentle, but his every touch was a knife, the edges of the blades sinking into the hardened skin that she had never been able to wash off entirely.
Her tears only barely quenched the fire in her throat, in her chest. But it strengthened her voice and made it into a spear, one which she hurled across her house, so everyone would hear, so everyone would know, that she was not so haughty as to think herself whore to only the gods.
But she did not lay with her husband after that night, not in the way that she was supposed to. She dug a channel across her bed, turning her body into an island, though she still commissioned sweet words and the occasional brave hand to make the journey across to him.
When the blood did not come, after one month, two months; when her belly began to swell, she wanted so badly for the child to be Tyndareus’s. For it simply to end there.
But the rumors, like her stomach, grew far too large far too fast.
The midwives were quick to declare that the child was truly of godly parentage, though their pursed lips and hushed words, and their knotted hands feeling only hardness growing there in her womb made them cautious.
Children born of gods were often beautiful, yes, but also often monsters. Stories were still told of the poor Cretan queen that had spited the gods and given birth to a bull; stories were told of the bull’s insatiable appetite for youths and maidens.
Surely she had done nothing to anger the gods?
Offerings-stinking things of meat and perfume-were made. Just in case.
She began to resent the growing weight in her stomach; she began to fear the hard, muffled noises from beneath her skin, and the way in which it had bulged unnaturally for a woman with child, like a fist below thin, thin paper.
With the passing of the months, she began leaving her chambers less and less, from the weight, from the pain, from the words and the glances and the smell of the now-constant offerings for the sick queen.
And when the time came for the birth she simply lay there as her body struggled with her unnatural burden. The pain was not much of an addition. The midwives, and their prodding fingers, their firm-gentle words and arms, were.
Tyndareus was not there. He had not been near her for what felt like several lifetimes.
If she had died then, she’d have been content.
But she did not. And instead she gave life to.
Things.
She hadn’t even needed to see the eggs to know that she had birthed its spawn. She had felt them, long before. Tapped their shells with her fingers on the laying-awake nights, when she almost wanted the knife-hands of her husband to cut her open and make her feel human again.
There were four of them. Two boys. Two girls. Too beautiful and too perfect and too healthy for them to be human.
She left them to the wet nurses. She asked to be alone.
And when she no longer wanted to be alone, she asked for Tyndareus.
But never the children.
He was given to her regardless. And she asked for him never to leave, knowing it was a promise he could not keep, but one he would try.
And he did.
The four things were given names because they had to have names. Because they looked human. And they smiled and giggled and grew like human children did, and acted like them, too. But they were never her children.
They were its children, and that would never change.
Even when, in time passing, she finally peeled away the last of the hurting skin with Tyndareus’s careful, bladed self; even with all the beautiful, imperfect daughters he gave her, daughters that squirmed and moved and felt as they were supposed to both inside and out of her.
She saw the wars those beautiful creatures began.
She saw the dead bodies at their feet, their skeletons in the stars.
They were not her children.
They were its children, and they were monsters.