Page 31 of This Divine Revelry

We round the corner of the inlet and there islands spill. A few are so clear I can make out the towns and villages, more beyond are hazy patches. For so long, I stared at a barren horizon dreaming of land, and here it was all this time.

I sit with Myrto at the bow of the ship, Opora and Calybe beside us as they argue about whose idea it was to join the thiasus.

‘Are you alright?’ I ask Myrto, whose eye has been occasionally twitching since we set sail.

‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘This happens sometimes – I get these compulsions for movement or speech. There tend to be bubbles when it happens a lot, and then it happens less and, well, I guess I’m headed into a surge of them.’

‘Oh. Is it painful?’

‘Not normally. It can make my muscles a bit sore with all that repetition. They can be annoying. But they’re funny sometimes too. My mother didn’t like them very much but here they’re just … a thing, I suppose. Like I say, not all of us run away for the orgies; some of us just want to exist in peace.’

‘For the record,’ Opora adds, ‘when I said I joined for fun, I didn’t mean I joined for the orgies.’

Calybe considers, then adds, dryly: ‘I might have.’

‘Cabarnis!’ someone calls, and we leap to our feet.

The island forms a dip around the port, the trail of towns beyond glowing bright in the last golden rays of the sun. We are headed to the main town – to an actual port. Fishing boats sit in rows, empty market stalls lined up beyond. The streets are narrow and winding, grey stone with slatted wooden roofs so that with all that rock and wood the town blends into the rising mountain and forests stretching beyond. As we draw closer, the children playing on the rocks point to our boat excitedly, the women drop laundry to jump in delight and the groups gathered around board games in the last evening light scatter pieces in the race to their feet. The celebration begins before we even dock.

Dionysus, Dionysus, Dionysus – his name carries on the wind, the very sound of their joy.

Women and girls pour from homes, a bright array of chitons and finely braided hair.

They dance as the music reaches them.

Other instruments join. A woman with ribbons in her grey hair plucks at the strings of a lyre. A boy Glaucus’s age toys with an aulos. Even those without begin bashing pots and pans. It is a jubilant, riotous cacophony.

Myrto gets her list out again – or maybe it’s a different one because it has an orange ribbon wound about it that might denote it as her revelry operations tablet.

‘I need the amphorae taken down first,’ Myrto directs. ‘Get the wine flowing. Silen, can you start the bonfire on the beach so we can roast the meat from the hunt? Opora, do you have your tympanon? Perfect, would you please lead the procession through the streets to draw everyone out?’ Opora begins beating the instrument in her hand, a quick pounding rhythm.

I turn back to observe the rising crowd as the rest of Dionysus’s followers race from the boat to join them.

‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ Calybe says, coming up beside me and resting on the boat’s rail. ‘I’d never seen anything like it, when the revelry came to our town. The men hosted parties sometimes but we had to weave and wait for them to come home. Then Dionysus came – an actual god in our tiny town, so the men flocked to worship him. And the first thing he did was order them to go home and fetch their wives and daughters and only then would he see fit to bless the town. Then … the music played. Opora never wanted it to stop and I suggested it never had to. We followed those beats across an ocean.’

Is this what Myrto meant? Sailing from town to town, bringing joy and revolution too?

I have seen more smiles in seconds than I saw in a lifetime in Knossos. There is laughter and music and pounding footsteps – all the sorts of things my father banned unless it was to celebrate his own savagery.

I watch as wine is poured and groups gather and talk and dance.

I witness people relish this world rather than fear it.

Oh Fates, I want this.

There, I let myself admit it. I want music and laughter and dancing on the sands of beautiful islands. I want a group – this group – of outcasts and strays, the people who choose kindness over cruelty and power.

‘Come on,’ Calybe says, taking my hand. ‘Let’s go party.’

We clink cups of wine against each other and I let the bright, tart taste roll over my tongue. We wander through the streets, moving past dancing revellers and small huddles of people laughing and clutching drinks of their own.

In the narrow alleys between houses, children draw patterns in coloured charcoal on revellers’ skin. Calybe gives two girls a few coins in exchange for flowers that lace up our arms and smudge as soon as we are thrown back into the throngs of people.

More wine is poured, more music plays and somewhere in all the chaos I lose Calybe.

I move back, trying to find her, round a corner and nearly collide with a man coming the other way. I stumble back, passing him, just another reveller in a too-tight space.

But then he clutches my wrist and turns me to face him.