Alcestis Read Online Free PDF

women in the room stared, waiting for Pisidice to shudder into sobs, but she pulled the white shift over her head calmly, without a sound.
    The head maid frowned and brought me another bowl of water. “Wash your face, child,” she said, touching the curve of my cheek. “Your eyes look bad.”
    I looked at my image, wavering on the surface of the water. I reached down, pulling away from the kind touch of the maid, and put my hands through the middle of my reflected face.

    THE FUNERAL FEAST would last until Olympus crumbled, I was sure of it. I was sitting beside Pelopia, and no one remarked upon it when he wrapped his skinny arm around my shoulders and settled me against his side. He smelled more like Hippothoe than Pisidice did, but he was still not right, and I wriggled under the weight of his arm. He looked down at me. His face was solemn, no hint of a joke in his eyes. I hardly recognized him.
    “You’ll be all right, Alcestis,” he murmured. “Eat something now. You don’t want to worry anyone.”
    It was bad luck not to eat at a funeral feast, so I forced a bite of boar into my mouth. The noise in the room was rising, men filling their bellies with wine before they ate, and their voices battered at my ears. I put down the piece of meat and leaned back, slipping out from beneath Pelopia’s arm. He turned, startled, and I braced myself against an expected yank, but he didn’t grab me. His eyes were sad. “Go on then and be quick about it,” he said. I scrambled up from the bench and fled the great hall.
    Pelias called after me, but I rushed through the entry hall and down the steps to the courtyard. Through the gate, I could see the men standing around Hippothoe’s grave, some leaning on sticks while the others held torches. The night had grown cool, and in their gray-brown woolen cloaks the men looked insubstantial, only outlines against the darkness. Gooseflesh rose on my arms. I took a hesitant step toward the gate, and one of the men looked up, his face a blur beneath his hooded cloak.
    I heard footsteps on the stone behind me and shot a glance over my shoulder. Pisidice stood on the porch, eyes hard, hands on her hips.
    “Well done,” she said. “You’ve got us both sent upstairs now.”
    “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
    “You are not.” Pisidice came down the stairs one determined step at a time and reached out to grab me. “Come on, unless you fancy being stuck in the room for a week.”
    I ducked away from her, toward the gate and Hippothoe’s grave. “Don’t,” I said, suddenly anguished. “Pisidice, don’t you—don’t you miss her? Don’t you?”
    “Don’t be an idiot. Of course I miss her.” Pisidice’s voice had gone quiet, but it was not soft.
    “I miss her so much,” I said under my breath. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the stretch of ribs beneath skin. The head maid had told me of a boy who’d died when she was a child, who’d sat by a pool in the woods and stared at his own reflection. He had so loved the beauty of his own face that he couldn’t look away from the image, not even to eat or drink, and finally he had withered away to nothing, just some flower petals and a name. Narcissus, the head maid had called him. Now I thought I understood him better. Hippothoe was there in the ground; she would be there for years and years, and if I stood over the grave and looked down long enough, perhaps the earth would open and swallow me, pull me down to the underworld like a sea nymph pulling a pretty sailor over the side of a ship. I could chase Hippothoe, maybe even catch her, and surely the underworld would not be so terrible with my sister by my side.
    My eyes were wet. I swiped the heel of my hand across my damp eyelashes and lifted my face.
    “Come in,” my living sister said, and turned back toward the entry hall without waiting for me to follow. I looked over my shoulder once, but I could hardly see the mound of Hippothoe’s grave, the curve of dirt hiding