Permutations on a Theme, or, Orpheus and Eurydice (Again)

short fiction

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I.

He looks back.

Instantly, he regrets it, for she stands there still, one delicate blood-dripping ankle arrested in the act of another step. He sees her with a clarity he had never mustered while she was alive, and now, of course, he never will.

She looks at him, surprised and mildly disappointed. She had expected more from the man who harrowed hell with a bent wood frame and sheep guts. Or is that a look of silent horror on her face?

“I thought…” Orpheus trails off, uncertain of what to say.

“Well,” Eurydice says, and then is silent.

Orpheus’ lyre catches on his belt and releases a faint, startled chord.

“Well then,” Eurydice says at last. “What now?”

II.

The world is a circle. The cosmos is a circle, rings within rings, and time follows suit, each age repeating itself in never-ceasing variations.

The world devours itself and is reborn, time loops back on itself, and those caught within its coils make their choice again and again and again.

III.

It always begins with the wedding. There is no changing that.

She comes toward him over the long grass, which waves and dips around her. He waits, impatiently, and wishes it were over and they could go away together. He would like somewhere with good wine and ancient trees. She doesn’t care about the wine, she says that he makes her drunk enough. He wonders if she means it.

The crowd murmurs behind him, something he hears with one ear and forgets in the next moment. He wishes that she would hurry up.

Then she stumbles and falls, and he runs to her, all else forgotten, throwing his lyre aside in his haste. Her body jerks from side to side, crushing the grass, twisting it round her legs, and all the while her eyes are fixed on his. She tries to speak but all that comes out is a croak, so unlike her own voice that he looks to see who has come up behind him. Then he sees the snake gliding away, vanishing into the grass.

He holds her as she dies, an ignominious death, painful to the last. She dies with one last shudder. He is bent over her, shielding her jerking hands from her face, and is ashamed that he does not notice the moment of her death. She is alive and thrashing one moment, and the next she is empty; her dead eyes stare and her mouth gapes - in death, she is ugly as she never was in life.

They come up behind him, the gods and satyrs and nymphs who had meant to celebrate. They carry away the body and give him enough wine to drown his sorrows. They are polite, and almost kind, but they whisper.

He does not know what he did to deserve it. His life is as empty as her face was when she died. When she is laid in the earth he can only run his fingertips back and forth over the strings of his lyre in some tuneless drone, and when the last of the uncaring dirt is dumped over her grave he turns away.

It should not have been a funeral, and he cannot think of a way in which he is not to blame for it. He drinks, and drinks, and tries to forget, losing himself in a haze of cheap wine and filth. At last he has enough, and he stops singing bawdy songs and begins to compose love ballads, duets that no one else will ever sing with him. Stories begin to spread of his songs, and it is said that no one, god or mortal, can hear them without weeping.

He dreams of a tall man wrapped in grave cloths carrying her away - or perhaps that was a song he wrote. He dreams of her voice, more perfect than it was in life, and he holds the words it whispers until they are swept away by the tides of other visions. When he wakes he knows what he must do.

IV.

What happens after differs. He always makes the journey to hell, and all who hear his songs are moved by pity to let him pass. Sometimes it is because they understand him, sometimes because they wish to sleep again. Sometimes they cannot bear to hear those songs, because they speak of every human loss and grief, and immortal creatures do not care to be reminded of such things.

It doesn’t matter. They always let him pass. Perhaps they know what happens after.

He goes to the King of Hell and his bride, and there he sings to them. Sometimes it is the bride that is moved, sometimes the King of Hell himself, and sometimes the whole of Hell stops and listens and howls.

At last, she is given up to life, to go with him, but only if he does not look back. That is when the story truly begins to fracture.

V.

He looks back.

The wind takes her then, and he reaches out to her, but the wind is too strong. Screaming, she is ripped back to hell.

For a long time he stands there. Then he sits, and then, finally, he weeps.

VI.

On other occasions, he has not heard any footsteps behind him for hours, and so as they come into the light he looks back.

She is there, of course, still in the dark. She takes a step towards him, which leaves her unmoved.

“Oh, love,” she says. “Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t know you were there,” he stammers. “I didn’t know.”

“Have you so little faith?”

As she is speaking, she fades away to nothing, and only her words linger.

VII.

Sometimes, she is angry.

“Why?” she wails. “You only had to listen!”

“You could have spoken to me! I would have never looked back if you’d told me you were there!”

“Do you know nothing of the dead?”

“I went to hell to bring you back! Isn’t that enough for you?”

And so it goes.

VIII.

The strangest one of all is when he looks back at her, as she knew he would. The two of them stand, silently, watching one another.

“Why are you still here?” he asks. “You should be gone.”

She makes no answer.

“You’re dead.”

She examines her arms, milk-pale and cold. “Quite so.”

“You’re not gone.”

“I am not,” she says. “I am not. And I do not wish to go. Not yet.”

“But you can’t –” He pauses. “You’re dead. You can’t leave. You can’t go – there.”

She smiles, a smile that is not like her at all and that shows all her teeth.

“The dead king said that if you looked back I must return to Hell. He did not say how soon I must do it. Walk with me.”

“But –”

“Walk with me,” she insists. “Are you ashamed of me? You went to hell to bring me back.”

“But I –”

She steps forward and takes his arm with such strength that she nearly crushes it.

“I know,” she murmurs. “I know. I know why you did it. I know why you looked back.”

His eyes flicker with fear, and he looks away from her.

“You’re ashamed of me,” she whispers, and from the look on his face, both furtive and horrified, she knows that it is true.

“You were never willing to die for me.”

Silently, sickened, he follows her into the light and the world of the living.

IX.

Sometimes, they stand together in the light for one moment, until the sun melts her, and she is gone.

X.

Once in ten thousand years he saves her. He looks back, but they have already stepped into the light, and she is free. The rest of their life begins with a whisper, and it doesn’t matter how it went after that.

XI.

Then, he looks back, and she is not there at all. He sees only fog drifting across the mouth of the cave, and he is left to wonder whether she was ever there. The wondering drives him mad.

XII.

He looks back.

She is still there, for a moment at least, and she looks back at him. The two stand together by the stream, one in shadow and one in light. They do not touch. They do not know how long they have.

Orpheus begins to speak.

“I know,” Eurydice says.

He is silent, then. He looks at his lyre, leaning against a tree, but he does not reach for it. He wonders if he ever will again.

“No,” Eurydice says. “Don’t be silly.”

“How much longer?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I never know,” she admits.

He smiles as he looks at her. The moments pass, and the first of the dying leaves drops from the poplar tree nearby.

“Well,” Eurydice says at last, “what now?”

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