by Zenia deHaven

Content Warnings: Death and Blood

The poets relish in describing the unfathomable beauty of the Nereids in painstaking detail. They write sentence upon sentence, the papyrus bleeding with ink, of how their hair shimmers like a gold sunset over an ocean horizon, of how their voices are crisper than forest streams slipping over smooth rocks.

Galatea wanted to ring those poets’ necks. Her ethereal form attracted greed, jealousy, and ire that could fill the depths of Tartarus and then some. The poets conveniently left that part out.

She swam through the sea, carving through the Sicilian waters with powerful arms. Though the sculptors tended to chisel her likeness into fragile limbs thinner than seaweed, her body was built for the ocean. Her shoulders were broad, apt for long, clean strokes. Her legs alone could propel a three-masted ship. Despite her sister Thetis’ constant teasing, many mortals worshiped Galatea as the most gorgeous daughter of Nereus.

As much as Thetis seethed at Galatea’s fame, being considered the most beautiful of the Nereids drew in a myriad of unwanted suitors.

Even leagues from the Sicilian coast, Galatea could feel the mortal eyes squinting at the horizon, at the faintly womanly figure swimming through the cresting waves. She kept her distance from cities bustling with mortals. She preferred the coastline, dotted by the occasional vineyard and fisherman’s hut. It was where she met Acis.

Her beloved stood beneath the shadow of the cypress tree where they first met. She remembered how his breath had caught as he watched the powerful, immortal woman step out of the sea without a drop of water on her clothes. Later, he confessed to her that he had thought she was Aphrodite herself. Galatea had laughed, folding her fingers around his palm, and said:

“Aphrodite’s soft hands wouldn’t survive long in the sea.”

Galatea blinked back to the present. Acis stood with his back to the sea, bent to scratch the head of one of his flock.

She inhaled, shuddering at the salty air filling her mouth, and moved towards the land when the water beside her churned. The surface bubbled and groaned, like an ancient, watery behemoth yawning awake.

The cyclops surfaced, mightily but without grace. Galatea would have been swept away in the ensuing wave had she been any less of a swimmer. The monster shook his thick hair clumped with flotsam, spraying water everywhere. He was twice the size of a mortal man, with rippling muscles along his thick arms and a muscular chest donned with battle scars. His single, green eye blinked from its socket centered in his forehead. The white of his eye was red and irritated.

Any other nymph with half a mind would have fled, and Galatea was certain that every fish, bird, and other semi-intelligent thing had dispersed at the moment of the cyclops’ surfacing. But his presence wasn’t unusual for Galatea, even if it was mildly unpleasant, and she offered a lukewarm smile.

“Are you having a good morning, Polyphemus?”

Despite herself, she pitied how his hard features softened as his one-eyed gaze found her. He drifted a bit closer to her, and she shook her head in warning. He stopped. She almost would’ve preferred if he’d charged ahead, ignoring her signals that she wasn’t interested, but the great monster was strangely respectful of her. This interaction would have been less awkward if he were a brute, but instead, he mustered all of his limited social skills into resembling something adjacent to a gentleman.

“It’s going far better with you here, Galatea,” he said. He looked away, almost shy. The whole scene would have been endearing if one ignored that cyclopes were known to tear heads from shoulders when they were displeased.

Galatea was not concerned for her safety, though. Polyphemus was a monster, this she would not and could not deny, but she was in her realm, not his. Any act of injustice wrought upon the daughter of Nereus was an affront to her godly father himself, and even Polyphemus wouldn’t risk the ocean’s wrath.

“My answer to your question, great cyclops, is the same,” Galatea said for the umpteenth time. She had lost count of how many times they had this weary conversation.

“Please, lady Nereid,” the cyclops pleaded, his words wavering like a wave splintering before crashing against a shore. His cracking voice didn’t suit his monstrous body. Not for the first time, Galatea wondered if his whole behavior was a front to hide the beast beneath. Had anyone else told Galatea that a cyclops repeatedly confessed his love and respected boundaries, she would’ve thought that Pan had driven them mad. Even witnessing it for herself, the whole thing was strange. If Polyphemus truly wanted her for himself, he could have abducted her, Nereus be damned. Gods and monsters incited wars for less. Instead, Polyphemus didn’t seem to want to take Galatea for himself, but rather for Galatea to want him, as bizarre and disturbing as it was.

“Polyphemus,” she said slowly, “I do not want to be tied down as someone’s wife. I am a spirit of the ocean, boundless and free. Nothing you can offer me would replace that.”

“I can give you whatever you want,” he stammered, as if the door to their relationship was still ajar and not firmly slammed in his face. “I have farms, cheeses, goats, servants—”

“No.”

Polyphemus’ mouth opened and closed, like a fish sputtering on the end of a hook. He searched for the impossible words that might convince her otherwise, but cyclopes were known for brutish strength, not star-dazzling wordplay. He was at a loss.

“Please leave,” Galatea said.

His bottom lip trembled.

“I will go,” he said. “But know that I will always love you, Galatea, daughter of Nereus.”

She watched as the dejected cyclops submerged into the waves, the bubbles slowly fizzing out as his massive shadow disappeared into the deep.

Galatea shook her head, once again feeling the urge to wrestle every poet that spouted the joys of physical beauty, and wished she could impose a cyclops’ unreciprocated love onto them and see how they felt.

She swam ashore.

Acis was ignorant of her encounter with Polyphemus. He watched his flock, assuring that they were grazing only upon innocent grasses and not something that would block up their insides and cause terrible deaths. Sheep, Galatea had learned, were hardly more intelligent than the dead-eyed fish that ate rotting corpses of their brethren, not realizing that they were consuming the same parasite that doomed their meal.

Sheep were far more adorable, at least.

Several of them plodded over to her, baying in welcome. She visited Acis and his flock regularly, and the livestock were comfortable with her presence. If anything, they might have been a bit too relaxed. They clamored over each other, demanding her attention with intensified bleats. She laughed, rubbing the space between their ears at their request. Sheep were far softer than any denizens of the ocean. As much as she loved dolphins, their slick, leathery skin was far less enjoyable to pet than the dense, warm fleece of sheep.

Acis turned around, a smile cresting his lips at the sight of her. Though they had known each other for nearly two mortal years, he always looked at her as if it were the first time: with unfiltered admiration and awe. Galatea wondered if this was how the gods felt when mortals prayed at their altars: all-powerful and loved and full.

He ran towards her, and she dashed to meet him. They collided in a mess of gasping breaths and tangled limbs. He picked her up by the waist, laughing as he spun her in the air. Galatea’s laughter entwined with his, and, for a moment, she forgot about any worry that had ever plagued her mind. Heartbroken cyclopes be damned. This, this twinning of souls in the glory of reunion, was all she wanted to feel for the rest of her immortal life.

Finally, their spinning slowed. Acis placed her down, both of them breathing heavy with exhilaration. She took in his tanned face, the offset of his nose that never properly set, the scar on the corner of his lip from his bloody tangle with a wolf that threatened his flock.

“I have something to tell you,” he said. His face was rosy with color, the crimson spreading to the tips of his ears.

“Oh!” Galatia said, taken aback. What could this be about? He had mentioned finding a small farm where he could settle instead of wandering wherever he could find greener pastures. Maybe he had gotten a deal on some goats. He always talked about selling cheese alongside his supply of wool.

“Galatea,” he said, his tone now low and serious. A shiver snaked up her back, gooseflesh rising along her arms despite the warm rays bathing her in gold. Gone were the playful curves of his smile; the boyishness of the moment they had shared was dead and buried.

“Galatea,” he said again, and she suppressed a shudder as he took her hands in his. “I would like you to marry me.”

Marry… him?

Galatea stiffened so suddenly that Medusa may have turned her flesh to stone. Marriage? To a mortal? While she loved Acis, his kindness, his gentleness, his relentless optimism in a world that was so obviously unfair, the thought of marriage made her stomach churn. She was immortal, destined to live until the sun imploded or the oceans ran dry, or whatever disaster the gods decided to wreak upon the world first. Acis’s beard was already flecked with shimmering gray. Thanatos wouldn’t reap his soul just yet, but Acis’ name was on Death’s list.

Had they ever discussed their future together? They had shared daydreams about owning a proper farm, with coups of clucking chickens and horses with glistening, fine coats. But all of those daydreams ended with her returning to the sea, resting beneath the foaming waves. To stay on solid land until Acis’ mortal life withered away, to debase herself as not a spirit of the ocean, but the brood mare of a human man? Her sisters would never cease mocking her. Thetis might manage to end her immortal life dying from laughter.

Acis did care for her, but she wasn’t a human woman. She didn’t crave domesticity.

A rogue wind sprayed salt water across her cheeks, a taste of home. She would rather live one human lifetime at sea than a thousand stranded on land.

She realized that she had not responded, and that Acis’ brow furrowed in concern.

“Oh,” she said. It was a pathetic non-answer. She didn’t want her relationship with Acis to end this way, but she sensed from the desperation in his eyes that he would never stop pining for her hand regardless of how many times she said she was uninterested.

The whole situation was bitterly familiar.

“I’m sorry, Acis, I just—” she waved her hands about, as if she could grasp an acceptable answer from the air.

“I understand that it may be sudden,” Acis said softly, squeezing her hands. Had his hands always been so clammy? “But I love you, Galatea. I can’t imagine myself without any other woman. Would you make me the happiest mortal and be my wife?”

The word grated her skin like coral.

My wife. She would no longer be an individual, but someone’s wife.

She bit her lip. Was she the fool for letting Acis believe something about their relationship that was untrue? Her sisters, of course, had dabbled in romance, both with mortals and other, more divine individuals. Most of them preferred briefer encounters that occasionally yielded offspring. There were exceptions, like Amphitrite, who married the newer god of the sea, Poseidon, and she was content. But Amphitrite wedded one of the most powerful deities of Olympus, not a common shepherd.

She winced at her own line of thought. Deeming Acis as no more than a shepherd was unnecessarily cruel, even if he was misguided.

Would you be my wife?

“No,” she said, so quietly that the sheep’s constant brays masked her voice.

“What?” he asked. He hadn’t understood her; his face was still too alight with joy. And she was about to stamp it out.

“No, Acis,” she said.

Acis’ mouth opened in a surprised “o.” He let go of her hands, dropping them limply at his sides. Her heart twisted. She would rather deter Polyphemus’ advances for the rest of her life than shatter the heart of Acis once.

“Is it because of my station?” he asked slowly. “Because I’m making more profit than ever, I swear. I nearly sold out of my stock at the last market.”

“Acis, it’s not that—” she started, but he interrupted her with a cutting look. A dark shroud clouded his gaze.

“Is there someone else? Some undersea lover you haven’t told me about?”

It was Galatea’s turn to be at a loss for words. He was pacing, now, huffing like a caged animal. The jealousy brimming in his eyes aged him by decades. She reminded herself that he was angry and frustrated. He was lashing out, trying to find the source of her hesitancy like a thorn he could pry out and burn. He could not fathom that she simply did not want to be married, because wasn’t that the goal of every fair maiden?

“Of course not!” she said.

“Then what is it?” he said, his voice cracking. Some of his rage slipped, revealing a broken man who’d poured everything he had into a well only to watch the contents drop away into an abyss.

“I just… I don’t want to be married,” she said.

Acis was about to answer when a deep voice bellowed:

“Leave her alone!”

Acis’s head whipped toward the sound. Grateful for the distraction, Galatea stepped away, creating distance between her and the man she had wrought unimaginable disappointment.

Polyphemus stood along the craggy shore, his shadow casting ghastly proportions along the stones. His chest was bare, dripping with water, his thinning hair sagging against his scalp. The single eye in his forehead was locked onto Acis with the intensity of a shark chasing down its prey.

The sheep brayed in terror, scattered, white, fluffy blobs streaming out into the countryside. To his credit, or absolute foolishness, Acis shoved Galatea behind him, as if he were any obstacle to the monster that could rip a ship’s hull in two.

“Leave us, monster!”

Polyphemus snarled, his teeth flashing yellow.

“The lady said no,” he snapped. “Let her go.”

“This does not concern you,” Acis said. His voice wavered on the last syllable, but only for a moment before he steeled himself again.

“Galatea does not want to be wed!” Polyphemus bellowed, stomping his foot. The stones beneath him crumpled into dust. “Hardly to a petty mortal like you!”

“She does not know what she wants!” Acis retorted, that jealous shadow crossing his face once more. Galatea knew that it was the wrong thing to say.

The cyclops’ eye narrowed into a hateful iris.

“I do,” he growled.

He moved with more agility than a monster of his size had any right to. With his massive hands, he scooped up a boulder the size of a chariot and hurled it at Acis.

The immense rock followed an almost angelic arc, blotting out Helios’ light as it eclipsed the sun and cast the world in darkness. Galatea couldn’t bear to watch where it landed. She hid her face in the curve of her arm, blinding herself to the horror.

There was a thud, a sickening, wet squelch, and then nothing.

Galatea blinked, and the space where Acis had just stood was gone, replaced by the boulder. Rivers of crimson leaked from its base. Acis’ blood spiderwebbed across the earth with a perverse beauty, like a winding river at sunrise.

She collapsed to her knees, her breath ragged as she drew in air. Sobs shuddered through her. What had she done?

The shadow of Polyphemus blanketed her, but she was too numb to fear him. Exhaustion weakened her to her bones. She couldn’t manage any emotion aside from utter despair and self-loathing that flooded her. How could she have ever thought that Polyphemus was harmless?

“Lady Galatea?” he said from somewhere close to her. He sounded confused. “The man was disturbing you, I thought—”

“To murder him?” she rounded on the creature, this insolent, entitled thing that deemed itself an executioner.

Polyphemus stepped back, his eye wide.

“He wouldn’t leave you alone,” he said slowly, as if Galatea was the one gravely misunderstanding the situation. “I thought you wanted him gone.”

“I wanted to reason with him, not kill him,” she seethed. “I want you gone.”

The mighty cyclops stooped low, shoulders caving with shame. He seemed genuinely regretful, not because he killed a man, but because he had wounded Galatea.

“As you wish, Galatea,” he said, shuffling back to the sea. She didn’t bother watching, instead staring at the bleeding rock as a splash confirmed Polyphemus’ departure.

The streams of red were thickening, flowing towards the sea. She had never witnessed death this close. It felt wrong for a life that shone so bright to be diminished with something as crude as stone. She recognized the short lifespan of humans, but forgot how fragile their bodies were, too.

It was not right for Acis’ life to end like this. He didn’t deserve to pour his heart out to her, receive her stunting rejection, and then be killed by a cyclops with the emotional intelligence of a sea cucumber. She didn’t regret telling Acis no, as it would be unfair to both of them to entrap him in a marriage she wanted no part of.

She had hoped to let Acis down easily, but Polyphemus had not given her the chance.

Sensing that the imminent threat had disappeared, some of Acis’ sheep strayed back to their grazing. They sniffed the air, taking in the coppery stench of blood intermingled with the salt of the sea, trying and failing to find their shepherd. One of the braver animals approached Galatea, baying a question she could never answer. She patted its fluffy head, her body moving on its own accord. If she couldn’t comfort herself, she might as well offer comfort to something else.

The red rivers continued to flow, as if the stone itself had a heart pumping out blood.

She was not her father, who could reverse the flow of the tides or drown a man by filling up their lungs with water. Galatea’s talents were meek by comparison, but she needed to do what she could to alleviate the guilt drowning her whole.

Standing, much to the sheep’s chagrin, she pressed her palms into the boulder. She reached out into the world of spirits and half-remembered things, searching for the golden light of Acis. His spirit was not hard to find since it was so recently cleaved from its body. It hummed at her presence, confused as it hovered on the border between the living and Hades. She tugged it back, pulling it away from the river Styx. He was a wayward ship at sea, teetering uncertainly, and she anchored him back to the world of life.

She could not restore the dead. That power lay beyond the might of even the fiercest gods. She could, however, offer a new life for Acis.

His soul was firmly in her grasp. She partially expected it to squirm and try to flee towards Hades, but it rested in her palm, warm and contemplative.

She exhaled and channeled Acis into a new being.

The rock stopped bleeding.

For a moment, Galatea fretted that she had accidentally committed a horrible mistake. She had never tried to use her powers this way. Had she accidentally infused his soul with the rock, and he was trapped in it for all eternity? Did she somehow annihilate his very soul?

The stone shuddered, then split in two in a thundering crack. From the crevice, a river of glistening, clear water burst forth.

Galatea stepped back, stunned at the water rushing past her in a gushing flow. It wound through the countryside, snaking towards the ocean, carving a new estuary into the earth. Already, it was brimming with life, with fish darting around under the surface, crabs scuttling along the sandy ground, and water striders skating the surface. The stone continued spouting water, the river stretching until it was several meters deep and even further in length.

Some of the sheep shuffled closer, bowing their heads to the water and drinking. Galatea wondered if they could somehow sense that their shepherd’s soul was infused with the newborn river.

Galatea trailed her hand in the water, letting the current flow between her fingers, and wondered if she felt an unseen hand grasp back, or if it was her imagination.

Zenia deHaven (they/them) is an author of short stories and essays. Their work has been published in Fruitslice, As Alive Magazine, SIEVA Magazine, and NoVA Prism. When they're not writing, they enjoy video games, group exercise classes, and petting their dogs.