Blood, The Blood Of Grapes

Blood, the Blood of Grapes

Fandom: Percy Jackson Rating: Teen Characters: Pollux; Caz (Castor); OC daughter of Dionysus; Lee Fletcher; Will Solace

Summary: The maenads, the raving-ones, the noise-makers. They had always loved the Children of Dionysus. Sometimes his children loved them back. (The youngest member of Cabin 12 is called like a fey to the revels in the wood)

CW: minor threat of cannibalism; blood imagery

A/N: Agatha is 11 here. Caz and Pollux are Scottish

Theo had been at camp three months before she dared to ask about the music. 

It was faint at first, lone notes snatched on the winds gone the moment she stood still to listen. 

She went to bed with it in her ears, rose with it on her tongue. It papered her skin with gooseflesh.

Then came cymbals. In the rustle of leaves, the salt-brine waves, the knives and forks at dinner. 

At night she heard laughter. The other cabins perhaps. But when she pressed her nose against the cold glass of her window it was only dark. The stars above swilled wine-drunk and gold. 

It grew louder. Like feet under the hills, like the thud of swords against leather, like the thump-beat-thump of her own heart.  

She rose early, one morning, mouth metallic, jaw aching for the taste of strawberries and found the satyr cross-hoofed cradling Pan’s reeds to his lips. He winked, a wild eye, and she swallowed his tune down her gullet.  

After that it never left her; sweet and strange, it poured through camp thick like syrup. She found it on her plate curled round her cup, felt it in the soil and the worm-dark dirt, heard it in the amphitheatre in the argument of voices, saw it in the long twigged hands of the tree-people as they waved to her, the pipes the cymbals the drums. 

The question fell like baby teeth as she climbed into bed. 

Pollux grinned lopsidedly as he tucked Bunny into her blankets. ‘What music?’ 

‘The pipes. The drums.’ She shook her head, ‘They chant, why do they always chant?’ 

The twins exchanged a look, one of their silent conversations she cannot read. 

‘Faun-song,’ said Caz softly, ‘Da’s followers. Don’t worry’ 

They double checked the latches on the windows that night, tested the lock on the door.

She didn’t tell them that she wasn’t afraid. 

The chanting swelled louder, the pipes never stopped. It was not enough. The pipes were not enough, the drums were not enough. The cymbals of the sea and the bearded bleats of goats were not enough. She started humming it, needed to feel it inside her, in her mouth, in the glut of her stomach, greedy, greedy, she hummed. 

It was not enough. Her fingers hurt, her chest hurt, her ears hurt. Like it was a noise that could not be contained, condemned, to be still. She wanted to dance. Wanted to stomp her feet like the music halls of her childhood when she was young enough to twirl her skirts and spin. 

At the firepit she grew restless. The flames were high, Phoebus’ children bright, summer was coming and everyone crowed and still it was not enough. Sedate. Quiet. 

She wanted to dance. Wanted to move, wanted to tear her hair and shout MORE MORE MORE. 

May’s nights were long and warm. She dreamt of bull horns and absinthe and grinning green masks. She woke with the smell of fennel. 

It surprised her, in the end, how long it took her to go to the Forest. But Caz and Pollux had said it was out-of-bounds, told of monsters. She had promised never to go in. 

But that was before the music. 

Theo was supposed to be doing chores. A Saturday, no classes. Just polishing her leather breast-plate before Greek with Caz. She was not even supposed to be there but she’d tried for a half-remembered shortcut, misremembered, twice-remembered. She did not remember. Because here at the greenwood edge, the music came. 

Her head tilted, as if she might see into the leafgloom better. Her armour trailed on the ground. There was laughter, spilling like a drink, frothed and loud and merry. It reminded her of the after-show parties back home. Sequined girls still in their costumes, men handsome and moustached. 

It took her a while to see the woman. Greenskinned and tall, taller than Pollux even. Ivy trailed from her hair, her wrists, her dress was fawn skin. 

‘My child.’ Her voice is the best of honey. It stuck Theo’s tongue to her mouth. She swallowed, drily. 

‘The music...’

‘Ah.’ The lady smiled, a heady thing, ‘You like to dance?’ 

Theo nodded. 

She held out her hands, a coy tilt of the chin. ‘Come. Join us.’

‘I - I can’t.’  Theo had made a promise to the twins. The forest was dangerous. (But the music, how could it be with the music?) The pipes the cymbals the drums were loud.

She had taken a step before she realised it. 

‘Come,’ the lady lulled, ‘come ye child. Taste and see. We will not harm you.’ Her voice was the voice of many. The voice of pipes.

Theo took her hand. They ran. 

A whoop. A holler. A cheer. The woods raised up, loud and braying, the sound of a crowd. 

‘Evohé. Evohé’

It was a prayer, a hymn. The clap of hands, the stomp of feet. A hundred figures ran, a hundred figures writhed. Tree-men and women of holly and fir, satyrs with rolling eyes and naked legs, red berry creatures with horns and tails, leopard folk and boys with the heads of panthers that lapped the milk from the wet dew grass. 

The trees poured wine, the flowers dripped with honey. The air smelled of tanned hide and incense, sounded of cymbals and drums and flutes.

They kicked their heels, they keened their throats. And when they saw her, when a hundred eyes looked and saw, they cheered. 

A garland was summoned, ivy and vine leaves, wound in a crown, pressed to her head. her hands were taken, pulled into the crowd, she span, she twirled. She danced like she had not danced for years, back when her mother was alive, when the brass bands played what she asked, when life was smoke and powder and brandy.

‘Sister.’ They cried. ‘Priestess.’ 

Theo’s grin was wicked. ‘We dance.’ She said. She compelled. And they did.

The pipes the cymbals the drums the feet the cheer of a crowd that loved her. They laid flowers at her feet, tossed ivy to the ground, and when she threw back her head and howled they howled with her. 

She wanted more. Needed more.

‘Evohé,’ they cried, ‘daughter of Ours, where do we go?’ 

To the mountains, the mountains. Called the chorus. To the woods. 

Theo pointed, there was a staff in her hand, pinecone tipped and sharp. Onwards, deeper, deeper. They followed, the crowd of frenzy, the men and women who raved.

Their song was the rage of animals, the tears of sap, the blood of grapes.

Blessed are the dancers of the dance of god

A goblet was pushed to her lips, blazed gold and gleaming, and she drank deep and long. Rubbed a hand from her mouth, speared liquid across her cheeks. They cheered. Theo flushed, hot and thirsty and threw the cup to the ground. Where it struck, the earth bled wine.

‘Sister. Daughter of the god of joy.’ 

Daughter of the god of noise

She howled, they howled, the woods howled. They were hers now. Tree and stone and root. 

That was why she noticed the fault. The crack, the break, the wrong-quiet note in the good-loud noise.

A spy upon god’s possessed

‘Stranger! Spy! Watcher in the Woods!’

For doom for deed. Smite til the throat shall bleed

‘Feast’ Someone called. ‘Beast. Lion. Spy.’  

Their lips foamed, their eyes leapt like fire. Their hands tore at roots, at flesh.

‘Bring them. Find them. Rip them. Lionspy.’

Theo’s head spun, her stomach ached.

‘Eat it drink it suck the marrow dry. Yes. Yes. Feast until they die.’ A shout. A whoop. A holler.

A Scream.

Part two --

(Part of a larger story universe)