"SHE SEES THE DAWN"
copyright 2006 by BARBARA JACKSHA
By Mere Reflection
She had never been beautiful. Men avoided her. She suspected a certain power in the avoidance, a reverse attraction. Even a lovely face demanded a comparative opposite—the overall shape, the tilt of cheek and brow, the set of the mouth, thin or full. Was a nose straight or cruelly hooked? And the complexion, pocked or fair?
She'd been a girl when first realizing the effect her gaze had on idle observers—lips curled, breaths caught, eyes fixed as if they'd gazed at the sun too long. The staring was hurtful and later made her cross. She repaid the rudeness with venomous fury. She had trophies. She'd collected hundreds, maybe a thousand examples of human frailty and brittle egos. But they were small comfort in the blue-black night while yearning for a lover's whisper, a hand or tongue to a taut, ripe nipple, or the slick dance of aching desire.
Enter the Greek.
He would mock her solitude, invade her lair, and with arrogant manliness accomplish what others had failed. Did he think her a fool? He had come to slay her with adolescent courage. He had come to take her infamous head.
He paused at the mouth of her cave, shoulders squared, jaw firm and resolute, and then he adjusted his meager shield and sword. Stupid boy! She could have paralyzed him then, struck him like a scorpion, but his silhouette pressed to the glare, innocence eclipsed, startled her with its simple, raw beauty.
A moment of weakness? A moment of weary resignation.
It would be written differently. The boy would be hailed the courageous hero, who in the critical moment swung his mirrored shield and toppled her by mere reflection. Didn't he know? She had seen the empty future, felt the very wind retreat as if a single breeze across her skin risked an Ice Age.
Not even the nectar of the gods tasted sweet enough. Not the statues of the men who had come or the flirting shades of those who would come made the passage of time bearable. Immortality was the cruelest gift.
And so she stared, drank deep of the warrior's mirror. For a moment, the scales and writhing headdress fell away, and she was radiant, a portrait of wondrous light. She tumbled from the slopes of Mt. Olympus. She traded the stony glance for an eye blink of brilliance. No regrets, no fussing or monstrous howling. She lost face and breath for a single look, the heart's quick stirring and the shiny image forever caught behind her wide, grateful eyes. Leave the mythmakers their campfires and glorious stories. She gave herself willingly and would do it again.
Hail, Perseus! May he ride the night sky and spur the belly of his great-winged stallion. She begrudged the lad nothing. She would crown his youthful brow with the champion's laurel.
Liberator. Hero. Unsuspecting lover.
But know this: she had never been beautiful until the severing of flesh and fragile vertebrae. She had never known love until the naked exposure, a rendering of blood and shimmering membrane, and then the soft, sweet shudder between the darkness and the light.
"By Mere Reflection" first appeared in Wild Strawberries
Copyright 2006 by Margaret A. Frey
Margaret writes:
