Galatea

Feel how chilled your hands are?’

Because I used to be made of stone.

With the gods, all things are possible, I said. Look at my stomach. I had puffed it a little, so that it looked like a mound. And anyway, he did not know what women looked like. To him, if there was anything, it was strange.

I live every day yearning for you to come. You are my husband, and father.’
‘And mother,’ he said.
‘Yes, and mother. And brother too. And lover. All of these.’

he couch without moving so that he might murmur, ‘Ah, my beauty is asleep.’ A few times in the past,

‘Lie down this instant,’ he said. Then, when I obeyed, he took my wrist and held it. ‘Your pulse is slow,’ he said.

my neck, and the purple on my arms and chest where he had gripped me. He rubbed at them, as though they were stains, not bruises. ‘The colour is perfect,’ he said, ‘Look.’ And he held up the mirror so I could see. ‘You make the rarest canvas, love.’

I was tired and sick and my feet were too swollen for the delicate golden sandals he liked to see them in. It made him angry, but it did not stop him from pushing me onto the bed or up against the wall, and I worried that because of it I would have not one child, but a whole litter at once, like the cats in the street.

. But it does seem foolish that he didn’t think it through, how I could not both live and still be a statue.

gift. And he told me again how well he had cared for me, dressing me in silks, and draping me in flowers and jewels, and bringing me seashells and colored balls, and praying to the goddess every night.