The Book of the Erinyes

I — A Ded­ic­a­tion Of Sorts

I stare fix­edly at this page because I know that she is stand­ing at my shoulder, a never end­ing pres­ence. I can sense her emer­ging from the shad­ows in the not-quite-seen at the edge of vis­ion. The ser­pent­ine move­ment of her pale limbs bypasses sight, imprint­ing dir­ectly on the mind as immin­ent peril.

Her sis­ters are here too — their ophidian per­fume fills the room, dis­cord­ant with the key notes of anger and revenge. I write because they will not touch me while I act as their scribe.

I mouth the words of the sixty-ninth of the Orphic Hymns, hop­ing to entice their kind­lier aspects to the fore, but Alecto’s cold hiss of breath chills the back of my neck. Per­haps writ­ing is the atone­ment that can pla­cate them. I embrace this small hope. And so I write because I can no longer run.

II — First Flight

I ran, frantic amongst the masonry, the angry ones in furi­ous pur­suit. Moon­light and col­oured lamps flickered across them in rapid suc­ces­sion, but des­pite their pale naked skin that should have marked them out they seemed to draw the night about them.

III — Orphic Hymn LXVIII to the Erinyes

Voci­fer­ous Bac­chanalian Erinyes, hear!
You, I invoke, dread powers, whom all revere;
Nightly, pro­found, in secret who retire,
Tisi­phone, Alecto, and Mega­era dire:
Deep in a cav­ern merged, involved in night,
near where Styx flows imper­vi­ous to the sight;
Ever attend­ant on mys­ter­i­ous rites,
furi­ous and fierce, whom Fate’s dread law delights;
Revenge and sor­rows dire to you belong,
hid in a sav­age veil, severe and strong,
Ter­rific vir­gins, who forever dwell
endued with vari­ous forms, in deep­est hell;
Aer­ial, and unseen by human kind,
and swiftly cours­ing, rapid as the mind.
In vain the Sun with winged reful­gence bright,
in vain the Moon, far dart­ing milder light,
Wis­dom and Vir­tue may attempt in vain;
and pleas­ing, Art, our trans­port to obtain
Unless with these you read­ily con­spire,
and far avert your all-destructive ire.
The bound­less tribes of mor­tals you descry,
and justly rule with Dike’s impar­tial eye.
Come, snaky-haired, Moirai many-formed, divine,
sup­press your rage, and to our rites incline.

IV — Orphic Hymn LXIX to the Eumenides

Hear me, illus­tri­ous Eumen­ides, mighty named,
ter­rific powers, for prudent coun­sel famed;
Holy and pure, from Zeus Khtho­nios born
and Persephone, whom lovely locks adorn:
Whose pier­cing sight, with vis­ion uncon­fined,
sur­veys the deeds of all the impi­ous kind:
On Fate attend­ant, pun­ish­ing the race
(with wrath severe) of deeds unjust and base.
Dark-coloured queens, whose glit­ter­ing eyes, are bright
with dread­ful, radi­ant, life-destroying, light:
Eternal rulers, ter­rible and strong,
to whom revenge, and tor­tures dire belong;
Fatal and hor­rid to the human sight,
with snaky tresses wan­der­ing in the night;
Either approach, and in these rites rejoice,
for you, I call, with holy, sup­pli­ant voice.

V — The Song Of The Erinyes

I can hear them call­ing out­side. The song of the Erinyes is an ulu­lat­ing threnody, caco­phon­ous yet mourn­ful. A sad and damning eulogy to their prey.

I sud­denly real­ise that I have been almost imper­cept­ibly mov­ing my lips to their song in mute accompaniment.

The real­isa­tion makes me lock my mouth shut in hor­ror, but moments later I find my lips phras­ing the sounds again, this time quietly mur­mur­ing the strange melody.

It takes all my strength to res­ist the urge to take up the refrain with full voice…

VI — The Maniai

So, like Orestes, I flee, but with no Pythian sanc­tu­ary in which to go to earth my flight is both frantic and directionless.

My pur­suers, mani­fes­ted in their aspect as the Maniai, shadow my every move. I glimpse them briefly before they draw back into the shad­ows. I feel their eyes on me at all times, and once, a taunt­ing light touch on the back of my neck.

All my efforts to pla­cate them have been in vain, and I know bet­ter than to attempt to ban­ish them. I have con­sul­ted a hun­dred lib­rar­ies, but I am none the wiser.

VII — Alhktw (I)

They were born of the spilled blood of Our­anos, and released from the dark­ness of Tar­taros to be my tormentors.

Mega­era and Tisi­phone circle slowly in the dark­ness, but Alecto advances out of the night. She is grace­ful, but her every step speaks of restrained viol­ence. She could rend me with ease, but she does not. Not yet. Her limbs are slender, spare of flesh, but not sparing.

Aes­chylus was wrong, there are no snakes twined in her hair — it is long and black, I think, almost invis­ible in the dark­ness — but her move­ments are lean and serpentine.

Even the moon­light is cir­cum­spect in touch­ing her — clavicle and car­til­age are almost imper­cept­ibly picked out in sil­ver fili­gree. Pale light flick­ers across the fine bones of her face. And then she smiles, and my heart is frozen ice cold.

VIII — Alhktw (II)

Alecto circles me in the shad­ows. At times she seems to drop to all fours to a lupine lope, but whenever the dim light catches her she remains decept­ively human.

Sud­denly she faces me, eyes flash­ing in the candle­light, and her voice seems to rever­ber­ate from the low­est pit of Tar­taros. “We are here as your appoin­ted escort — it is our duty and our office.”

I recog­nise the ancient words and know that protest­ing my inno­cence would be both futile and false. Her expres­sion is as cold as marble, divine and demonic. I won­der how even Apollo or Athene could have argued in the face of such con­trolled fury.

Entranced, it is some minutes until I real­ise that she and her sis­ters have with­drawn, and I am left to won­der to what state they are to escort me.

IX — Tisi­fonh (I)

I wake, feb­rile and sweat­ing. Tisi­phone, the arch-retributionist, towers above me. The guard­ian of the Gates of Tar­taros has come for me.

She stands naked and statuesque in the dark­ness, but my hands seem almost crim­son in the pal­lid argent light lumin­es­cing from her marble skin. I thought this at first an illusion–and from one per­spect­ive it is–but I real­ise that it is no mere coin­cid­ence. The Erinyes are ancient and they can cre­ate the signs divined by manteia, although it’s true that they have no lik­ing for Oracles any more.

And, in some com­pact with Mnemo­syne or Morph­eus, she floods my mind with the memor­ies of my crimes. And they are legion.

X — Megaira (I)

Flame-haired Mega­era, feral daugh­ter of Erebos, hisses as she circles.

The Latin writers — from Aes­chylus onwards — had her entwined with swarm­ing snakes and draped in black, but the truth, as Pausanias noted, is dif­fer­ent. The hor­ror is not in such super­fi­cial accoutre­ments, but in their very essence — their psyche, if you will.

XI — Tisi­fonh (II)

I offer them a black ewe and a liba­tion of neph­alia on the eve of the Eumen­ideia, but Tisi­phone merely stares with eyes full of scorn. Those whom Ovid called “Sor­ores Gen­itae Nocte, divin­it­ies implac­able, doom-laden” can­not be pla­cated. Orph­eus might have been able to spell­bind them with song, but even he could not send them back to the deep­est abysses of Tartaros.