The Reviled Sisters by Robyn Thomas
“As you have chosen to stand with the sister who has scorned my trust, I place a curse on you both. While men may come and go, no woman shall ever invite you into her home or into the temple of her heart.”
The Minerva Alliance women’s networking group met every third Tuesday of the month at 8:30am. Euryale sipped espressos until sunrise, slipped into a thrifted Versace suit, and claimed a grimy seat on the B-line. The humid stench of humankind was comforting, soothed her nerves—the jostling bodies, blaring headphones underscored by muttering from the wide-eyed night walkers or yawns from blurry-eyed shift workers—a prelude of peace before she arrived at the soulless golf clubhouse, adjusted her blouse, and prayed for no slip-ups this time.
The first networking group she trusted too easily (unlike her)—but there was a member who sold sex toys and produced “Porn tailored for Womxn”, which induced giggling approval and nods for progressive empowerment. But when Euryale revealed her true profession, they responded first with intrigue then condemnation. The centuries had marked her unkindly, her hair was losing its obsidian sheen and she’d never been statuesque like her two sisters. She could tell the women wondered how she acquired clients, as if the only thing she gave was her physical form. We don’t want to support the commodification of women, they wrote in an email, the rest of us are working hard to break the glass ceiling and we feel you’re not a good fit for our community.
The next time she listed her profession as ‘intimacy therapist’, but too many members requested her services. Certified Life Coach was more innocuous—their eyes glazed over when she pitched her exclusive self-development workshops as generic as the dozens hawked throughout the city.
As the current presenter delivered a sermon on another variation of “surviving to thriving”, Euryale met the eyes of Danielle, the owner of a comic book shop, who mouthed the words “thrive” as if possessed. Euryale grinned, taming the hope that surged whenever Danielle graced her with a whisper or a snarky quip. Lucinda, the self-nominated leader of the meetups, glowered at them both. Euryale noticed the nails on Lucinda’s fingers (always perfectly shellacked in a shade to match every season) protruded well past the cuticle and the glittered tips were slightly chipped.
The current trend of clicky clacking gels and three-inch fluorescent talons that jutted out menacingly reminded Euryale of her clients in the 14th century who began donning poulaines. Shoes with one extremely long toe stuffed with moss or horsehair, their tips extended out like an elongated jalapeño pepper and gave the wearer dreadful bunions. Some men came to her with cords attached from their knees to the tips of the poulaines to avoid trips and ungraceful shuffles. There seemed to be a similar infatuation today with those candy-coloured claws of primal power—mimicking the keratin of a tiger, eagle, or perhaps a sloth—a deceivingly weaponized creature donning sharp blades. Most striking was this ritualistic form of aesthetic care had nothing to do with seduction, as most men she knew found the nails abhorrent. So then, it was simply for the pleasure of her own animalistic expression, which in a way was rather nice.
It was little surprise when Lucinda’s circle share swerved from “I’m finally making six figures this year” to “that bastard, he went to an agency, an agency!! Couldn’t even get laid without spending my money,” and then… “If I could get my hands on her I’d…”
The ladies reacted sympathetically with the standard “how could he!”, “but you’re so beautiful”, “he’s a blind idiot”, etc., but while some were truly sympathetic, there were others whose pulse quickened and eyes dilated, for one of the most feathered in the flock had been debased.
Euryale exhaled slowly and focused on the business cards displayed on the table. She missed the elaborate calligraphy of the 18th century, marketing the wares of women manufacturing fans and furniture, the milliners, silversmiths and haberdashers, wax chandlers, whalebone sellers and horologists. For all their supposed prudishness, the female entrepreneurs of that time were more accepting of Euryale’s business than the modern woman. Recreating that camaraderie, despite humiliating failures, had become an obsession fueling her otherwise stale existence. She chuckled, recalling how many guilds and companies in the 20th century boasted they were the first to admit women, not remembering women had been running businesses only a few short centuries ago.
“Is this funny to you?” Lucinda asked, the gaze of the others darting towards Euryale, ready to peck.
“No not at all,” she sighed. “It’s just…” bite your tongue bite your tongue. “I understand your rage at his betrayal. Of this you have my deepest sympathy, for you made a sacred vow and he was first to break it, not merely the promise of faithfulness, but the expectation of trust, of enduring love, of continued interest.” The women nodded, satisfied. “I don’t understand your rage towards the girl, though. She doesn’t know you, made no promise to you, and was simply doing her job.”
Like a hot poker to the gut, Danielle piped up in Lucinda’s defense, “I don’t think this is the time for debates, I mean, her whole marriage is like super fucked.”
The others cooed in agreement.
“No, she’s right,” said Lucinda, surprisingly. “It’s him I should be angry at. After everything I gave of myself, he takes all he can and leaves me a fool.” She stared out the high windows past the neatly trimmed green towards her own sorrow, eyes welling. “But she’s still a homewrecking whore.”
Euryale tried to swallow the sound that erupted from her womb, but a low moaning growl rumbled from her lips.
She was bathing in the pools of Tigris, enjoying the sensation of her breasts absorbing sunlight, faint ripples of water caressing her ribcage, neck, arches of her feet, when a similar growl released from her lips, and her body trembled with rage and dread—her baby sister’s anguish reverberating through her own bones. By the time she reached Athena’s temple, their eldest sister Stheno had already drawn her sword, calling for Poseidon the coward to face her and answer for his violation. At first, she didn’t recognize her sweet little Meddie, for her comportment always reflected pride and beauty. Not this wretched, hunched figure weeping red tears on the temple’s steps. A crowd had gathered, chanting whore, chanting harlot, chanting snake. Euryale fell to her sister’s side, enveloping her in a protective embrace as they had always done when Meddie had fallen and split her knee, or cried because she was the runt, the one who would grow weak and wrinkled, afraid her big sisters would forget her in the ocean of their eternity. As if they could.
“Don’t look at me,” she said between moans, hair matted and tangled with the scale-like sheen of fresh blood.
“Dearest sister,” Euryale murmured, placing her hand on her sister’s cheek, feeling wetness, feeling torn flesh, “who did this to you?”
“I thought she was my friend.” Her sister wept. “I told her I fought against his advances. I told her I said no.”
The crowd moved in as Stheno slashed them down in a trance of rage, but they kept encroaching in the name of Athena, their preferred Goddess.
“Turn your head sister,” she whispered gently. “It matters not what you look like, for no dragon-face could hide thy soul’s beauty, flowing out of you in torrents.” At first Meddie resisted, but eventually she let her face be turned upwards. The crowd jeered as if ugliness was all she had ever been and all she deserved.
The ladies from the Minerva Alliance networking group turned to her as she tried to quell the rumbling cry.
“Are you alright?” asked one.
“Too much bacon?” asked another.
Euryale swallowed and regained focus. “It’s unlikely she tried to seduce and tempt him away from you. If not her, he would have found someone else at the agency. When they’re working for someone else, they don’t get a choice of client.”
Silence.
“I’m just saying… perhaps we can… redirect our anger to the one who deserves it.”
The women paused for a moment—considering—before raising a collective eyebrow. “Why are you so sympathetic towards her?”
“You seem to know a lot about how “agencies” work…”
“What will you do for all eternity,” asked a young Meddie for the thousandth time as her tiny hands collected shellfish from the shore. “Won’t you get bored?”
“Bored!” bellowed Stheno. “With so many battles and lovers to conquer? Never.”
“I’d learn all the languages of the world, and befriend every species of animal, and invent a way to make all the mortals immortal. Well, the ones I like.”
Stheno and Euryale never told Meddie how they argued with the gods to give her what she wished, for they couldn’t bear the thought of her light growing faint and her body turning to mulch as they carried on in her absence. Poseidon seemed the most interested in their case… but all along…
Athena needn’t have bothered cursing them, for their friends abandoned them one by one, mumbling excuses for “maintaining political alliances.” Then the narrative morphed, and they seemed to forget the injustices, for surely no innocent woman would be so disfigured, would never be slain by a “hero” who paraded his victory throughout the streets. She was always a bit of a snake, really, and why stick their neck out for loyalty of the dead, it wasn’t practical, tarnishing themselves and their families by association.
After killing as many in the city as she could, Stheno took her rage to any battle, no matter the side, easily finding new wars once the old ones burned and expired. Euryale channeled her gifts of sensuality into her work, seeking connection and a waning worship where her sister sought blood, both surrounded by the gender who reviled them less. But neither of them had recovered from the betrayal of their friends, that rejection from the life-affirming and tempestuous world of women, a curse that lingered long after the gods had lost their power.
Something between rain and snow weighed down her eyelashes, her boots finding firm footing on the slippery concrete. “Someday, Stheno,” she whispered, looking forward to a hot bath and a nap before her next client. She heard Stheno’s slurred words in her mind, a voice that lost its vitality piece by piece, battle by battle. Why do you still try?
“Briar!” came a voice from behind, and her back stiffened, awaiting further reproach.
Danielle slipped beside her at the intersection and Euryale reached out to steady her. “Thanks. Sorry I, I just wanted to say—”
“No that’s not… I was wondering…” Danielle lowered her voice as a group of friends linked arms and waddled past. “Well, it’s just, finances have been shaky this quarter and I’ve been wanting to renovate the store and I was…”
Aphrodite! There was always one.
“I was wondering if you could teach me, you know. How to get into it. I could use the money and it always seemed kind of…exciting to me.”
Euryale was tempted by the walk signal, but instead turned to an embarrassed and curious Danielle who added, “and also, I do agree with you… about the husband/whore thing.”
“I see,” said Euryale. “The thing is…” she was about to say, “it was different in our time,” but instead stuck with, “there was a time when I would have… recommended it,” thinking back to her days in the temples of Babylonia, when her work was sacred, when she welcomed strangers with the open arms of the Goddess, when they worshipped her body as if she were Aphrodite reincarnate, made holy from the act of love. When she and her kind were revered as alchemists, transforming the physical body into a vessel for the divine, transcending this earthly realm and its limited reality.
“But…there is a cost. The people who tell you it’s only empowering are as wrong as the ones who pity and shame us. Yes, there are clients who just want connection, to talk and be seen. The ones who will buy you gifts and treat you well and even love… but, always a part of them thinks they own you, will never respect you like… and then there are the ones you can’t wash from your mind. The ones who enjoy inflicting pain and disgust and shame. And then it’s not worth the money, it’s not easy money is what I’m trying to say. There’s nothing easy about this job.” Not to mention the scorn from women, the hatred, the pity, the ostracization.
Euryale stepped back as Danielle made the slightest movement towards her—a gesture of comfort? “That’s… I guess I’ll think about it.”
Euryale nodded and waited with impatience for the cars to stop for her. “All the best with your business.”
“I wish you weren’t leaving. Hey, a friend of mine is playing at The Rogue on Friday. Do you want to come along? I think there’s a ten-dollar cover, but it should be a good time.”
Blood rushed to Euryale’s head; elation and terror flooding through her. Could this be the one? But no, it was too easy. She wanted something from her, surely. Advice, or to parade her in front of her friends as a novelty. And she despised modern music. “I have a client on Friday,” she said.
“Oh okay. No problem. Well, if you want to hang out sometime, you have my email.”
She watched Danielle smile, then slip and slide away ungracefully, and was struck with an urge to give her everything she knew. To bless her with the Goddess’ love, to gift her the power of sensual ecstasy, golden and roiling, to swear to be the best of friends, to protect her and cherish her and even prepare and adorn her mortal body after death. Slow down Euryale, you always come on too strong.
As the walk sign reverted to red, Euryale stood lost in time, centuries of rejection cemented in her throat. And then, as Danielle stepped up the opposite curb, finalizing the chasm between them, Euryale spoke. “Maybe I do have time on Friday, after work. If you still want to… hang out.”