Daughter of the Golden Touch by LM Zaerr
When Flavia turned to gold, the daisies fell from her hands, drifted to the floor, and splayed limp. As they fell, a sudden warmth blended away all her skin and muscles and bones until her whole being filled a single instant. Stillness nurtured her there, one leg pushing off as she ran, her arms reaching to give Papa the daisy bouquet, her knuckle just grazing the palm he’d raised to ward her off.
When the daisies reached the floor, Papa clenched his open hand into a fist and twisted away from her, his golden robe swirling. “This is my doing,” he shouted. “I have turned you into an abomination.”
The shouting hurt Flavia’s ears, but when she tried to tell him to stop, the place where her voice formed wouldn’t move. Her eyes should have widened. Her breath should have come in gasps. Her panic deepened with her body's failure to express her terror, a fear as she'd never known in all her eight summers. She yearned for her father to comfort her with reassuring words and a hand on her shoulder.
Instead, he shouted even louder, “Bacchus, great god, I am not a fool. I made just one mistake. I beg you: take away the gift you gave me.” Then Papa fell silent except for sobs that frightened Flavia even more than the shouting. She should be the one sobbing.
A green tendril crept out of a crack between flagstones. As it twisted around Papa’s ankle, a fruity scent filled the air and more vines draped among the golden vessels on the table. A tangle of purple globes settled over Flavia’s hands as if she were lifting them to Papa, and heavy clusters of grapes dragged platters of shining loaves and gold-filled goblets clattering to the floor.
A plump voice spoke, rolling rich and careless. “Turning my wine into gold is sacrilege, so I won’t cure you. Ask the river god to show you mercy.”
As the divine presence withdrew, the vines withered and the grapes rotted with a stench that disgusted Flavia until all that vineyard splendor faded and only the daisies lay limp on the floor. Papa rushed away, leaving Flavia imprisoned in the marble hall lit by sunlight.
She balanced immobile for a long time, feeling molten gold pump through her body. Eventually, the movement of her new blood settled her, warmer than her old blood, slower, more fully a part of her. This rich flow might serve instead of muscles. She imagined her elbow bending and thought what that shape would feel like, then reached that thought into her body. Slowly her arm reshaped itself, swelling in places, shrinking in others, and her golden sleeve draped after it with the grace of sheer linen. She remembered running just moments before, amazed now that she could ever have moved so quickly.
She set herself a new task, bowing at the waist to reach for the fallen daisies, then curling her golden fingers around them. Hours later, when her father returned, Flavia was thrilled to present the flowers to him with a clean, smooth gesture.
Papa ignored the limp bouquet. “The river god cured me,” he announced, looking everywhere but at her. “He rinsed away my golden touch. See?” He lifted an apple from the table, then set it down unchanged. “Come with me,” he commanded. “The river will cure you, too.”
So she followed him through the morning and into the afternoon, through groves of cypresses and down a willow bank. Papa glanced back from time to time, and every time she hoped he would take her hand and pace himself to her slow flowing. But instead of coming back to her, he hurried on faster, then waited, twitching and shrugging his shoulders.
When at last they reached the river, Papa said, “Bathe in this water, and when you come back out you will be my child again.”
Had she stopped being his child when she turned to gold? She would do whatever it took to make him love her again, to make him look at her. Her desperation to be rid of the gold made her awkward as she waded in. Her feet slid over the pebbles instead of conforming to their shape, and she couldn’t adjust her body quickly enough to keep her balance. Her foot skated over a large rock and she tipped over. Round rocks dented into her as she splashed heavily into the water and lay helpless, entirely submerged.
She panicked until she realized she didn’t need to breathe, then lay there letting the water polish her. She felt a slight buzz when a fleck of gold touched her shoulder, then her foot, a recognition of common substance. “I’m surfeited with your father’s gold,” the river god murmured in her ear, “and even if I could hold more, your gold cannot be washed away.”
Flavia sat up in her new slow way and twisted toward Papa. His fingertips flew to cover his mouth, and she couldn’t miss the disappointment in his eyes before he turned and fled up through the willows, leaving her to crawl to the riverbank and follow as best she could.
By the time she arrived home, the palace was transformed. All the gold ewers and goblets had been cast away, the gilt seared from the fluting in columns, the gold-edged highlights scraped from the wall decorations.
The servants did their best to give Flavia her dinner, cherishing her with her favorite food. She couldn’t bear to eat olives or roast lamb or bread. Only one food nourished her: golden honey, heated slightly, slid down her throat and blended into the rich substance of her body. As she finished her meal, she swept a slow gesture to her father’s empty place. “Dear child,” her nurse said, looking at her with shadowed eyes, “your father has gone to the wilderness to escape the sight of gold.”
Flavia was the only gold left. Papa had fled from her. She longed for hot tears to flow down her cheeks and her chest to tighten with grief. If she were human again, she would have a way for that shapeless hurt to take form.
Her nurse fluttered her toward her chamber, murmuring, “My dear, this makes a nice change from all your darting about.” Flavia lowered herself onto her bed, but as soon as her weight lay on the mattress, the leather straps that supported it broke and the mattress folded around her, the sides held up by the bronze bed frame. She welcomed the wool-stuffed muffling around her, glad that in sleep she could hold still without reproach, glad as she drifted off that even a girl made of gold could sleep and escape her woes.
She woke up with a firm resolve to do whatever it took to become human again so Papa wouldn’t hate her. Nurse had noticed how slow she was. If she could move as fast as she used to, she reasoned, the human-like motion might restore her, and the swing that hung from an oak branch would carry her quicker than she had ever run. Under the huge tree, she clutched the ropes and walked backward with the wooden seat against her bottom, then leaned back and lifted her feet from the ground.
The oak above cracked and she thunked to the ground as the heavy branch thudded beside her with a rustling of leaves.
“Flavia?” Her friends stood in a group, staring at her. Cornelia spoke. “Your father did this, didn’t he?”
Flavia wanted to assure them that she’d be human again soon, but nothing inside her could vibrate enough for speech so she was forced to stay silent.
Andreas took her hand and tried to help her sit up. When he realized she was too heavy for him to move, he stopped pulling but didn’t let go. Grateful, she settled her hand around his, loose enough he wouldn’t feel trapped, and sat up slowly on her own.
The others came closer then, touching her arms, her hair, and the filmy gold clothing that still flowed around her as it had when it was linen.
“Let’s play statues,” said Octavia. In the dappled light of the oak tree, they mirrored Flavia’s viscous movements and in their faces she saw the bright smile she felt dimpling her cheeks. Then they took turns leading elaborate convolutions, slow and steady enough that she could follow along with the others. They delighted each other by ending with hands splayed as antlers by the ears, or bowed at the waist with one leg back and arms out at the side, wobbling there until little Nikolaos tumbled to the ground in a heap.
During their game, Flavia almost forgot her deformity, but as soon as her friends were gone, her determination to regain her true form came flooding back. Because she couldn’t speak, she brought Nurse to see the ruin of her swing and clasped her hands in supplication.
The next day a sturdy structure had been built with a swing that could support her. Full of hope, she pulled back against the seat and let herself glide into exhilarating speed. She was so sure her golden surface would darken to brown skin that for a moment she saw only the ropes of the swing; then the sun glinted on her hand and she realized she was still an abomination. All morning she strove for enough speed to restore her, yet nothing about her changed. She would have to find another way to be human.
Her friends came again in the afternoon. They held hands in a gliding dance in and out among the columns of the courtyard while Andreas played a heartbeat rhythm on an upside-down wooden bowl. She thought surely that rhythm would bring her back to herself, but gold still channeled life through her.
When the others burst with too much energy, they all went out to the rocky olive grove and played tag with Flavia as the safe haven moving gently through the landscape. She expected to grieve that she couldn’t run, but she found an equal thrill in gliding, the same satisfaction in movement that used her whole body.
Papa came back the next day. She saw him winding up the road, the shape of his hair still dented by the gold crown he’d once worn. She wanted to call out and run to him. Instead she glided toward him, hoping he would see her love. He gave himself no chance to see it, looking over her head as he handed her a jar. “Rub this salve on your skin and hair,” he said. “A naiad gave it to me to cure you.”
When Flavia opened the jar back in the safety of her chamber, a river smell with a hint of wild thyme filled the air. She stubbed a finger into the green goo and tried to apply it, matching the curve of her hand to the curve of her arm, but the hard surface of her fingers was not suited to smearing ointment. She had to use a linen cloth, and she worried too much of the precious substance was absorbed into the cloth and wasted. It took hours to apply the salve everywhere, holding her golden garment out of the way, yet despite all her effort, her brilliance never dimmed to flesh. She dabbed on more behind her ears, between her toes.
When the salve was gone and she’d wrung as much as she could out of the cloth, she carried the empty jar to Papa and laid it on the obsidian table by his side. She saw him gaze at her golden reflection on the polished black table, and she felt the weight of his unspoken words: You put it on wrong. That’s why it didn’t work. He rubbed at her reflection with the heel of his hand as if trying to erase her, then settled the lid on the jar and walked out of the room.
The next morning he was gone again. Nurse snorted and murmured, “Off to seek approval from the god who refused to cure him.”
All through the summer, Flavia tried everything she could think of to make herself change. She stuffed bread into her mouth, dribbled olive oil down her cheeks like tears, clutched a doll that was as soft as she’d once been. Nothing worked. Her friends were her only comfort, reshaping their games to include her. Sometimes she lay down in the creek and formed a dam to make a swimming hole, savoring their delight and the feel of water over her hard substance. They never looked away from her.
Years went by until Flavia had seen eighteen summers. The gown that was a part of her swelled at the chest and took on a more stately form. Papa came back from time to time, sometimes with a powder to stir into her honey, sometimes with a transformative fragrance to smell, sometimes with a liquid to pour over her. Neither his efforts nor her own made her any less gold.
Again and again, she tried to talk, opening a channel from her mouth to a pocket in her depths and squeezing air over moving tongue and lips, but all that came out was a breathy murmur.
Then one day as her friends were lounging under a lemon tree and she was struggling to speak, Andreas sang in his new bass voice a slow song of the changes the gods work on humans. Inspired, she shaped her body for song and immediately gave voice to pure sound like a wind flute. She couldn’t shape words, but she no longer cared. She and Andreas sang together until his vibrating voice and her clear tones transformed into something worthy of the gods.
As they were singing by the creek one day, Papa arrived. He dismissed their music as meaningless with a quick shake of his head, now wrapped in a purple turban. That quick motion triggered an earthquake in Flavia, but she kept singing and found her music had the power to sooth away the tremors.
Although she never mastered speech, she and her friends created a slow-motion sign language. At first the ideas were simple: a slight dip of the hand for a water hole, pinched finger and thumb for an olive, two fingers together for an adventure. Over time, they developed subtleties enough to convey a question in the slight lift of a brow, a conditional verb with a twist of the wrist, laughter in a backward tilt of the head. All of them delighted in their language, and all of them used it, not just Flavia.
Andreas lingered with her more and more. They spent a day walking down to the market to bring back brightly colored ribbons for dancing. Together they tended goats on high scrabbly slopes. One day as they harvested oranges, Andreas climbed into a tree and Flavia held up a basket to him in untiring arms, catching the fruit like drops of her own substance. As he climbed down again, a branch he was holding broke and he caught himself on her arm. His grasp turned into a caress, and a molten heat stirred in her belly.
Suddenly all her desperation to be human raged hotter than ever. She loved Andreas, and he deserved to be with someone pliable like him, someone with a body that matched his, not an abomination. She had never felt like a monster with him until now.
When she signed her fears to Andreas, he wept and pleaded with her. “Your great change transmuted what I love in you, never took it away. When we were children, you showed me how to make a whirligig out of a wild iris and we laughed at the spinning petals, and I showed you how to stretch a grass blade between your thumbs to make a whistle. What mattered between us stayed strong when you turned to gold. You showed me how to shape ripple patterns in the creek when we wade, and I showed you a slow dance to birdsong.”
Flavia brought his hand to her lips and kissed it, and she wished her longing could make her shiver as he did.
Good sense won out in the end. Andreas and Flavia loved each other and there was no point pretending that could change. Still, Flavia harbored a secret hope. If anything could turn her back to flesh, surely it would be the vibrating intensity of joined substance.
A few months later, their friends showered them with nuts and figs. And in bed at night, Flavia gave herself over to delight in exploring his body, and his caresses awoke surging gold with every touch. Andreas seemed to become more golden, glowing as bright as she. Yet when their passion was spent, Flavia was no more human than before. She kept her disappointment quiet within herself.
Soon after, her father came back from the wilderness, his face hardened into a new resolve. “Daughter,” he said. She’d grown tall enough he could no longer look over her head, so he looked down instead. “Apollo can change you back. Come with me to his oracle.”
Flavia reminded herself that Papa had never been kind to her, but she couldn’t resist the shiny hope that she could connect with him if they traveled together. Besides, a king must be obeyed, and it was easier to do what he asked. It would be a relief to be normal again if this scheme actually worked. The towels she’d just hung on a clothesline were already dry because the task had taken her so long.
She signed goodbye to Andreas, promising by touching her fourth finger to her heart that she would come back to him, maybe as a real woman. “Just come back,” was all he said as he kissed her, his lips soft against her unyielding substance.
She rode in a sturdy wagon, and Papa, still in his purple turban, led the mule that pulled it. He talked to her as they traveled, about revels on rocky hillsides where faun hooves danced in pale dirt and herbs. “I had to leave because of you,” he told her, ignoring her dismay. “You are a symbol of my guilt. But that will end when you are flesh again. You will be living proof I am redeemed.”
Other voices distracted Flavia before self-loathing could take hold. A goldfinch squeaked, A donkey is king, and as they climbed along a river, the rushes whispered, He hears with ass’s ears. Among the folds of Papa’s turban, Flavia glimpsed the fuzzy gray tip of an ear.
They traveled for a week until they came to Delphi, where a light drizzle coated the grass and poppies with silver and made the daisies glow with diamonds. Alone, Flavia climbed toward Mount Parnassus and entered the marble temple. A radiance appeared on the throne like her own substance turned to light, and then Apollo was there, weaving a tissue of harp music like her gown. He inclined his head to her as slowly as if he too were made of gold, and the laurel leaves on his garland glistened with borrowed light. She didn’t need words for this god who bore such kinship to her. He knew her desire. “I will restore you to flesh if you wish it,” he said. “You can speak and laugh and run again.”
This sudden offer of what she’d longed for tripped her up. She remembered what it was like when she first turned to gold, the warmth and joy in that instant. It was her father’s horror that had alarmed her. She saw again the reflection of her arm on the obsidian black of his table and knew that if she accepted this change she would be just as far from his love as she had ever been. She’d found a way to speak and laugh, and she’d found just as much exhilaration in a slow tread through dawn as in pumping fast with muscles.
Half her life she’d been gold, and she had only childhood memories of flesh: shivering in the dawn, bruising when she fell, yielding so easily to every pressure. She thought of how she and her friends had shaped themselves to each other over the years. She would be a stranger to them if she were human, a stranger to Andreas, to herself.
So instead of welcoming back the form she’d been born into, she bowed her head and turned away.
Apollo’s radiance lingered with her as she went back down, gathering daisies along the path. Her father, drawn to the radiance, looked at her for the first time since he had turned her to gold, and disappointment darkened his face. He ignored the daisies she offered him; he would never take them. So she gave him a gift she didn’t need him to accept, a kiss on his cheek, a golden touch of forgiveness.