Now that I’ve made up my mind to do this I don’t really know where to start, so I’m just going to jump straight in and see what happens. My name is Aphrodite. Like the goddess. Well, I’m not like the goddess… at least, not exactly. Not like the mythological version: an idealised, perfect woman who made gods and men fall in love with her wherever she went. I’m thankful for that. Sounds like a major headache if you ask me. But if there was a real person who inspired that myth, then you might say I am a bit like her. I’m of this world, but not entirely part of it; there’s the human part, and then there’s… something else.
It’s entirely possible that no one will ever read the words I’m about to set down on these pages, but that doesn’t matter. I think, like most of us, I’m just trying to make sense of it all. And it feels like the right time to do this now, at the start of a new chapter in my life.
If you’re reading this and it dawns on you that you shared some of this story with me, I hope it will help you make sense of what happened too. I hope you’re happy, wherever you are now – that you found whatever it was you were looking for and that it was everything you hoped it would be. Sometimes the things we think we want don’t turn out exactly the way we expect when viewed up close. Sometimes they’re even better, but most often – at least in my experience – they become doorways that lead to whatever happens next: not the end of the road but the beginning of another part of the journey. Perhaps I have a different perspective on that, given everything I’ve been through. Being something more – or maybe less – than human brings with it a certain clarity.
Anyway, I’ll get to that later, but let’s just say for now that I’m more than I first appear to be, just like the others of my kind. Oh yes, there are others, although I have no idea where they are and I probably wouldn’t know one of them if I tripped over them. You have no idea how lonely that can be.
But hey, I am what I am. Love has been my reason to exist, my function, for almost as long as I can remember. Without it I would never have started on my Path. Like I said, I’m not the Aphrodite, but I am akin to her in a way.
I’ve had so many loves, and every single one was different – some chaotic and all-consuming, others gentle as summer rain. You might be thinking that I’m talking about promiscuity, not real love, but you’d be wrong. I was created to love completely and devotedly, without judgement or reserve, until… until my purpose was fulfilled. And although at times that has felt like a curse, deep down I know it’s a blessing: to have loved – and been loved by – so many.
I’ll be honest, some of those loves have affected me more profoundly than others. I don’t mean that I loved one person more than another, but some loves go beyond being something you experience and become part of who you are. They become embedded in the very essence of your being, until you can no longer separate them from yourself. Those loves linger on, long after the people you shared them with have slipped from view, and you carry them with you for the rest of your life, whether you’re aware of it or not.
So, these words are my parting gift to you, my loves. A memorial, of sorts – a thank you, and a final farewell. I dedicate it to all of you. Just know that I meant every bit of it, and always will.
You were the first. I know that now, although I could never have guessed what that meant back then. It seems such a long time ago, but it can’t have been more than… actually, it was a long time ago. But I still remember every detail.
I was sixteen years old, impossibly innocent and desperate to grow up. We’d been friends since we were what, six? We were children together, just learning the rules of the world and our places in it. I wasn’t Aphrodite then, and you weren’t who you are today, but there must have been something of my later self in that naïve little girl. I know that, in hindsight, because of everything that’s happened since.
Hearthfire – our home and school since we were children – seems a world away now. It wasn’t like anywhere else I’ve ever been. It had a feeling about it, an elusive enchantment that went beyond the towering grandeur of the old, red sandstone walls; beyond the endless adventure of poking around the musty outbuildings and spooky cellars; beyond the ever-shifting beauty of the grounds that swept down and away from the house, beginning as a broad, well-tended lawn and gradually metamorphosing into the untamed tangle of the Fairy Wood with its ash trees, wych elms and hazels. It was something more than the closeness of our wild extended family – the Elders who were our teachers, carers and confidants; the dozens of brothers and sisters who laughed and played and fought and cried together, every day and every night for all those years. We were distinct from the rest of our species – other and apart – and Hearthfire was our place, our sanctuary, so I suppose it makes sense that it was different too. It held itself apart from the world, just as we were held apart.
There were exactly forty of us children, all around the same age, and even now I still feel a pang of regret when I think of the friendships we all had to leave behind. Well, at least I had to leave them behind. I suppose some of the others might have stuck together after they left, but it’s not as if there’s anyone I can ask, not now. Since I left it has just been me and the world. All contact broken. All ties severed.
I would have liked to have said goodbye, though, at least to you. But then, you were the reason I had to leave. You set the ball rolling. I know you didn’t mean to, but the result was the same in the end.
I think it started the year before I left, the summer after my fifteenth birthday. That night when we snuck out and escaped to the woods, with some pilfered snacks and apple wine. The wine was far too potent for two untutored teenagers, and we were drunk before we were halfway through the bottle.
You had your guitar with you, as always, and we sat on the big, flat rock by the stream – the one we sometimes perched on to net sticklebacks – and sang and laughed and drank our wine. Neither of us cared that I was a girl and you were a boy; we were Adam and Eve before the Fall, still innocent and unselfconscious in each other’s company. We were the best of friends, brother and sister, although maybe closer than real siblings because we never argued over anything.
My other best friend, Hannah, was your girlfriend at the time. I always envied her a little, not because of you but because she was the one with all the brains, which might have explained why she refused to sneak out with us. She was the sensible one, I suppose.
It’s funny but it didn’t seem wrong that we were out alone together in the dark; that wasn’t how we were. I miss being that young!
Eventually we ran out of songs to sing and food to eat, and we crept back through the pale, early dawn, arms wrapped tightly around each other to fend off the chill. My hair hung loose around my shoulders like a warm woollen cape, and you made a show of spluttering occasionally when the wind whipped a few stray strands of it into your mouth.
Partway across the lawn I complained that I was too tired to walk any further, and you made me stand on your feet, my back to your belly, and walked the rest of the way straight-legged like some kind of clunky, stiff-jointed robot. Your arms clamped me tightly against you so I wouldn’t fall off, and the guitar hung upside-down across your back, held on by the strap around your chest.
We reached the door to the girls’ wing, which I’d wedged ajar earlier with a spent toilet roll tube, and you stopped so I could disembark. I turned to smirk at you triumphantly, delighted by the success of our clandestine mission, before carefully pushing the heavy chunk of studded oak back on its hinges to avoid the squeak.
Just as I was about to step through into the familiar gloom you reached out and stopped me, and I looked back to find you grinning broadly, the shaggy waves of your sandy-brown hair stirring gently in the chill morning breeze. I half-turned towards you, and for just a second it felt like we were on the edge of some marvellous discovery… but then it was gone, and you tweaked my nose and jogged away around the side of the building, heading for the boys’ door.
Looking back, that must have been where it began. That tiny less-than-a-heartbeat in which I felt something other than everything I’d felt before. I was young enough that it didn’t trouble me, but I know now what it was. It’s happened many times since that day, although never quite as sweetly.
It’s funny how something that seemed so insignificant at the time has stuck with me for so long, but since then I’ve learned the meaning of those moments. I’ve had to; they’re what I’ve built my life on.
Where was I? Oh yes, so, the summer passed without further incident. Autumn was a riot of colour and scent, and I felt like I had suddenly learned to feel more than I ever had before. Everything was so much brighter, sharper, like when you wake up from a dream and realise how foggy and unclear it was compared to real life.
You broke up with Hannah at All Hallows’, which upset her greatly, and I didn’t speak to you for a while even though we saw each other every day. I don’t know why I was annoyed at you – you hadn’t done anything to me, and I’d always been closer to you than her, but I felt like I owed it to her to be loyal in the face of male treachery.
I’d forgiven you by the first snowfall, with all the fickleness of youth, and although Hannah thought it was insensitive of me I took to spending a lot of my free time with you again. What can I say? We were drawn together. And I had more fun with you anyway.
Winter was beautiful, as it always was at Hearthfire. The sugar-frosted leaves crunched underfoot, and the great swathe of sky alternated between mottled metallic-grey and that startling shade of blue that looks like the colour of pure air. In spring we danced like hares across the dew-soaked grass, consumed by the sensations of the sap stirring in our veins and the warmth of the new sun on our faces.
I remember looking up at you one day, as you sat on your usual perch in one of the old oak trees that stood in regimented file along the western perimeter wall, swinging your feet back and forth and tapping out a rhythm on your thighs. Between one blink and another you looked… different, and that split second of sweetness from the year before came sweeping over me, intense and terrifying as a summer storm.
The feeling refused to go away for the rest of the afternoon, and it was still tormenting me when the dinner bell rang in the evening. When I woke the following morning I thought I might be free of it, but the second I saw you at the breakfast table I was flooded with a sickening sense of longing, an urgent buzzing in my bones that didn’t seem to switch off no matter what I was doing or who else was around. For the next few days my face felt hot whenever we were close, my mouth went dry and my limbs became clumsy and unruly, as though they were no longer under my command but that of some external, malign force that was bent on making me look a complete idiot. I didn’t know what was happening to me.
In the space of a week you were no longer my childhood friend, co-conspirator, faithful companion and brother of my heart, you were you: an impossible, unsolvable puzzle that I struggled to comprehend. Our friendly games became something else; our secrets were suddenly sacred and unbearably vital; the sun would rise or set on a chuckle or a frown. I hungered for your smile with every breath of my body and jealously guarded every moment I could spend with you without the irksome presence of another person – any person.
You definitely felt it then too. I know you did. I know it because of what I am.
One day, as we were chasing each other across the lawn, you seized my hand to pull me off-balance and I fell against you, only just keeping upright by grabbing hold of your T-shirt and spinning us both in a circle. We came to a stop face-to-face, breathless and waiting, and I wanted to let go of you but my hands refused to move from your chest.
I don’t know who leaned forward first, but I know that when our lips met with a clumsy bump and the salty taste of sweat, it was what we had both realised would happen in the end – what we had both wanted to happen, even if we hadn’t admitted it to ourselves.
We stopped kissing and looked at each other, shy for the first time in our lives. I was very aware that I was touching your body, and although the sensation was pleasant there was a part of me that wanted to make a throwing-up face so you’d laugh and stop being so intense.
‘Um, sorry,’ you said, without letting go of my waist.
I grinned. ‘Why?’
‘I… I don’t know why I did that.’
You looked guilty, the way you’d looked when you were caught stealing from the kitchen. The thought made me giggle.
You relaxed at the sound, and a tentative smile twitched across your lips. ‘I just… felt like kissing you.’
‘Well, I liked it,’ I said, trying not to laugh too much in case you thought I was laughing at you.
‘Oh. Really?’
I nodded, fascinated by the soft, downy hairs on your chin.
‘Coz, I’ve wanted to do that for ages.’
‘Really?’ I echoed you. ‘How long?’
You blushed. Neither of us had moved. I think we were scared to in case the spell was broken.
‘Well, you know when I broke up with Hannah—’
‘What?’ I felt a twinge of guilt that she would find out I’d kissed you and be upset, but then it melted away as I realised I didn’t care.
‘Was that why you broke up with her?’
‘Yeah.’ Now you looked really sheepish. ‘I felt harsh, but… I just really like you.’
‘I like you too,’ I said softly, the truth dawning on me at the same moment the words came out. ‘It’s just… weird. Coz we’ve been friends so long. I just never… thought. You know?’
You nodded and I saw your gaze flicker down to my lips and back up again. Your arms tightened around my waist and your fingers tapped a quick staccato rhythm against my spine. You always drummed them when you were nervous.
I shifted my hands to your shoulders, elated by my own daring.
‘Can I kiss you again?’ you asked, in your deepening man-voice.
I felt a surge of hormones so fierce that my fingers flexed involuntarily, and before I knew it your lips had found mine again, and it was strange but wonderful, less clumsy this time and so much better because I’d liked you for so long and now I knew that you felt the same about me.
We stood together in the sun with the rich, sweet scent of honeysuckle infusing the air around us, discovering new facets of each other that we’d never dared to imagine before, kissing and smiling and blushing with shy adoration, whispering promises that we fully expected to keep – assuming, like all young lovers do, that the rest of the world would simply get in line, that the universe was on our side.
But it wasn’t, was it? That was the beginning and the end of what we were. That was how I became… me.
After that first kiss, it was less than a day before I found my full purpose. I had less than a day to revel in the new, blissful sensation that was the touch of your fingertips on my face. Less than a day to stare wonderingly into your eyes and notice the flecks of purple I’d never seen before. Less than a day to savour the soft and thrilling sweetness of your lips, as we redefined the boundaries that had existed between us for most of our young lives.
That night Elder Maia came for me, and I never even got to say goodbye. I was becoming Aphrodite, and they had to get me out of there.
It still makes me sad to think of it, even though I understand the reasons why they couldn’t let me see you. It was the way it had to be, but… it all seemed so unfair, to be forced out into the world just when I’d found the biggest reason to stay. Though it might have been worse if I’d known it was coming.
In the deepening twilight, Maia led me across the pale gravel of the forecourt and up to the solid double gates under their filigree arch, set into the high brick wall that had formed the outer limits of my world for as long as I could remember. She pulled the right gate open with hardly any effort at all, the unresisting steel swinging back silently on well-oiled hinges.
Beyond there was a tiny walled courtyard with a stone building on the far side, like a gatehouse but with only a single door for an entrance. I stared at it for a moment, puzzled to find the gates didn’t open directly onto the street as I’d always imagined they would. Then I realised what the building was. The smooth, worn stone that looked far more ancient than its surroundings. The weathered door decorated with obscure, primitive characters, so faded as to be barely discernible.
The Forge.
Maia led me to the centre of the courtyard and turned to face me. Her dark eyes were sad, but her smile was kind and encouraging.
‘So…’ I glanced nervously at the building. ‘What do I do now?’
She exhaled slowly through her nose and patted my hand. ‘It’s not my place to tell you, anymore; we have nothing more to teach you. It’s time to tread your own Path now, little lamb. Follow it bravely. The Path of Love isn’t easy; in some ways it’s the most painful of all, and only the strongest of us are chosen to walk it. There will be times when your courage will fail you, but keep faith.’
‘Love?’ I gazed up at her. I’m to be the Keeper of Love? The thought made my stomach clench with excitement and apprehension.
Maia nodded, and for a moment I thought she was about to cry, but she straightened her back and cleared her throat, and when she looked back at me her eyes were dry. ‘You have so many beautiful things ahead of you. And remember your purpose. Remember what’s at stake.’
‘What if I can’t do it?’ I asked, consumed by a sudden dread. I understood perfectly the responsibility that was being laid upon my shoulders – had spent my life preparing for it – but never before had it seemed such a monumental thing, and now my mind was filled with a thousand burning questions that I had never realised I needed answers to.
She shook her head. ‘You won’t fail. You can’t. You have been chosen to walk this Path, and you won’t be released from it until your purpose is fulfilled.’
‘But… what happens if I never fulfil my purpose?’
A frown clouded her face. ‘You know what would happen.’
I swallowed hard. I did know what would happen, it was just… somehow I hadn’t quite believed that it could happen to me. It was one of the first things I’d ever learned here: the Keepers are the light and the hope of the next generation – the ones who mark out the Paths for the rest to follow. If a Keeper fails, their Attribute is lost to humankind, forever. So… no pressure or anything.
‘Without you, there is no future,’ Maia continued quietly. ‘Without you, my dear, there is no love in the world, and without love…’ She stared at me, and for just a second I saw a deep fear flash across her features. But then her expression cleared and she smiled at me again. ‘But you shouldn’t worry, sweet child. You were born for this Path. And you have the strength of all the past Keepers inside you; they will guide your steps.’
I let out a long breath and straightened my shoulders. Of course I won’t fail. This is my destiny.
The door before me seemed to loom out of the thickening shadows, almost as though it were floating in space, unsupported by anything but its own strange power.
Maia tucked my hair back behind my ear. ‘I promise, you’ll know when you’ve found what you’re looking for. There’s no mistaking true love; it’s not like anything else in the world. Stay true to your Path. And always remember the Hearthfire burns within you, wherever you go.’ She kissed me on the forehead and stepped aside, releasing me.
It struck me that after this moment I would have to leave you behind forever – that I would never see you again, no matter how hard either of us wished it.
‘Can I really never come back? Not even to visit?’
She didn’t say a word but her expression told me everything. I knew the answer anyway: There is no going back.
I forced a smile and took a shaky breath, before turning away from her for the last time and letting my feet carry me up to the door that would open the way to the rest of my life. My fingers rested against the timeworn carvings, and I paused on the threshold as the image of your face floated across my inner eye.
I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I willed the thought to fly to you so you’d know how hard it was for me to leave you behind. It was too late to go back. Already, it was too late. So instead I continued on, towards the future and away from you.
That was the night I lost you, and gained myself. From that moment on I was Aphrodite, the Keeper of Love. And I was alone.
I don’t remember much about the weeks that followed. I existed in a dreamlike state for a long time, with no real knowledge of what I was doing or where I was going, and no clue how I was supposed to start on my Path. It’s bittersweet, thinking back to that time, because, of course, I had already taken the first steps along it. I floated through space on a current of feeling, my mind replaying what I had learned and what it would mean.
The first thing that intruded on my consciousness was a sound. It was some weeks after I left Hearthfire – in fact, it must have been around midsummer because the sky had that particular warm shade of blue that only exists for a month of the year. The sound I heard was a song that was playing on the radio in a shop. Just as I was passing by the entrance the music came drifting out to me, and although it was only faint it brought me to an abrupt standstill. I stood, trembling, listening with every pore and hearing every word as though it was sung to me alone, like the universe was sending me a message.
That song brought back every second I had spent with you, every whisper and shriek of glee, every prank and promise, every touch and kiss and sweet, luminous glance. I felt a searing pain in my chest, reaching up to choke me as molten tears poured from my eyes. The music enfolded me as lovingly as your arms had, such a short time ago. It was ‘Kiss the Rain’ by Billie Myers, and it spoke of every aching beat of my poor, bruised little heart.
So, you see, you started all this, First Love. And although I don’t think it was necessarily part of the plan for me, you started something else too. Because for everyone I’ve loved since you, there has always been a song – actually, in my mind, they’ve become Songs, capitalised – sometimes more than one. That’s how I know when I’ve found someone who needs me. That’s how I know when it’s time to move on. The Songs are like a soundtrack to my life, signposts for me to follow when I don’t know which way to turn. Perhaps it’s a frail little way to impose order on something that often makes no sense at all, but it helps. It strings together all the stepping stones that make up my Path and forms a chain that I can follow back to the beginning.
Music is the friend I can always turn to for help, or for consolation when there is no help to be had. It’s the only constant I have, in a life that’s ever-changing. I know what it means now. I know why the music has stuck with me through everything, and you do too. But that part of the puzzle wasn’t solved by then. All I knew was that I had lost something dear to me at the very moment in which I’d found it.
I’d like to say that losing you was the worst pain I’ve ever suffered, but sadly that wouldn’t be true. Still, it was the first pain, and I’ll never forget it.
I never got the chance to say it then, but I can say it now: Goodbye, First Love. No matter what came after, you will always be my dearest treasure.
Hidden Heart. You were in every way a revelation to me. I met you almost two years after my first foray into the outside world, and you opened my eyes to everything I could be… and everything I couldn’t. I still dream of you sometimes. Not like in the beginning, but every once in a while I’ll see your face as I wander the corridors of my mind and it makes me smile a little. And ache a little.
My time with you didn’t dawn on me slowly like the turning seasons, but crashed into me all of a sudden, with no warning and no escape.
We were in New York City, at a party – my party, as it happens. Well, more my housemate Lizzie’s party, but since I was living there I guess it was mine too.
I’d moved into her apartment on the Lower East Side about a month earlier, right at the end of March, after meeting her on a subway car. Normally nobody ever talks on those things, but I’d been sitting next to her and reading The Bell Jar, and as soon as she spotted it we got chatting. The rest is history.
She’d helped me get a job at a coffee house on Delancey Street, which was managed by a friend of hers from college. She was a few years older than me and far more worldly, and her parents were pretty well-off, although she never said so outright. She ran her own jewellery-making business from home, and alternated between long hours of intense concentration and brief explosions of energy, like a Mentos mint that’s been dropped in a bottle of Coke. These days she might be thought of as a hipster, but this was the 90s and they hadn’t been invented yet.
. . .
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