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"To Ares and Aphrodite, and to Xena," the man beside me murmured as he dipped a finger into his mug. For hundreds of years, it had been to Zeus and the Olympians, and to the heroes, but Olympus was emptier of late and Xena was the only hero for this town. Even as my neighbor flicked drops of mead to the floor, a young woman was singing of the warrior princess. Green eyes sparkled beneath blond bangs as she described Xena's dancing on the shoulders of townsfolk to defeat Draco. She hadn't yet learned to control her breathing: her words piled up until she was forced to gasp. But her inexperience could not hide her talent: rather than reciting, she was actually improving the scrolls.
Catching my crooked thought, I bit my cheek. 'The scrolls,' I had called them, as if they were not mine, as if I had not written them. But I, the I who sat at this table and smiled brittlely at this girl, had not. In her next tale she might declaim me as the battling bard, but I hadn't finished a scroll since Xena had died. Each time I tried to write about Japa, no words were empty enough to encompass what had happened.
The girl finished her story—my story—with Xena calling me her friend. That wasn't in my scroll; I had downplayed my presence until Xena had argued for truth even in epic. The other patrons hollered their approval and the girl's face shone with shy pleasure. I signaled the server to bring her a mead, and then debated complimenting her further. What could I say? 'You got it right,' or even, 'How did you know?'
Making minute libations with the drink I had bought her, the girl smiled guilelessly at me. I was not afraid of being recognized, not even in Amphipolis. People never recognized me, only what I carried, and I had packed away my weapons before entering Thrace. Even without them, it was obvious I was a warrior, and she knew that I had stories, or at least events that she could make stories. I knew no words were strong enough to compress my life into something manageable or heroic.
I stood awkwardly, barking my legs against the table and thrusting money at the server. Then I was outside, frowning at the dusk. I had meant to wait until later, when I would be sure not to encounter any supplicants, but being unwilling to return to the tavern, I judged it safe to walk to the tomb.
People had left votive offerings at the gates, rings of wood and terra cotta I recognized as chakrams. I pressed my hand against the lock. Aphrodite had allowed me to use her husband's forge to fashion it, and it opened for no one but me.
Inside the tomb were two stone sarcophagi. Between them was a pedestal supporting a small black pot. Behind that stood Xena.
"She looks like you," she commented.
"Who, the bard?" I asked. I had not come here to see Xena; I carried her with me. But I liked to check on the tomb and on her hometown. "You really think so?"
"You're prettier, of course." Xena batted at the pot that held her ashes. Her fingers passed through it.
"Of course." I stepped closer. She could not touch me either, but memory does not exist solely in the mind. When she brushed her thumb against my cheek, I felt it again.
"Beautiful," she amended. In India we had learned that our true selves endured across lives, bound to flesh by desire. So Xena was bound to me.
The edges of her fingers merged with my tunic and I remembered the weight of her hand on my shoulder. I knew that between my potent memory and my own hand we could make some mockery of love, but I also knew that it would only undo my grieving, bursting it open like a scar.
I shrugged her off and she dropped her hand. Her corporeality was our consensual delusion. Or—and this I had never admitted to her, but if the dead heard the thoughts of the living, then she knew it regardless—she was my delusion only, Xena's true self having already been reborn with no thought of the mulish blonde from Potidaea.
"Enjoying being a local god?" I teased.
She scowled. "I'd enjoy it more if I could actually answer their prayers."
"You did enough for them while you were alive."
She grunted, a noise so peculiarly Xena I wondered how I could have doubted her presence. I grabbed her wrist. This was harder: keeping my hand just open enough, recalling the contrast of the metal and leather. "Hey."
She looked up, her nose crinkling with embarrassment, then forced a closed-lipped smile. "Hey," I repeated, abandoning her bracer for her side, trying to tickle her through the leather.
"Gabrielle," she warned, finally smiling with her teeth, and captured the offending hand.
I pushed through her grasp to dance my fingertips against her belly. "Yes?" She was not the only one who desired. But my breathing was the only sound in the tomb. I pulled my hand back.
"Nothing's changed," I observed, wiping some dust from the pedestal. "I should..."
"Yes," Xena agreed and disappeared.
I pressed my hand against my eyes and stumbled back to the surface. I locked the gates blindly, Xena's offerings splintering and crumbling beneath my boots.
Someone gasped behind me. Rather than spin around, I leaned my forehead against the gate. Desire and contact, attachment and delusion: this was our karma. When I didn't hear my interloper leave, I sighed and turned my head.
The bard from the tavern was staring at me wide-eyed. "You were in Xena's tomb."
I bit my cheek. "Yes."
"But the lock is unbreakable. It was forged by Hephaistos himself."
I glanced at my handiwork. "You really believe that?"
That gave her pause. "I...a traveling bard..."
"And you believe everything a bard tells you?"
I could see her flush even in the twilight. "Of course not."
"Then don't worry about it." I began guiding her back to the tavern. She'd recovered a little of her spirit, but looked like she could use a drink.
She jerked her arm free. "I'm not going anywhere until you explain why you were in Xena's tomb."
"Fine." I stalked toward the stables. She could stay there as long as she liked; I would saddle my horse and be gone before she could tell anyone what she had witnessed.
"Why were you in Xena's tomb?" She was trotting doggedly beside me.
I stopped and stared at her. Xena had been right: there was a resemblance after all. I could not ignore her—if I tried to leave, she would only follow, outsmarting cyclopes and charming old travelers just to find me again—but I could lie to her. Surely I wasn't so out of practice that I couldn't spin a tale she'd be repeating for years to come. But I had been trying to tell this story for a long time.
"I'm like you," I told her. "I came to make an offering. And like you, my offering is a story." And as fractious and intractable as that story might have been, it had not ended in Japa. So I began to sing.