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Pentheus feels like he is flying as he walks – runs? glides? his feet seem to barely move – through the corridors. The frescos blur, distort, the faces of his ancestors glare at him. Cadmus always was a family man, decorated his walls with his mother and father and sister. Rather endearing, Pentheus supposed, although he had no time for family beyond who his father was, and how a son would identify himself one day as son of Pentheus, king of Thebes. Agave never had time for family either. She would gather her son to her and whisper about goings-on in the palace, delighting in her malicious gossip. Even her own sister Semele wasn’t safe from her cutting tongue. Cut her in two, tore out her mysterious child – were they alive or dead? Everyone said they had to be dead, if they were the son of any mortal man, as Agave purported.
The stranger smiles into the darkness.
They burst out into the courtyard in the middle of the palace suddenly. The middle of the palace is the part that was the most destroyed by the earthquake – the prisons and the dining-hall sustained the most damage, as well as Pentheus’ bedroom. No dark nooks for him to hide. Everything had to be out in the open now. Cracks in his resolve, pull it open. He finds he doesn’t mind, strangely, after he had worried about it for so long.
He squints in the light, suddenly blinding, head splitting. The stranger is a dark shadow against the sky, fawnskin around his shoulders, horns sprouting from his head like branches. He hesitates in the shadows, clings to them. Suddenly he can’t take another step, his feet are weighed down.
“Come on out, Pentheus!” the stranger spreads his arms wide, teeth gleaming white and animalistic. “Show me yourself, in your maenad-spying costume! If you’re so keen to see what should be hidden, feel what you never wanted to feel – why, you could be one of Cadmus’ daughters.”
Pentheus squints into the sunlight, raising a hand to shade his face. The city spins giddily around him.
“Why – there’s two suns in the sky,” he laughs, spreading his hands heavenwards as if in prayer (too little, too late). “And two cities of Thebes – each with seven gates! Isn’t that funny?” and sure enough, he finds himself laughing, a breathy kind of giggle, like a spring bubbling over rocks, a laugh he tries to restrain but can’t. “And you look just like a bull! Were you always an animal?”
“The god is beside you now.” The stranger bows his horned head. “You’re seeing now as you should see.”
“Do I look like my mother?” Pentheus runs over to him, tripping, spins around, twirls on one foot. He can move now, and will never stop. “Or one of my aunts? Tell me!”
“I seem to see them when I look at you.” Dionysus wraps his hand around Pentheus’ waist, pulling him into a half-dance. “You are identical in my eyes.”
That pleases Pentheus. He smiles.
“But look here,” the stranger cocks his head, looking kindly, almost familial. Like a relative long missing. “Your hair is coming loose. I see that strand there – it’s not where I placed it under your wig.”
Pentheus blows the offending strand of hair from his eyes and merely giggles. Dionysus sighs, leans in closer, until they are breathing the same air. “Keep still. I’ll adjust it. After all, I’m here to serve you.”
“Yes, you do that.” Says Pentheus vaguely. “I’m in your hands completely. I’m all yours.”
“I know you are,” there is a strange kind of sadness in the stranger’s voice, before the eyes dull, like someone has closed the shutters in his head. Pentheus can relate to that, at least. He can remember that time before, all walls and shutters, letting nobody into his head. But the stranger has come and pulled out his deepest desires like rope, and tied him up in them. “Take my thyrsus.”
He takes Pentheus’ arm, opens it, smooths it out like a piece of fabric, with his small gentle hands, folds his thyrsus into Pentheus’ grip. Pentheus laughs and twirls it experimentally.
“How do I hold it?” he asks. “How do I dance – how do I walk and hold myself, to look truly like a woman? Do you stand like this? Tell me!”
“You must raise your right hand in time with your right leg.” The stranger says, looking amused. “I congratulate you on your change of mind! You were not in your right mind before, but now you truly show your heart.”
“Come on,” says Pentheus, “Take me to Mount Cithaeron! I want to see the maenads.”
“You want to spy on them – or dance among them?”
“I wouldn’t like to get drunk, or see them drunk.” Pentheus frowns. Something about drunkenness and disgust. He had been disgusted by them, disgusted by the idea of them. The truth is, he does want to dance among the maenads, craves their community, wants to feed the animals and play with the snakes, want them to laugh with him and reassure him that they love him. “I could dance with them, I suppose – I have the strength to dance forever! I could lift the whole mountain on my shoulders! Do you think I can?”
“As long as you don’t tear up the hiding places of the gods.” The stranger chides, shaking his head jokingly. “They wouldn’t like that. But I praise you on your attitude nevertheless.”
Pentheus tugs his hand, like a child. Smiles up at him, completely trusting. His face glows beneath the red painted on his cheeks. “We shouldn’t waste any time. Shall we go?”
“Through the backstreets?”
“No,” says Pentheus. “Through the middle of the city.”
“Are you no longer ashamed?”
“I’m the only Theban man enough to do this!” Pentheus says, and the stranger smiles wryly.
“Yes,” he says, “You alone will bear this burden. But come on, I’ll lead you to your contest – the contest of your destiny. I will guide and protect you, but another will bring you home.”
“My mother?” Pentheus smiles, hopeful, excited.
“Everyone will see you.”
“Such delights!”
“You’ll be carried aloft.”
“Such a luxury!”
“In your own mother’s hands.”
“You spoil me. You’ll make a soft thing out of me.”
“I hope I shall.”
“But I deserve it. Don’t I deserve it?”
“You’ll deserve all you get.” Dionysus says. “You are a terrible and amazing creature, and such terrible and amazing things await you. Your name will echo to heaven.”
“Oh, delightful!” He is already off, towards the mountain, twirling his skirts, delighting in his new guise. Agave was always fond of fashion, Dionysus muses. He found her carefully inspecting her dresses when he sent the madness into her, breathing it into her head. His mother’s ruiner, his own aunt. Pentheus – his mother’s daughter to the bone.
“Ready to embrace your son, Agave?” he whispers. “I’m bringing him to you, if you’ll take him. He tried to challenge me, and I will take him to his final performance. Take a bow, or a curtsey, if you like, Pentheus. I will triumph, me and the god.”
And the final words, so quiet even he can barely hear them. A note to himself, a stage direction, the end of the play, the chorus singing their closing song. “So be it.”