ACT I
[We open on the once fertile Edonian meadows which have been transformed into a desert. On a rock sits a woman, veiled and weeping; in the background the royal residence smolders. A figure approaches her; he is beautiful and bearded, wearing a warrior’s linen breastplate over a woman’s flowing red gown. From ivy crown to hunting boots he is covered in splatter a much darker red. He sits beside her on the rock.]
Dionysos: It is finished.
Kytis: My line has been extinguished, root and stem.
Dionysos: Yes. That madman, your husband, did it with his bull-driving double-axe. Hacked his little ones apart as they clasped his knee and begged him for mercy. You alone I spared, for your clear sight and your hospitality.
Kytis: Would that you had not. Is this how you Gods reward piety?
Dionysos: Should I have let that savage wolf cut you from groin to gullet and pull your breasts off with his teeth? Because that is what he was of a mind to do.
Kytis: Then, at least, my suffering would be ended. Am I to wander this earth a childless mother and a widow? How is that a kinder fate?
Dionysos: You mourn your husband, even now?
Kytis: I do.
Dionysos: But ere Lyssa smote him with her snake-twined goad he beat you for talking sensible words, for trying to get him to turn aside from that black blind hatred of me.
Kytis: I am his wife.
Dionysos: And mother of Astakios and Dryas and …
Kytis: You do not speak their names.
[Dionysos nods gravely, almost remorsefully.]
Kytis: You know nothing of love, do you?
Dionysos: I have never felt the pangs of the winged one’s darts.
Kytis: It shows.
Dionysos: Does it?
Kytis: You would not ask such a thing if you had. When love has hold of you, it is total. You cannot divide your beloved, love them only in parts. In the end he proved the most wretched of men. But he was my husband, and I will mourn him.
Dionysos: That sounds like madness. A thing I am not unacquainted with.
Kytis: It is a terrible thing and does terrible things to one. Melts the heart. Befuddles the senses. Makes one care for something more than life, more than one’s own self. It opens one to pains unimaginable – and to fathomless joy.
Dionysos: I think I should like to experience this love.
Kytis: I pray that you do.
[Everything fades to black.]
ACT II
[We open in a cave with a limpid stream and moss and ivy clinging to its walls. Satyrs and Nymphs slumber, limbs entwined, around the couch of Dionysos and Ariadne. Her hand rests on his chest and her head upon his shoulder, honey-gold hair fanning out. Dionysos smiles down at her inscrutably.]
Dionysos: I have done such terrible things for your love, my wife, my one and only.
Ariadne: I remember, husband of mine. The cries of Psalakantha are fresh to me, and dear.
Dionysos: Another might fear you take too much pleasure in that memory.
Ariadne: There is such a thing as too much?
Dionysos: That all depends on whether one’s spirit is strong enough to endure it.
Ariadne: I have endured much.
Dionysos: Much joy and much grief, for sure.
[Dionysos looks away.]
Ariadne: Husband, I like not this somber spirit that has taken hold of you of a sudden. Especially since talk of that leafy girl has aroused my ardour.
[Her hand disappears into the folds of his robe.]
Dionysos: You will like it even less when I reveal to you what is on my mind.
[Her hand returns to view.]
Ariadne: Speak on.
Dionysos: That night when you suffered so much that you broke, left to die on Dia’s desolate shores by that Athenian …
Ariadne: Do not speak his name.
Dionysos: I was there.
Ariadne: You came later. When the long night and tormenting dreams finally released me, ransomed by your kiss.
Dionysos: I was there. Before.
Ariadne: You saw me insane?
Dionysos: I did. And before.
Ariadne: Why did you wait? Why let me suffer so unspeakably so?
Dionysos: You were beautiful.
Ariadne: Is that when you fell in love with me?
Dionysos: You were most lovely then, to be sure, but it was before.
Ariadne: How long?
Dionysos: I loved you on Crete, and before.
Ariadne: Before?
Dionysos: At your birth is when I first loved you. So I conspired to share the womb that gave you life.
[She pulls away from him, horror dawning in her eyes.]
Ariadne: You speak in incomprehensible riddles, husband.
Dionysos: And brother.
Ariadne: Asterion is dead.
Dionysos: And I live. Has it never struck you as odd that I have the same horns that he had, and before him the bull with which your mother committed her adultery?
Ariadne: There are similarities … Then that means you know …
Dionysos: Your secret shame is no shame to me. How could it be when you gave yourself to me down there in that place?
Ariadne: But I helped him …
Dionysos: Kill me.
Ariadne: Willingly. He did not coerce me. He did not need to.
Dionysos: I know.
Ariadne: He promised me he would take me away from there. Show me new things. I had everything but novelty in the labyrinth. And I was so hungry.
Dionysos: I know. That is why I let him.
Ariadne: It was all a lie. The fickle-hearted bastard. I hate him as greatly as I love you.
Dionysos: He was sincere.
Ariadne: What?
Dionysos: He meant every word he spoke to you.
Ariadne: How do you know his heart?
Dionysos: I was there.
Ariadne: Understanding escapes me.
Dionysos: I saw what he would make of you. His wife, his queen, but mostly his broodmare squeezing out many a fat babe for him. I saw your spirit crushed by a colorless and unending tedium. You grew so small with him, so meek and good. Forgot that once you had been a daughter of Minos, once you had tasted freedom and savagery. And finally I saw it all grow too much for you, saw you swinging from a rope like a spider, your only way out.
Ariadne: How? How do you know the very contents of the dream you woke me from on that beach so long ago?
Dionysos: I was there. It was no dream.
Ariadne: Is this the dream then? Or am I dead?
Dionysos: No. I drove him from the island, gibbering and pissing himself in fear, before your fate was set and that nightmare become your reality.
Ariadne: And then you carried me off to your abode below the earth, like a second flowery Persephone.
Dionysos: I did. And I wronged you in not granting you choice. Love compels me to see that. If I could I would be sorrowful.
Ariadne: Sorrow not, my husband. My brother. You made yourself a monster for my sake, and worse. Has any woman been loved as fully as I have?
Dionysos: None.
[Around them the Nymphs and Satyrs stir and begin making love as everything fades to black.]
