“Leandros denied her. For days and weeks on end, she returned only to be turned away. When she sent a rampaging bull with shoulders taller than a horse’s head, Leandros struck it down.”
The image shifts, showing the scene, Leandros’s sword once again felling the creature with ease.
“When snakes appeared suddenly within the town’s walls, Leandros, with the help of the royal army, eradicated every single one.”
This, too, is shown above, countless snakes bursting into tiny stars that reform as the tale goes on.
“He was not to be deterred by the goddess’s wrath. Nor her beauty, which she offered him freely. Her gifts of gold and the finest weapons were also denied, left outside his doorstep. There was not a single thing she could do to sway Leandros away.”
The stars disappear then, all of them. For a moment, there’s endless black. Until Leandros reappears, a man beside him.
“The reason why is quite simple.” The two men reach for one another across an expanse of deep blue space. “Leandros was in love.”
I pull in a breath as their hands touch, tiny stars, like sparks, lighting between their fingertips.
“We don’t know the name of Leandros’s lover. None of the stories give him one, which suggests he wasn’t notable himself. A merchant, perhaps. Or a peasant. But it didn’t take the goddess long to learn of his existence.”
My stomach sinks as the image of the men morphs, becoming more indistinct. The goddess walks into view, and I want nothing more than to strike her down before she can reach the pair. The feeling is so strong, so visceral, my hands shake with it.
“She found them one day,” the presenter says, her voice quiet. “In the wheat fields behind Leandros’s house. She was enraged, a fury like no other, for no one denied her as Leandros had.”
The image shows the goddess becoming larger, the stars making up her outline turning to red.
“Seeing the sword lying on the ground, she picked it up and spoke a curse against its blade. Leandros tried to stop her. Of course he did. But even he was no match for a furious goddess. She drove the sword through his lover’s heart, the cursed blade promising repeated death as punishment for Leandros’s refusal.”
The projection shows the goddess piercing the starlit man through his heart, brilliant white stars falling like pigmentless blood around his body. My inhale is sharp, my own chest feeling so tight it’s as if I’m being pierced, too.
“That, perhaps, should have been the end of this tragedy. Without his lover, the goddess would be free to take Leandros for herself, his grief too strong for him to fight.”
I swallow heavily as the Leandros above cradles his dead lover in his arms.
“But what the goddess didn’t consider…” our presenter says, pausing only briefly. “Was love.”
The image shifts again, Leandros picking up his sword. The goddess reaches for him, but she doesn’t make it in time.
“Leandros took up his fallen sword, and without a single second of hesitation, he pierced himself through the chest, choosing an eternity of death with his beloved over the offer of immortality with a goddess.”
Grayson’s hand lands on my own, his grip tightening to the point of pain. His gaze is trained upwards, but there’s a single tear rolling down his cheek, the sight of it reminding me so clearly of the day he found his star-boy. He had the same expression on his face then. The same anguish.
My own breath shudders as the woman speaks on, the projection above shifting once more. Leandros disappears. His lover, too. And the goddess. All that’s left is the sword, blinking in the sky, the point aimed downward.
“Some say the stars themselves wept at the loss of such pure devotion, placing the sword in the sky so that the young lovers could be guided together in the next life. Others say it was the Fates. Either way, the constellation we now know as the Sword of Leandros sits bright above, a beacon for many who draw strength or courage from its celestial blade.”
Sadness echoes in my chest, and I turn my hand up to meet Grayson’s, winding our fingers together.
“Now, it’s impossible to say how much of this legend is based in fact and how much is fiction. But we do know the Sword of Leandros didn’t appear in literature until around 800 BCE. Compared to the earliest depictions of Orion’s Belt found carved on a mammoth tusk some 32,000 years old, this makes the sword in the sky one of the most recent constellations to come into being. Dating of the stars has confirmed them to be just over 3,000 years old, which puts them in their relative infancy. Stars, as you know, can live to be millions,billionsof years old.”
The woman continues to spin in a slow circle as she speaks to the filled theatre, the sword shimmering above.
“What’s stranger yet is that each star mapped in the outline of the sword is the same precise age. They came into existence at exactly the same time. Multiple star systems are certainly not unheard of. But twelve stars born at once and gravitationally bound in a stable array? It’s impressive, to say the least. I don’t think we’ll ever know if myths like Leandros’s were true. But I’d like to think if the star-crossed lovers are out there still that they’re together.”
My breath puffs out of me as Grayson’s hand squeezes my own tight.
The show continues with a shorter breakdown of other famous constellations. But try as I might, I can’t get Leandrosand the sword out of my mind. I’d never heard the myth before, and I don’t know why it’s hitting me so hard, but the idea of Leandros and his lover dying because of a vengeful goddess?
Fuck.
Eternal death. Dying again and again and again…
