Echo still had a body then; she was not just a voice.
It was in her body, where her hunger slept in fetal spiral, that Juno’s offense bruised blackest. Here’s the tea, spilled in sum: it had been Juno that took her voice, punishment for lying to cover Jupiter. Enabling that thirsty daddy to satisfy his lust for nymphs. Juno, then, fierce in Fendi but clouded by ancient ideas and her own problems with the things men do:
“You wear me out with your talk, Echo, your labyrinth language in which my husband hides. I strike your voice dead in your mouth and deny you a platform.”
Leaving Echo speechless among the suicides of the Aokigahara forest, with only the ends of others’ words to amplify her brand.
To be canceled, and by a woman, for the lusts of a powerful man would have been violation enough but worse were the suitors, matched by ancient algorithm, who came thereafter to find Echo. For seasons on end, none of them said anything worth repeating, but each took Echo’s affliction for fascination with their opinions and lifting routines. How they loved her for this, enamored to hear their own voices made lyric by hers.
Ima be ur Sugar Daddy, they would say from the depths of their DMs.
Daddy, she would repeat, despising their limited imaginations and tragic follower counts.
Not so Narcissus, whose cheekbones of Parian marble already had 1B views. He had strayed into the lonely countryside and sat beside the pool at the Marriott Courtyard, beneath that eyeblue sky. There he bathed his body, milktooth white, and made new content, which was so exhausting, so exhausting. Who knew better than Narcissus the economy of attention’s insatiable appetite?
“Is there anybody here?” he asked, having grown unused to so few likes and engagements.
Here! Echo answered.
“Come!” said the stunning crimson of his lips.
Come! cried Echo, as if she could taste them.
“Come here and let us meet!”
Let us meet! replied Echo, feeling a vibe. She reached her arms out from the Sea of Trees to clasp his delicate neck. But Narcissus had not meant IRL and so slipped her grasp, crying:
“Away with these encircling hands! May I die before what’s mine is yours.”
To which she could answer, only What’s mine is yours!
Perhaps Narcissus, dim as he was, lost in the lemniscate of his influence as he was, had thought she was merely repeating. Partnered to the pools of his own eyes and a Sephora brand collaboration, he never noticed how Echo, in her loving and infinite cleverness, laid claim to his witless words. Among them: “I am on fire with love for my own self. It is I who kindles the flames I must endure.”
And so, Echo: I must endure.
Who knows what might have come of it had he given her more to work with? Like the others, though, he had so little of interest to say. It broke her heart to have to drown him as she did, to throw his unbearably beautiful body into the canyon below. With the proper filter it looked even lovelier rearranged into its new angles, atop the bone heap of those who had come before. As for his skyblue eyes, she kept them for her inspo board, along with his final word: Farewell.
Because her name is Echo, and she always answers back.
Jared Green is an author, visual artist, and professor of English literature at Stonehill College. His fiction, poetry, and critical writing have appeared in numerous journals, including Colorado Review, Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, Chicago Review, phoebe, Subnivean, and The Missouri Review Aud-Cast. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and is a recipient of a 2019 Gurney Norman Fiction Prize, His work has been recognized with fellowships by the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the state of Rhode Island’s Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Foundation.