Nobody's Prize (11 page)

“If you stay, they stay. I won’t have them on board the
Argo
without you.”

My fingers closed around Iolaus’s wrist. “We’ll stay,” I whispered. “Together, maybe we can heal Herakles sooner than—”

“No,” Iolaus replied quietly. “This island might have enough food and water to support one person or two, but four? And for how long until my uncle’s sane again, and we see another ship?” He shook his head. “I can’t do that to you and Milo.” He took a deep breath and looked at Jason with pure contempt. “We’ll sail.”

And so we did, as soon as Iolaus returned to the
Argo
and brought all of Herakles’ weapons and belongings to the shore. He also fetched food and a small amphora of wine. When we were all once more on board and the
Argo
pulled away from shore, Iolaus refused to row. Instead, he stood beside our helmsman and watched until the unlucky island was out of sight.

That night, we camped near a fishing village. The women stayed hidden, but the men emerged from their homes and came down to the waterside in a whispering cluster to watch us beach the
Argo.
A ship that big was a novelty to people accustomed to boats only large enough to carry two or three men. The sight of it must have been terrifying and tempting at the same time. They greeted us from a respectful distance and made no move to approach until Argus hailed them in their own tongue.

The next thing we knew, we were being welcomed with bread, salt, meat, drink, and smiles by the entire village. Argus beamed as he told us that we’d finally reached the Colchian lands, though we were still some distance from King Aetes’ court at Aea. The crew was jubilant and pitched in to help the fishermen kindle a huge fire on the beach. While Argus proudly showed off the wonders of our ship to the local men, their wives and daughters served us with as much generosity as their lives allowed.

We repaid them with one of our larger amphorae of wine and with Orpheus’s gift of song. He sang about how we’d battled the Harpies and cheated the Clashing Rocks, and how we’d soon overcome any other obstacles that might lie between us and the Golden Fleece. I sat between Milo and Iolaus, staring into the flames.

Then he sang about a young man so handsome that everyone who saw him loved him. One day, when he went to fetch water from a spring, the nymphs who lived in the pool saw him and fell in love with him. They dragged him down into the depths and gave him the gifts of eternal life, youth, and joy, but he could never return to the mortal world again. As I watched the flames and listened to the music, I imagined that Orpheus’s sweet song conjured Hylas’s spirit back for just a little while. I pictured him the way I best remembered him, happy and kind.
I won’t forget you, Hylas,
I thought just as one of the logs on the fire cracked open and my friend’s image blew away in a fountain of sparks against the evening sky.

I was still wiping tears from my eyes when my brothers came and planted themselves between me and the fire. “So…Glaucus, is it?” Castor said sternly. The two of them were looking right at me, their faces stone. It was over. I stood up to accept my fate.

As I got to my feet, I felt strange. My bellyache was back, worse than before. The heat of the fire must have been greater than I had thought, because I felt a trickle of sweat on my leg.

All at once, one of the fishermen’s wives set down her platter of broiled sardines and pointed wildly at me, grinning and calling out to the other women, young and old, in a loud, joyful voice. My brothers were brushed aside as the mothers, daughters, and grandmothers of the village rushed forward and carried me away.

         
7
         

THE MASK OF THE HUNTRESS

By the time the women brought me to the large hut at the very edge of their village, I understood what had happened to me. I wasn’t a girl anymore. Just before they shoved me through the curtained doorway, I looked up into the night sky and saw the silvery moon that Artemis ruled. Now the moon ruled me.

When my sister, Clytemnestra, first entered womanhood, our mother told us both what to expect, how to deal with our new condition. Clytemnestra was quick to remind Mother that it wasn’t “ours,” but hers alone. Mother said, “It won’t be long before Helen catches up to you. You’re twins, after all.” But Mother was wrong. I’d spent so long lagging behind my sister that I believed the change would leave me alone until I decided I was ready to accept it. If the gods could read thoughts, how they must have laughed!

Inside the hut, an old woman crouched on a piece of faded blue cloth beside a small fire pit. She was crumbling dried herbs into a painted bowl. While she went about her business, a younger woman came in, handed me a clean wool pad, and spoke to me in a kindly voice. I didn’t recognize a single word, but it wasn’t hard to figure out her meaning.

By the time I felt clean and comfortable again, the old woman was finished with her task. She raised the bowl of crumbled herbs to the smoke hole in the roof, chanting, and the other woman sang a response. Then she lowered the bowl, poured water into it, and offered it to me.

Just then, there was a commotion outside the hut. I heard many men yelling, and the village women yelling right back at them, unafraid. I recognized my brothers’ voices through the tumult. They sounded angry, but scared as well. Over all that loud confusion I heard the voice of Argus, shouting in the local language.

I don’t know what he said, but it had the magical effect of silencing the uproar. There was no more yelling from outside, though I still heard plenty of grumbling. The old woman snapped out something that must have been a command. At her words, the young woman who’d helped me earlier went to the door and pulled back the curtain.

“Girl, are you all right?” Argus stood just outside the doorway, speaking barely above a whisper.

“I’m fine,” I replied.
For now.

“So, this women’s business of yours—” He sounded ill at ease, speaking about what had just happened to me. “Your new friends here seem to think it’s the first time it’s happened to you. Are they right?” I nodded. “Ah. Seems like it’s something special to them, a great honor to share. This hut you’re in, it’s the women’s shrine, and that crone’s a priestess. The only reason they’re letting me come this close and talk to you is so I can translate what she’s got to say.”

“Argus, please tell me what’s happening outside,” I said. “I know my brothers saw, but the others—?”

“It doesn’t matter who saw what, by now everyone’s heard all about it. If I were you, lass, I’d stay inside that hut until I had grandchildren.”

The old woman said something and thrust the bowl into my hands. I looked to Argus. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You had a mind of your own last time we talked. What do
you
think you’re supposed to do?” he countered.

“
You’re
helpful.” My words were bitter with sarcasm, but nothing on earth was half as bitter as that bowl of herbal brew. The first sip I took made my tongue shrivel. I would have set it aside then and there, but I saw how closely the two women in the hut were watching me, so I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and gulped the rest of it down. I handed the empty bowl back to the old woman and was rubbing bits of crushed leaves and stems off my teeth when she tilted her head back and burst into wailing song.

“Well, well, isn’t that interesting,” Argus remarked from the doorway.

“What?” I asked, watching her warily.

“Apparently, our priestess is also the local Pythia. She foretells the future, but only for girls who’ve just become women.”

“Is that what she’s doing now?” I asked. “Telling my future?” The old woman was still making noises like those of a hired mourner. I hoped that her woeful tune didn’t mean that my life was going to be one long tragedy. “What’s she saying?”

“Oh, it’s mostly babble. You’re brave, you’re strong, you’re quick-witted, you’ll marry a king, find your true love, have lots of babies, kill whole armies with your beauty, and your fame will live forever, yap, yap, yap. If you were one of the local girls, she’d probably say that you attract fish. Don’t take any of it seriously, lass. It’s just an old woman’s way of giving you something to look forward to. That crone knows how hard a woman’s life can be, so she’s giving you a few dreams to distract you. Hope costs nothing, right?” For once, Argus’s smile looked natural.

The old woman ended her song and looked at me expectantly. I wondered how much of it really had been just “babble.” Argus was the one to belittle her prophecy, not I. Just because she spoke of the future from a humble village hut instead of from a rich, impressive city shrine didn’t mean her gift wasn’t genuine. I wished that I could have heard her vision of my future for myself, word for word, without my skeptical friend standing between us. I raised my hands and bowed to the old woman, thanking her even though she didn’t speak my language. Argus translated and she smiled. I stood up and took a deep breath. “Time to meet the lion,” I said. I started for the door, and the trouble waiting for me beyond the threshold.

The priestess called after me and the young woman attending her laid hold of my arm. “Not so fast, girl,” Argus said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “She’s got something for you.”

I squatted across the fire from the old woman and watched as she took the bowl from which I’d drunk and smashed it on the stones ringing the little hearth. She chose a small shard, wiped it dry on her skirt, and, from the shadows behind her, produced a palm-sized dish of black paint and a tiny brush. In a few flowing strokes, she drew a design on the shard, then handed it to me. It was a picture of a hunter on horseback, armed with the big spear used to hunt boar. She’d taken care to draw the rider stripped to the waist so that there could be no doubt: The hunter was a woman.

What god had inspired her to give me
this
image? Had her visions shown her my past as well as my future? In such a small number of lines she’d let me see a woman who looked strong and brave, one who rode out to confront the perils of the hunt with confidence and pride, a huntress who chose her own prey and her own weapons.

A huntress…
The word struck a spark of memory. Suddenly I realized that I had the means to turn the old woman’s gift into the perfect weapon. With it at my command, I would face the battle awaiting me outside and come through it victorious. I smiled.

“Argus,” I said. “Argus, will you help me?”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, suspicious. We spoke together so softly that the only people who could overhear our conversation were the two women in the hut with me, and they couldn’t understand one word we said.

“Everyone knows I’m a girl now,” I replied. “Jason will be afraid to let me back on the ship in case I cause trouble among the men.”

“You’ve got that right,” Argus said. “I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same, in his place.”

“You wouldn’t,” I told him. “You’re not like Jason. You’re only hard on the outside.”

“You make me sound like a beetle, and you still haven’t said what you want this old bug to do for you.”

“I want you to tell the crew my name.”

I waited inside the village women’s shrine with the painted shard in my hands. Beyond the door curtain, I heard Argus calling out for the crew’s attention. “Men of the
Argo,
you know what you saw!” he cried. “Your eyes didn’t lie. The weapons bearer called ‘Glaucus’ is no lad.”

Someone in the crowd made a crude jest. Another man shouted something even worse at Iolaus. I heard the sound of a scuffle and twitched the curtain aside in time to see Iolaus standing over the fallen jokester, cradling the fist he’d bruised on the man’s jaw.

“Why tell us what we know?” Jason pushed his way forward, dragging Milo by the arm. He shook my friend viciously. “Who is she, boy? Your bedmate? Or yours?” He glowered at Iolaus.

“Enough!” Argus thundered. “By Poseidon, you’ll
hear
me before you start flapping your jaws, sparking quarrels we don’t need! This girl is no one’s bedmate, young or old. She’s as untouched as the holy huntress she serves.” He pointed one callused finger at the shining moon, then turned and raised the door curtain. “Come out, Atalanta, and let your shipmates know you at last.”

That night, I slept in the old priestess’s home. She lived with the younger woman—I supposed they were mother and daughter—and that woman’s husband and children. Their house was clean and pleasant, with many bundles of drying herbs and flowers hanging from pegs, covering the smell of fish. They gave me a thick blanket to spread on the ground, more woolen pads in case I needed them during the night, and even a cup of warmed milk with honey to drink before the man snuffed out the lone oil lamp that lit their home. I heard the younger woman crooning to her fretful baby, then silence.

I slept badly. My body was weary, but my thoughts raced over everything that had happened that day. The loss of Hylas, Herakles’ madness, the end of my life as Glaucus, the new mask I’d chosen to wear, all of these whirled at dizzying speed through my head. When I did drift into dreams, they were brief, senseless, and horrifying. I woke up clutching my throat, feeling as if I’d nearly drowned. As soon as I saw the hint of dawn beyond the door curtain, I crept out of the house. I had to find my brothers. We needed to talk.

They were awake and waiting for me just six paces away from the priestess’s house. They’d settled themselves on the ground with a clear view of the doorway, and the small space between them was filled with intricate designs they’d scratched into the dirt to pass the time. They stood up together when they saw me, their eyes red and their faces haggard.

“You didn’t have to keep watch all night,” I said. “I wasn’t going to run away, you know.”

“We
don’t
know,” Castor said. “We know nothing about you anymore, Helen. What in the name of all-seeing Apollo were you thinking, coming on this voyage, pretending to be a boy, doing something this—this—” He threw his hands up in frustration and blurted, “You must be as crazy as Herakles!”

“Little sister, you could have died.” Polydeuces could hardly get the words out. “All of those days at sea, all the dangers, the raiders in Thrace, the bandits of the Clashing Rocks, even a simple misstep, like the one that killed poor Hylas—” His voice broke. He drew a ragged breath and added, “
Why,
Helen?”

If I answered, would they understand? Their lives were always their own. They never had to fight for their liberty. When Jason came to Delphi seeking heroes, they joined his crew without asking anyone’s permission. No one demanded that they justify their choices. If you asked them why they had so much freedom, they’d react as if you wanted to know why the sky is blue.

I’d be queen of Sparta one day. I’d marry because it would be my duty to have children and provide the land with its next ruler. If I was lucky, I’d choose my husband wisely and we’d love one another. But between
You
must
do this because you’re a princess
and
You must
never
do that because you’re a girl,
there was no time left for
Do what you
like,
because you’re Helen.
This quest, this adventure, might be my only chance to see what it meant to be myself.

What would my brothers say if I told them that?

“Don’t call me ‘Helen,’” I said firmly, brushing Polydeuces’ question aside unanswered. “Helen of Sparta wouldn’t be on this ship. I’m Atalanta.”

“I was wrong. You’re
crazier
than Herakles,” Castor said.

I ignored his sarcasm. “When the
Argo
returns to Iolkos, do you want the crewmen scattering to their homes, bearing the tale of how Helen of Sparta threw away her proper role in life to go sailing halfway across the world? What will the lords of Mykenae, Thebes, Iolkos, and all the rest say about us then?”