Chapter 6
I recovered slowly.
I can only recall glimpses of that time, wisps of memory dancing like shadows in a storm.
My mother holding my hand.
My brother crying.
The sting of a wet cloth against my back.
And the pain. Constant and paralyzing.
Consciousness came and went in faint waves that lapped against my mind.
Every time I felt sleep beckon, I prayed Penelope would be there waiting for me when I woke.
She would make it all better. She always did.
But it was only ever my mother at my bedside, her face creased with worry, tears in her eyes.
She would press her fingers to my forehead, my temples, skating a familiar route over my skin.
“I’m here,” she would whisper. “My heart, I’m here.”
I do not know exactly when the fever found me, but I knew the hideous chill rattling through my bones, shivering over my sweat-soaked skin.
Reality floated, untethered, bleeding into my dreams, my nightmares.
I saw Clytemnestra standing over my bed, the whip in her hands, her face cut with a cruel smile.
I felt Penelope beside me, feeding me honeyed figs, her hand resting in mine.
I wanted to talk to her, but the words were always liquid in my mouth.
Everything will be all right, Penelope told me again and again until her voice began to slip into my mother’s soft lilt.
“Penelope?”
“Shh, my heart, shh.” My mother’s voice soothed me back to the edges of my dreams.
“The king requires an update on her condition.” Another voice came from the pulsing darkness.
The king. Tyndareus was worried about me. He wanted to make sure I was all right.
He cared about me.
“She needs a doctor.” My mother again.
“You know they will not send for one. Not for us.” There was a pause. “If she’s not back on her feet soon, the king warned he would need to make…decisions.”
“He would sell her? Like this?”
“He is considering.”
“Acte, she’s in this state because of them.”
It was quiet for a long moment. “I will pray to Asclepius for her.”
“She doesn’t need your prayers. She needs medicine.”
“She will—”
“She will die.”
I wanted to stay and hear the rest of the conversation, but familiar cool currents tugged me away, pulling me down and down into Morpheus’s distant realm.
***
My mother wept when I finally woke.
We were in the corner of our sleeping quarters, and it was strange seeing the room so empty, daylight spilling through the open door. I was lying on my stomach, the ground unusually soft.
“People have been very kind,” my mother said as I stared at the blankets stacked beneath me. “We’ve all been worried about you.”
I tried to sit up, but a slice of pain shot down my back.
“Careful! Try not to move. You still need to rest.”
I glanced around, my eyes catching on a crumpled heap of linen beside me.
My gown.
“I didn’t know what to do with it,” my mother murmured as I reached for the torn, bloodied material.
“Where is Penelope?” I whispered hoarsely.
My mother stared at me for a long moment. She looked so tired, so sad, so old. Tenderly, she pried the ruined gown from my fingers and slipped her hand into mine.
“The princess has gone back home,” she told me in her gentlest voice.
“Home?”
“To Acarnania with her father.”
“Why…why didn’t you wake me when she said goodbye?”
My mother brought my fingers to her lips and brushed a light kiss against them. “She didn’t say goodbye, my heart.”
“But she visited,” I insisted.
My mother shook her head.
“I saw her here. I heard her.”
“I’ve been at your side every moment, Melantho.” Her voice was frayed with exhaustion. “The princess did not visit.”
It was then that I remembered Penelope’s words. Those horrible, cruel words.
She is not my friend.
The realization sank into me, slowly at first, then crashing all at once.
Though not as painful as the lashes I had endured, Penelope’s betrayal cut me far deeper, opening wounds my body did not recognize, did not know how to heal.
I buried my face in the blankets and wept furious, hot tears.
Penelope had gone.
She had not said goodbye.
She did not even care.
***
Three summers passed.
I did not see Penelope again.
I told myself that I was glad she stayed away, that I had forgotten all about her. By the time the fourth summer rolled around, I began to actually believe the lie.
I was thirteen now and supposed myself a woman, far older and wiser than the foolish girl who had thought she could befriend a princess.
I was beginning to look like a woman, too, my body marked by unfamiliar swells and dips, ones that made the boys’ eyes linger.
I liked the way they stared, the way they jabbed each other with their elbows when I passed them.
It made me feel powerful, knowing I could make their cheeks redden and mouths gape.
Still, even this newfound interest did not stave off the boredom, not now that I knew how small my world truly was.
Once, those confines had felt like a comfort, familiar edges that kept me tucked in safe and warm.
But now, the boundaries pressed in from all around me, making the days chafe irritably.
This was what it meant to be a slave, I realized: being expected to take up as little space as possible and be grateful for that tiny scrap of existence we were offered.
“Don’t you ever want more?” I asked my mother one day while we worked, dough rolling between our worn palms.
She glanced sidelong at me. “More?”
I waved at the kitchen around us. It was early that morning, the sun still rising, and yet the air was already laced with acrid sweat.
It was the stink of too many people worked too hard in too small a space.
I was sick of it, and I knew I was not the only one.
Complaints about the kitchen’s overcrowding had been rumbling all summer.
“Than spending our lives stuck here, serving others, never able to live for ourselves.” I slapped the dough down onto the counter. “Than making the same bread every morning, day after day.”
“There are people far worse off, Melantho. People like us.”
I knew that. Every slave did. It was the silent threat that hung over us, all those horror stories about slave markets and silver mines. The knowledge of how much worse our lives could become with just a single command.
“But don’t you want to be more than what we are?” I pressed. “More than just a slave?”
Sometimes, I longed to go back to those days when I believed “slave” was just a name I shared with my family, one that gave me a sense of belonging. But that naivety was gone, stripped from me like everything else.
And I knew she was to blame.
Penelope had struck something inside me that summer, a thrill I had never experienced before, one that lingered, its echo making my life feel inexplicably hollow. With her, I had glimpsed another world, and now, in its looming shadow, everything felt…lesser. I felt lesser.
And I hated her for it.
I hated her for so many things.
“All I want is for you to be happy, my heart. If I have that, what more do I need?” My mother smiled, and I sighed, throwing my hands up in defeat. She never understood.
“But I’m not happy. I’m bored.”
“Boring is good. Boring is safe.”
“I would take danger and excitement over boring and safe,” I stated. Though even just saying the words made the scars on my back twinge.
“Don’t tempt the Fates, Melantho,” my mother warned.
I scoffed. “The gods do not listen to us.”
She took my hand and squeezed tight, her dark eyes suddenly intense on mine. “They are always listening, Melantho. Always.”