Chapter 7
Atalanta
The young woman wore a short, practical tunic and sturdy sandals. A sheen of sweat covered her body, so that she seemed slightly
luminous. Her chest rose and fell with exertion, and she held a spear just as I did. In her other hand was a brace of rabbits,
necks wrung from the snare. She was about my age, I thought, though I was not practiced at telling how old humans were.
If I’d had my wits about me, I would have fled into the underbrush, away from this chance encounter. But I was fascinated
by this woman. There was a tenderness to her skin that seemed to call for touch.
I stayed where I was, and in so doing ensured my own doom.
“You startled me,” the young woman said, laying a hand on her chest. She smiled, and her cheeks dimpled prettily. “My name
is Procris. Princess of Athens, huntress of renown, and devotee of Artemis. And wife of Cephalus,” she added, with a twist
of bitterness. Her lovely eyes turned toward me. “What’s your name?”
“Atalanta,” I muttered, scuffing the dirt with my foot. I was acutely aware of my awkward human limbs around Procris, who
seemed to wear with elegance that which had always been a burden to me.
My heart was beating quickly, I realized, though I did not feel afraid.
“Well, Atalanta, I’d be honored if you would join me for dinner,” Procris said, holding up the rabbits. “If you are another woman who walks the woods, we will have much in common.”
Procris led me to her campsite, and my heart thundered in my chest. The old hunters would have called me a fool for trusting
a stranger, and even the bear would have snuffed disapprovingly. I had been alive for about twenty-four summers at that point,
but I had never spoken to another person my own age. My only glimpses of human beings had been on those rare occasions when
I accompanied the hunters on trading trips to the little towns in the valleys, but the sight of so many humans frightened
me far more than the woods at night or any wild beast. I shied away from those loud-voiced people with their staring eyes,
unable to relax in a place where human bodies were packed so close together.
But Procris was different. Maybe because she was like me, or because she treated me so kindly, I could not tear myself away.
I was drawn to her with the same force that pulls an apple toward the earth.
Procris’s camp consisted of a canvas tent, several saddlebags swaddled in tarps, and a horse and a donkey who chewed grass
meditatively. The ashes of a firepit sat in a ring of stones. A dog came barreling toward us, a tan-gold blur with a waving
tail. “Lailaps!” Procris called in greeting, reaching down to ruffle his ears.
“Whirlwind,” the name meant. Certainly the dog was as fast as one. I had grown up around dogs—the old hunters kept a large
pack—and recognized Lailaps as a particularly fine creature. He was golden-furred, with a fanlike tail that arched over his
back as he danced around Procris’s feet, overcome with delight at her return.
Procris could not be dangerous, I decided, if a dog loved her this much.
I cleaned the rabbits while Procris spitted and cooked them.
When we were done eating, Procris pulled a waterskin from the pouch at her side and drank deeply, her smooth throat glowing in the light of the setting sun.
I watched her satisfy her thirst, unable to look away.
She smacked her lips and put the waterskin aside, then patted the rock by her side.
I sat down next to her as close as I dared, our thighs pressed together, and a thrill of pleasure ran through me.
There was no place in the world that I would rather be.
“So, Atalanta,” Procris said, the sound of my name in her mouth sending a shiver down my spine. “What city do you hail from?
Who is your husband, and who are your parents?”
“Don’t have any of those,” I muttered. The hunters were not really parents, only fellow denizens of the wilderness. The bear
seemed closer to a mother, but even I had enough sense not to immediately tell this stranger that I had been raised by an
animal.
Procris’s face creased in the way that signaled confusion or concern. I decided to change the subject quickly.
“Lailaps is a good dog,” I said, scratching his ears as he laid his head on my lap, probably hoping for some roasted rabbit.
“Where did he come from?”
A slow grin spread across Procris’s face. She straightened and set her shoulders back. “Lailaps,” she began, “was a gift from
the gods.”
It happened like this: Procris left her husband, Cephalus, and went to the court of King Minos on Crete, island of monsters,
to serve as governess to his children. The king of Crete was always called Minos, having given up his personal name when he
ascended to his office. But when Procris arrived, the current Minos was in the grip of a curse, and the land itself suffered.
Procris healed him using herbs and sacred incantations.
“I learned it all from my mother,” Procris explained, leaning back to look up at the starry sky. “She’s a devotee of the goddess Hekate of Colchis, and she taught me many remedies. Though it’s Artemis I revere above all.”
In gratitude, King Minos gave the dog Lailaps to Procris. Lailaps had been a gift from the god Zeus but seemed utterly unaware
of his divine origins. At the moment, the dog was singularly focused on crunching rabbit bones.
“Lailaps can catch anything, no matter how swift. And my spear”—Procris indicated a weapon made out of honey-colored wood
with a razor-sharp bronze tip thrust into the dirt like a declaration of battle—“my spear can hit any target. If I closed
my eyes and threw, it would still strike where I intended. Not that I need to use a trick like that to bring home meat; I’ve
been hunting all my life.”
Procris kept up a rapid stream of speech. I let her words wash over me, basking in her attention.
“I grew up hunting with my father,” Procris continued. “And, later, with my husband. Early in our marriage, at least. Before
Eos.”
Eos was the goddess of the dawn and the illicit lover of Procris’s husband. When Procris uncovered their affair, she confronted
Cephalus. Another woman might have meekly accepted her husband’s infidelity, but not Procris.
I nodded as she spoke, though I wasn’t entirely sure what an “infidelity” was.
Cephalus had not taken the confrontation well. At first, he denied that anything had happened, then he grew angry. He struck
Procris with his heavy fist, leaving bruises that persisted for weeks.
“That was why I left,” Procris said, firelight glistening on the tear that rolled down her cheek.
“Why I went to Crete and became governess for the king’s children, why I was there when Minos needed healing.
It all turned out for the best in the end.
My husband’s disrespect was the reason I got the dog and the spear.
If I’d stayed with Cephalus like he wanted, I would never have gotten the dog and the spear. ”
Yet Procris looked so sad that my heart twisted. I didn’t know yet that we sometimes repeat words in order to convince ourselves
just as much as our listeners; she had the dog and the spear, but she’d lost everything else. All I knew was that I grieved
Procris’s sorrows as though they were my own and wanted to soothe all her discomforts.
By then the stars had bloomed across the sky and the night wind began to blow. The fire died down as if in hushed awe.
“Anyway, that was how I got Lailaps and how I came to be here,” Procris said, looking down at her lap. “I’m only passing through
these woods. I won’t stay long.”
My body burned with an unfamiliar fever, and an undeniable magnetism gripped me. Soon I would return to my cave by the crystal
waters of a mountain stream, but I would be back at Procris’s camp the next morning. And the next and the next, if she would
have me.
I managed with great difficulty to speak. “It’s all right if you stay for a while.”