Chapter 8
Atalanta
Over the next few cycles of the moon, Procris and I spent a great deal of time together. We ran through the forests, working
together to take down deer and even long-horned aurochs. One morning I found to my astonishment that the cold core of loneliness
in my belly had vanished, driven away at last by the belonging I’d long sought.
I introduced Procris to the old hunters who’d raised me. “Like a matched set carved from the same piece of driftwood!” she
declared, fascinated. “How marvelous. You can scarcely tell who is the man and who the woman.”
I, who had no idea that men and women might be treated differently, only nodded.
We did not stay there for long. The hunters admired Lailaps, but they would not look at Procris when she spoke to them. Procris
attempted to gift the old huntress a necklace from the court of Minos, and she recoiled as though she had been offered a snake.
“Too soft, too rich. No good can come of that one,” the male hunter whispered in my ear when he thought Procris could not
hear.
Furious at their lack of welcome, I eschewed the hunters’ cabin entirely. We had always lived our own lives, but now we kept
fastidiously apart.
I told Procris haltingly about my early life and brought her to the bear’s den. Procris stared open-mouthed as the mother bear leaned into my touch.
“You must be blessed by the goddess Artemis,” Procris said, her eyes shining with awe. “I have never heard of a child surviving
something like that.”
I felt my ears turn red. It occurred to me that the bear was remarkably long-lived, having nursed me when I was an infant
more than two decades ago. Perhaps the goddess really had blessed us both.
But I didn’t care about Artemis’s blessings. I was more interested in Procris.
Procris insisted on taking me to the temple at Brauron, which was a wonder. She introduced me to one of the priestesses there,
a young royal woman named Astydamia. I was awed by the temple’s grandeur, especially the vast soaring ceiling supported by
huge stone pillars like the trees of a forest. Usually being inside stone walls made me anxious, but this place was different.
We danced the bear at Brauron, a custom that Procris explained was usually reserved for young women before marriage. I, who
had always longed to be a bear, found it both baffling and enjoyable. We donned costumes made from bearskins and pranced around
a fire, an activity that was supposed to tame our wildness but in fact led to much laughter. Procris and I stood out for our
age and height; most of the participants were much younger.
I looked at Procris in the firelight, shadows playing over her face. The bear costume threw a tiara of teeth over her forehead,
and the heavy pelt prompted a sheen of sweat from her skin. Seeing her, I thought my heart might burst from beauty. Nothing
divine could ever be more perfect than her.
Procris turned to look at me, and she must have caught what I was thinking.
The smile melted from her face, replaced with an expression of awed solemnity.
Then she grinned and lunged forward to snatch my wrist. Procris pulled me away from the circle of dancers and into the darkness beyond the edge of the fire.
The other little bears cheered before returning to the dance.
Out of their sight, Procris took my face in her hands and kissed me.
A fireball exploded in the pit of my stomach, traveling down my belly to the base of my spine. Her kiss left me feeling lightheaded,
as though I had been running for a long time and only now paused to rest.
Procris took me back to her tent and pulled off her clothing and then mine, showing me the things that Artemis’s nymphs did
together on the nights of the new moon. While Artemis embraced sweet solitude, the nymphs embraced each other, trading kisses
and caresses. They might have eschewed marriage, but they did not spurn pleasure.
With Procris I learned that bodies had more uses than running in the hunt and lips could do sweeter things than speaking.
When Procris brought her body against mine, I learned that there were wonders in this world that I’d never imagined. In her
arms, I tasted something of eternity.
This was only the first night of many. Soon we became like Artemis and Callisto, inseparable. Before long, we spent as much
time in her tent as we did on the hunt.
Afterward, our heads resting on the same pillow, Procris would talk to me about many things, like the hunts she’d been on—for
lions and griffins, even a failed expedition for the bronze guardian Talos during her time on Crete. She told me of the intrigues
of the Cretan palace, the quiet war between the old ways and the new. I drank in her words like parched soil drinks in rain.
But always, the conversation circled back to Cephalus, her husband. She couldn’t seem to keep from talking about him, in much the same way that you might probe a loose tooth with your tongue.
In the darkness, other stories emerged. Slaps and slights and shoves into the wall, countless little cruelties spanning the
length of their marriage. Not to mention the affairs Cephalus pursued with both mortal women and goddesses, Eos being only
the most blatant. Procris had left home for many reasons, it turned out.
“It wasn’t all bad, though,” Procris said one night, her head pillowed on my chest. “The victory of the fleeing deer is the
tragedy of the lioness, my mother used to say, which I suppose means things look different from someone else’s perspective.
If you met Cephalus, he would tell you I’m an empty-headed woman who thinks of no one but herself. And there were good times
with him as well. The little jokes, the way he stroked my cheek so softly in the darkness of the bedroom.” She sighed, remembering.
I stiffened with cold rage. I had also stroked Procris’s cheek in the darkness of our tent and had never hurt her. But it
was not my touch she seemed to crave. Was I merely a substitute to her, like drinking water to trick your belly into feeling
full when you have not been able to catch any meat?
“Cephalus was terrible to you,” I said. “How can you say things like that?”
“Cephalus is my husband,” Procris said coldly. “He and I will always come back to each other. You just don’t understand what
husbands are like.”
Yes, I thought. That’s the entire point. I thought of Artemis changing Callisto into a bear and wished she’d turn Cephalus into a slug.
I grabbed Procris’s hand and pressed it to my lips. “Stay with me,” I whispered. “Forget this Cephalus. Stay with me in this
world we have made and become my wife instead.”
“Oh, Atalanta.” Procris laughed lightly, withdrawing her hand. “How earnest you can be. But I’m only one man’s wife.”
A role I could never fill, in other words. I snarled in frustration, storming out of the tent. Lailaps tried to follow me,
but I pushed him away.
I left for my cave with a buzzing in my ears like a hive full of bees and spent a restless night’s sleep alone. In the morning,
I considered going to visit Procris, but my pride and anger kept me away. After all we had done together, after all we had
seen, did Procris really count me less than the brute she’d married? What made him so special?
For three days and nights, I kept away from Procris, despite the magnetic pull to her side. But on the dawn of the fourth
day, my anger relented. We had never been away from each other so long, and I missed her terribly.
I came to her campsite, only to find it deserted.
Nothing remained but the charred ruins of the firepit. A strong wind cast the ash into the air. It was as though my heart
had torn itself from my chest and walked away, leaving behind a bleeding wound. I was suddenly gasping for breath. Tears ran
down my cheeks, warm as blood.
There was a piece of papyrus pinned under a small rock, where it fluttered like a small bird trying to pull free of a trap.
I picked it up and looked at the little black marks that covered it, uncomprehending. Then I tossed the papyrus over my shoulder
into the breeze, letting it wing away into the mountains. Procris should have remembered that I’d never learned how to read.
Procris left a trail through the forest, and I followed it, passing beyond the valleys and mountains where I had grown up.
The only world I knew. Fear tickled my liver, but a burning impetus spurred me on.
I needed to find Procris and apologize to her for my foolish outburst, so that she would come back with me and we could resume our life together.
It was a need that drove out all thought of hunger or thirst or even sleep.
For a day and a night, I followed her trail. Then I crested a hill, and the shining ribbon of a river unfurled below.
The little ford stationed at the river’s edge was a hive of human activity. Workers hauled travelers across the current, and
boats left chevron patterns in their wake. A man made his way across the water with an elderly woman on his back, like a bear
with a clinging cub.
My heart fell. I would never be able to track Procris across these roiling waters. Her trail was lost to me.
But I would not be dissuaded so easily. For weeks, I searched. I went to the forests around Athens, her home, but could find
no sign of her there. Then Brauron, though this proved fruitless too. In the course of those adventures, I’d encountered Meleager
and been drawn into the Calydonian boar hunt.
When Meleager brought back news of the Argo to the cave where we were hiding, I sat up at once, rigid with interest. The mention of a ship departing for Colchis tickled
something in my memory. Procris, telling me about her mother’s goddess, Hekate of Colchis.
A long shot, certainly, but there were no short ones. Colchis was her mother’s land, and perhaps Procris had gone back to
her ancestral home. In any case, it was the only lead I had.
And so I found myself here, on the deck of the Argo, wrapped in a tattered blanket to keep off the sea spray. Meleager was already snoring. I leaned my back against his, snuggling
close for warmth, and fell into an uneasy sleep filled with dreams of Procris.