Chapter 15
Atalanta
Grief was an ocean, and I drifted through it forever.
My throat ached from screaming and my skin felt gritty with the dust that was all that remained of Meleager. In the den I
scrounged under the Argo’s deck, I fell into an uneasy sleep full of fire, waking only to darkness.
My friend, my first friend, reduced to ash. I understood the cause of Meleager’s sudden fiery end, or at least the rough edges
of it. His mother, Althaea, he told me, pulled a log from a fireplace on the advice of the Fates because her young son’s life
was tethered to it. It seemed that, in her anger, Althaea had thrown the log back into the fire again.
A mother killing her own child. I could scarcely conceive of the horror. Even my birth parents had possessed the grace to
discreetly abandon me in the wilderness instead of burning me alive.
Death. I’d seen it time and time again, had caused it myself whenever I hunted in order to eat. But this was different. This
was the loss of a singular, unique individual, someone who could never be replaced.
I should have seen this coming. Hadn’t the goddess herself warned me in a dream?
The dream came to me on the first night I spent at Brauron with Procris. In the dream I was standing in a moonlit clearing, the night trees reaching up around me. Then she appeared: Artemis, like the moon itself given human form. She drew close and clasped my hand like a friend. We ran together
over silent hills, hunting shadows across the mountainside for what felt like an eternity. But of course it came to an end,
as all things do. Dawn arrived, shattering the dream. As it did, Artemis turned to me.
If you love, you will lose yourself, the goddess said.
The words followed me into the waking world. At the time, lying next to Procris, they had seemed absurd—not a divine message,
but the imaginings of a sleeping mind. Now, I was not so sure. I’d lost part of myself when Procris left, and with the death
of Meleager, I’d lost even more.
If you love, you will lose yourself.
The goddess herself had told me what would happen, and I had not listened. My feelings for Meleager were different from my
love for Procris, but friendship was a type of love too, and I was forever changed.
Despite my grief, the relentless needs of life crept in. My stomach grumbled, and my muscles cramped. My tongue flicked out
to touch lips dry with thirst. How long had it been since I took more than a sip from the waterskin? Longer still since I
had last eaten.
There came a distant grating sound that I recognized as the hull of the Argo being pulled to shore. Odd, since the light streaming into my hiding place told me it was not evening yet. We had not come
ashore to sleep; we were here for some other reason.
The sound of feet coming down the stairs. “The Argo has arrived in Colchis,” Jason said. “I thought you would like to know.”
I waited for him to leave, but Jason did not move.
His weight shifted awkwardly from one foot to another, making the boards creak.
“I know what it is like to lose someone,” he said finally.
“It feels like the darkness will never end. But . . . if you never leave this place, nothing will ever change. Do you want that? Would Meleager have wanted that for you?”
Anger filled me. “You have no idea what Meleager would have wanted.”
“You’re right,” Jason replied mildly. “I didn’t know him well. But I think he’d have hoped for better things for you.”
Jason left, his footsteps sounding up the stairs.
Sitting up in my nest, I thought about Jason’s words. If you never leave this place, nothing will ever change. As much as I disliked the man, he had a point. Changelessness was the provenance of the gods and the dead. I was neither.
Meleager would have no patience for my wallowing. And besides, there was still something I needed to do. Someone I needed
to find.
I rose from my makeshift bed and walked into the light. The deck was a flurry of activity, with the other Argonauts unloading
tents and amphorae, eager to be on solid ground. I moved among them like a ghost.
Leaning on the railing, I took in the scene stretched before me: a beach leading up into dunes shaggy with grass, and above
it all the looming majesty of green mountains.
Colchis, the edge of the world.
A flicker of movement in the long grasses of the dunes caught my eye. Was that a young woman I saw, clad in a purple dress?
I tried to peer closer, my curiosity roused. But she was gone before I could be certain she was not an illusion caused by
hunger and thirst.