Chapter 55
Atalanta
On the slopes of Mount Parthenion, I stared at the empty ruins of the hunters’ hut.
The door had fallen in, and the windows were like the hollow eye sockets of a skull. The small garden was overrun with weeds,
and no chickens or barking hounds disturbed the silence.
The old man and woman must have left to live out the rest of their lives in civilization, I told myself sternly, ignoring
the prickle of tears in my eyes. They were too old and tough for the forest to claim. Still, I felt a strange heaviness in
my chest as I turned away.
Next I went to the den of my mother bear, warm and scented with milk. The bear was the same as she had always been, though
her muzzle was whiter and a new litter of cubs tumbled in the grass. She acknowledged me with a swipe of her tongue, then
turned back to her children. Her message was clear: I am pleased to see you, but I am busy right now.
I left half a deer carcass for her and went back to my cave by the stream.
To my irritation, my blankets and bowls had been rifled through, and the sharp scent of animal musk filled the cave. I saw
the glint of eyes from the shadows; a family of foxes had taken up residence. I could not in good conscience evict a vixen
and her nursing kits, so I decided to share my home.
In truth, I found myself glad for the fox family’s company. The antics of the kits provided a distraction from the melancholy that settled upon me, as day after day passed with little to distinguish one from another.
A few months after my return, I sat under the rustling leaves of a great oak and felt as though I might go out of my mind
with boredom. A peculiar pressure built inside me, like a cyst about to burst. Once I’d longed for the silence of the forest,
but now I missed the sound of human voices.
Perhaps it was not so easy, as I’d once insisted, to leave behind the orderly roads of civilization and carve one’s own path.
The idea made me think at once of Medea. She’d asked me to visit, hadn’t she? Maybe I could go see her, and we could talk
as we once had.
With a cry of frustration, I leaped to my feet. No, no, there was no use indulging in navel-gazing meanderings. If I went
to see Medea, nothing would be as it had been; she was a married woman now, and Jason would be there too. I’d pulled Jason
back to his feet when he was about to be trampled on our way out of Libya, but my goodwill did not extend much further.
No, I would not be going to see Medea, not now at least. My heart was still too raw, and I had no desire to spend time around
a newly married couple.
Deeper and deeper into the woods I went, climbing the slopes of Mount Parthenion. I’d come home, but home was not the same.
I stalked the forests in an unending loop, trying to pinpoint what was different. It took some time to realize that it was
not the forest that had changed, beyond the ordinary cycles of the seasons.
It was me.
Solitude no longer came as naturally as it once did.
I’d known belonging and friendship and love as well.
Meleager, my first friend, and Procris, who had initiated me into love.
And Medea too, who had shown me what it meant to be looked after and taught me so much.
To be separated from them was a great bitterness to bear.
Perhaps this was why, when the messenger appeared, I did not chase them off.
I say them because I could not quite tell at first glance if the stranger was male or female. They dressed in hunting clothes like a
man, but their limbs were slender as a girl’s, and their movements like flowing water. A shock of black hair, soft as a raven’s
wing, hung over their forehead.
The stranger crouched down at the mouth of my cave, scratching the ears of one of the fox kits while the others tumbled around
their feet and chewed the lacings of their leather boots.
“What a wondrous home you have,” the newcomer said, looking around to marvel. “Simple, but comfortable.”
“Who are you?” I demanded, holding my spear more tightly. “What do you want?”
The dark-haired one swept a hand into the air, then laid the splayed fingers on their heart and tilted their head to the side,
allowing a little smile to grace their lips.
“I am Melanion, born of Amphidamus,” the stranger said. Their speech was peculiar, relying on the neutral case, whereas a
man would use the masculine and a woman the feminine. Besides that, Melanion was an unusual name—the suffix was a childlike
diminutive, odd for an adult. Almost feminine.
As peculiar as my own name, I supposed.
“And you,” Melanion continued, “I presume to be the hero Atalanta, of Argonaut fame? Oh, what marvels I have heard about you!
Is it true that a fountain of water sprung up where you struck your spear against a rock near Kyphanta? And that you killed
the Calydonian boar?” Melanion’s beautiful black eyes shone.
“I am indeed Atalanta,” I replied warily, caught between curiosity and suspicion. “And it is true that I joined the hunt for the Calydonian boar, though I’ve never heard anything about Kyphanta. Have you really come here just to ask me these things?”
Tension rippled across my skin like a bear raising her hackles, but I was too entranced by this strange visitor to run. Until
that moment, I had not realized how profoundly hungry I was for human company. Besides, this stranger could not be so bad
if the young foxes trusted them.
“Well, not just to ask you those things,” Melanion conceded, “though my curiosity led me to volunteer. I bring a message from your father,
King Schoenus of Arcadia: He greets his long-lost daughter and invites her home.”
My father.
I’d always known that I had a father, as all living things did, but I’d never thought much about him. Why would I, when he’d
abandoned me on a mountain as a baby?
But the Argo’s journey left me changed. I missed the human world and wanted a place in its heart. A father, a family, would give me that.
Melanion led me to the palace of Arcadia—if such a structure, much less imposing than the royal dwellings I had seen during
the journey of the Argo, could be called a palace. My father, Schoenus, waited outside. He was middle-aged, and the moon of his scalp emerged from
a ring of silver-white hair. I marveled at the way his voice sounded like an older, male version of mine and how his cheekbones
echoed the shape of my own. Perhaps this was what it meant to have a family—to see your face reflected in the faces around
you and to know that you were not alone.
Schoenus pulled me into an embrace, smelling of sweat and garlic. I hugged him back, sighing with the simple comfort of it.
My father released me, then turned to the gathering crowd.
He pressed a possessive hand to my back as he announced that his famous daughter, Atalanta, had at last returned.
It had taken Schoenus some time to draw the connection between the proud hero of the singers’ tales and the infant he’d abandoned on Mount Parthenion so long ago.
But when he did, he’d sent for me right away.
Feeling awkward and exposed in front of so many staring eyes, I smiled nervously. In the crowd, the messenger Melanion tried
to catch my attention, but I ignored them. My attention was fixed on something else.
“My mother?” I asked hopefully, once the crowd had dispersed.
My father’s face fell, and his eyes closed in profound pain. “She died giving birth to a stillborn child some years ago. I
never did get around to marrying again.”
The words landed like a blow. My mother, dead. I would never get to know her, never speak with her. The knowledge weighed
down my limbs like lead.
Still stinging with this disappointment, I allowed myself to be led into the palace. Schoenus showed me the spacious chambers
that were to be mine and the servant girls with downcast eyes who would tend my every need. He showered me with gifts: costly
dresses, jewelry, and perfumes, which I accepted with puzzled gratitude. The only gift I liked was a nasty-tempered bay mare
called Kastana after her color and the chestnuts she liked to eat. I took the expensive perfumes my father gave me and rubbed
them into her mane.
A week or so after my arrival, Schoenus announced there would be a feast. My maids gathered to prepare me, scrubbing my flesh despite my protestations that I could bathe myself, thank you very much.
They dressed me in a too-long chiton that went all the way to my ankles and made me stumble over its hem, then gathered up my hair in an elaborate style, briefly evoking the bittersweet memory of Medea.
But where her ministrations had been soothing, these were intolerable; the maids pulled at my scalp and yanked my hair, conditioning it with oils and styling it with hot irons.
I gritted my teeth against the discomfort, reasoning that this was simply how things were done in the human world and I’d best get used to it.
On my way to the feasting hall, a sudden sound caught my attention. I watched in utter astonishment as a human being tumbled
from a hall window, landing in a sprawl of limbs and causing my maids to shriek.
The fallen figure looked up, and I recognized the face of the messenger Melanion. “Sorry,” they said with a lopsided grin,
illuminated by sunlight streaming through the window. “This isn’t quite how I pictured it, but here goes: Marry me, Atalanta.
I think I would be a good match for you. I am a fellow lover of the woods and a skilled runner, though terrible with a bow.”
I stared slack-jawed. If this was a proposal, it was an utterly preposterous one. The maids whispered to each other, and a
few young men passing by chuckled. Melanion seemed untroubled by all of it, looking at me as though we were alone in all the
world.
“What?” I said, certain I’d misheard.
“Marry me!” Melanion repeated brightly. “Though I may not seem like it, I am an enthusiastic hunter. Though perhaps more a
fox than a bear like you.”