Chapter Fifteen
I quickly fell into a rhythm with work, joining the women in the morning, then eating with them by the river before fetching my wages and heading home.
Some days after bathing, we would not head straight back to collect our wages.
Mostly, we lay beneath the shade of the poplar trees, talking, listening, or simply staring at the feathery clouds as they hung in the sky above us.
Occasionally, we headed to the fields beyond the village to lay snares for rabbits.
It was a simple life, but within two moons, I was more at ease there than I had ever been. Still, I had yet to bond with everyone.
Damaris struggled to look me in the eye, and I suspected she only tolerated my presence because of Eleni, who was desperate to sweep us all into one great family.
Thalassa spoke incessantly of her wonderful and kind husband, Xanthus, despite the bruises that constantly patterned her skin, while Glykeria—who held no formal role—was quick to boss others around and point out errors in their tasks.
There was one with whom I quickly formed a friendship, however. Althea.
She was pragmatic to the point of bluntness, with a dark and dry humor that left the older women scowling and the younger women with tears in their eyes.
Though she did not extend her smiles freely, when she did, they could light an entire room.
Never once did I hear her complain about the work, and she was always the first to aid others who were struggling.
Yet with all my newfound friendships and freedom, there was still something I longed for. I wished to see the horses again.
It was on the day of Cybele that Iphinone finally suggested I join her and Aina. Melitta was keen to offer her libations to the mother goddess, and out of respect for my own mother, I too wished to make an offering to the deity. But not until I had seen Aina with the herd again.
“They will be south of the river.” Aina walked in front of us, visibly irritated by our slower pace.
I had extended the invitation to Althea, who strolled with Iphinone and me, all of us lethargic from the heat.
“The fruit is falling from the trees there now, so they will go there late morning to feed. We must hurry. It’s so much harder to find them if they go off into the forest.”
“Does she always know where the horses are?” I asked Iphinone.
“They follow a pattern through the seasons. Aina had it memorized by our third year here. She is rarely wrong,” Iphinone replied, “and is most upset at times when she is. I think sometimes she wishes she were a horse.”
Though she spoke with a tone of weathered frustration, I could hear the pride in Iphinone’s voice.
Her daughter’s skill had little use in a life such as ours, but it brought her joy, and that was a rare thing.
As I watched Aina skipping up ahead, her unbridled glee gleaming out into the world around her, I felt a sudden flash of jealousy.
I could not recall anything I had ever loved with such passion as Aina loved these horses.
“Do you join them like this often?” I turned my attention to Althea. Her strides were so long that her pace was almost languid.
“I have been before, but I should come more often.”
“What about other women? Other children? Do none of them join you?”
“The children would be glad to come,” Iphinone said. “But their parents are understandably fearful. Most have come once, seen the size of the beasts, and decided not to return.”
The walk was long, but the time went swiftly as we talked.
Just as Aina had said, the herd came into view on the south side of the river.
The child raced toward them, calling out their names.
I too wished to run, to see the magnificent animals up close once again, but the women were talking and laughing, and I did not want them to think me childish, even though I was closer in age to Aina than her mother.
By the time we reached them, Aina stood in the center of the herd with the same chestnut mare from before nuzzling at her thigh. I assumed the animal hoped to find some food hidden in the folds of Aina’s chiton, although as the child wove her way back to us, I was proved wrong.
“May I, mother? Please, she wants me to. Look!”
The chestnut mare was peering intently at us as if she understood Aina’s words and was waiting to hear the outcome. At this point, I was unsure what Aina was requesting, but Iphinone knew exactly what her child wanted.
“You cannot do it there. She is in the middle of the herd,” Iphinone said.
“She will follow me out. Look.” Aina turned to face the horse and made a noise by smacking her tongue against the top of her teeth. The mare’s ears pricked up. “Myrina! Come, Myrina!”
Belonging to me. That was what the name meant. Only a child, I thought, could be so presumptuous to name a wild beast such a thing. A child or perhaps a man.
“She has named them?” My voice was close to a whisper, my eyes fixed on the mare, though Iphinone heard.
“All of them. Every one.”
“And do they know their names?”
“This one does.”
It was beyond refute, as the chestnut mare wove a path to us, almost identical to the one Aina had taken. It was as if she were a street dog, following someone for scraps of meat. Rather than watching with amazement, as I was doing, Iphinone let out a deep sigh of resignation. Aina’s smile widened.
“You stay close,” Iphinone said firmly.
Aina’s grin was now so wide that my heart drummed with anticipation. Still, I did not fully understand what I was about to observe. Not until Aina reached up, grabbed a fistful of the horse’s mane, and pulled herself up onto the mare’s back. I let out a gasp of surprise and fear.
“The horse allows her to sit on it?”
I had seen horses hitched to chariots that would race around in circles and mules laden with bags of flour, and occasionally small children perched on top of the oldest, most gentle beasts.
But never had I seen this—a girl sitting atop a wild animal nearly twice her height.
And yet this surprise was nothing compared to when Aina squeezed her thighs around the animal and it took off, racing through the grass away from us as if they were one.
A rider. This girl was a rider.