Chapter Fifty-Nine
There were seven women and nine children.
The decision should have been an easy one, for without our acceptance, they would be condemned to death.
But we had to see beyond the moment. If we accepted these, more could follow.
Or worse, men could seek them out. The debate rolled late into the night, yet in our hearts, even the most fearful knew it would end the same way.
“They will stay,” I said, my tone declaring the finality on the matter that would otherwise have been debated well past dawn. “I will go now and speak to Sotiria.”
The dismissal had only been implied, but the women knew well enough what my words meant and rose to their feet. Soon, only Damaris remained.
“You wish to come with me?” I said, assuming that was her reason for lingering. But she shook her head, and her pupils grew so wide it was as if she had been plunged into darkness. Only when every last woman was out in the night did she speak.
“What is it? Something is wrong?” I said.
She nodded. “I did not wish to say anything in front of the others for fear it would alarm them, but when we met with the women on the road, I saw six crows circling.”
“Six crows?” I questioned.
“They circled to the left, looping three times around these women. I believe if we are to offer them refuge, there will be consequences.”
Her face was stern, and I recalled the woman I had met when I first arrived in Ninniya, the quiet waif who looked at me with such a curious gaze it caused my skin to prickle. It had been a long time since I had viewed Damaris in such a manner. Resting my hand on her arm, I spoke.
“Thank you. I believe what you saw, but I am sure you are mistaken, for I saw only swallows and sparrows. Artemis has protected us always and will protect these women too now. Now come, they will be waiting to hear our answer.”
Within days, it was as if Sotiria and her women had always been with us.
They may have provided only seven more pairs of hands, but they were hands that worked tirelessly, from dawn to well past dusk.
They took their meals last, washed other women’s and children’s clothes with their own, and constantly sought out ways to aid us.
Sotiria had not lied about Boryana’s skills at sewing.
Still, it was hard to look at her handiwork without a throb forming in my chest as I remembered Melitta.
But she had underplayed her own skill with wood.
In a matter of minutes, she could whittle an arrow that was smoother and straighter than I could have achieved in a full day of trying.
Our first winter without the men, we thrived.
Every home was warm, every belly full, and every woman survived.
Those accomplishments alone would have been enough to fill my heart, but there was one other.
One that happened before the snow came, when the leaves still fell from the trees.
And as with so many things in my life, it was Aina who was central to making it happen.
“I believe if we could coax the rest of the herd closer to the village, they might stay there,” she said. “Myrina is growing more comfortable around the houses, Erebus too. We could build them stables. That way others could learn to ride as well.”
“I think perhaps we have enough tasks at hand before we start building stables,” I replied, anticipating how Erebus would feel confined within four walls. I believe that he, like the rest of us, felt comfortable in the village, because he held the power to leave.
“But you will think about it?” she asked, still with that childlike eagerness in her voice.
Though no stables were built, the herd stayed close throughout the coldest months, and just as she had dreamt, more and more of the women took to their backs.
Yet when spring arrived, the first of our fears came to fruition.
I was riding Erebus that morning, and height offered me a vantage point from which I could see down the valley. My stomach knotted. A mass of women and children walked the path up to Ninniya.
Kicking my heels into Erebus, we galloped the short distance to the rest of the women.
“Otrera!” Sotiria was the first to see me. “I did not know. I promise you. None of us did.”
“You know these women?”
“I believe so.” Tears filled Sotiria’s eyes as she spoke. “I believe it is the rest of the women from the village.”
“Village?” Damaris spoke. “This looks as though half of Athens has come for us.”
“I promise you, Otrera, they have no weapons. No means or knowledge of how to attack.” One winter together, and Sotiria had already learned enough about me to know my first thoughts were about protection.
“They are peaceful, like us. They come only for sanctuary. I fear their lives worsened after we left. They will help you, Otrera. Just like we did.”
I did not count the numbers, but from my brief study, I knew there were a hundred more mouths to feed at least.
“Otrera, look, please.” Damaris tilted her head upward as she spoke. There, circling above the lines of women and children, were six crows. “It is the same as I saw before. We should not do this.”
These were not swallows or sparrows, and a shallow apprehension fluttered within me, though I quashed it. I did not have time to pander to a different god’s superstition. I trusted Artemis.
“This is who we are now.” I spoke as much to myself as to Damaris. “We are the women who stand together.”
The women worked like Sotiria had promised they would: without question or complaint.
Sotiria herself fell into the role of spokeswoman, and she had good instincts too.
The first time I introduced myself, she had already separated them out into those who she believed would work best with the herd, those who should be given the task of cooking or washing, and those who could work in carpentry or learn to hunt and ride.
Of all the women who now lived with us, over a dozen were capable with a bow, and a similar number could ride to some degree.
I was not the only one to have brought down a doe or a wild boar, and it soon became so commonplace that we did not even celebrate such a hunt with great festivities unless it was a person’s first kill.
One evening was such an event. Tasia, a woman from Sotiria’s village, had headed out with Damaris and Iphinone.
She was the seer, the oldest woman to have made the trip to Ninniya, and her skin bore the evidence of her longevity.
The left side of her face was scarred, puckered, and stretched with pink skin, while her left eye was so opaque no light could penetrate it.
She had been that way as long as Sotiria had known her, and the scars were a gift from her late husband in return for providing him with only daughters.
The energy and life that Tasia brought to the village were infectious. She would hunt at daybreak, weave baskets in the morning, and even learned to ride, though only upon the most docile of mares. But it was at nighttime when she truly came to life.
While the fire crackled and gray smoke wove its way to the stars, Tasia would tell us the stories of the gods.
She would recount these tales with such animation that her voice quivered.
Her quiet whispers were so intense they could hold the attention of the most restless child, while her laughter could have tears rolling down your cheeks.
The night she shot her first arrow into the hide of a boar was a celebration indeed.
The women had been with us for a full year.
They had survived their first winter in shelters built on the hillsides, formed friendships with the women in Ninniya, and proved themselves integral to our way of life.
On nights like that one, where we all came together, I would find myself wondering how we had ever considered turning these women away. They were my home now. My family.
In truth, the animal would have likely survived, and it was my own shot, fired from Erebus, that brought it down, but it was a victory for Tasia, and every woman in the village came to celebrate and listen to her that night around the firelight.
“She had no desire or love for him. For he was hideous.” She was recounting the tale of Aphrodite and Ares.
It was one I knew, having clung to it as a child.
Like so many, I had longed for the gifts of Aphrodite, with all her beauty, for who did not yearn for men’s attention or adoration?
But times had changed. I still wished for men to fall to their knees for me, but in terror, not love.
Like all the women, I knew how the story ended.
I knew how Hephaestus had trapped the lovers in a golden web of his own creation and how, upon Zeus’s ruling, Aphrodite and Ares were separated, nevermore to meet.
But Zeus did not have the infinite power he so liked to believe, and if the whispers on the wind were true, the lovers’ trysts continued.
We waited in silence for Tasia to complete the tale, to recount the climax of Aphrodite and Ares’s entrapment, but as she told us the part where the watchman fell asleep, a voice cut through the night.
“Sotiria! Tasia! They are coming. They are coming!”