Chapter Sixty-Seven
The women were all in agreement; it would be a waste not to use the resources in Oreia, but we could not all go.
There were still women left in Ninniya, those who had remained with the children.
If they did not hear from us soon, they would think the worst, and there could be no predicting the outcome.
Besides, we had dead to bury. I would not offer Aina the insult of delaying her passing to the underworld in return for some copper or gold.
So we split, half the group to each town, as many women riding as was possible. Only those carrying Myrina had to walk, for despite my initial objections, we burned the other horses on the roadside at an altar we built to Artemis.
Damaris was among the women I assigned to go to Oreia. She protested, but I wanted her away from Ninniya for a short while at least. Time to heal and regather herself and be my trusted voice.
I rode with the group back to Ninniya, keeping pace with the women who carried Myrina, swapping out when they became tired. We fashioned a sling to make carrying the animal easier, but it did not change her weight, nor the weight we all felt.
“I will head to the house,” Thalassa said when we arrived. “Tell the others of our victory. They may wish to anoint the bodies of the dead.”
Flies were already buzzing around the corpses. Bathing them in oil would stem their decay, but what for Myrina? We could not do the same for her, and our oil was already in limited supply.
“We will skip the prothesis,” I said. “I do not believe the gods will prevent them from entering the underworld for not having been laid out. We will bury the dead tonight.”
I expected some rebuke, but none came. We dug graves on the outskirts of the village, in the graveyard where Eleni was buried.
As I placed a coin in Glykeria’s mouth, I considered the items beside her: a comb and a mirror.
They were common items to be placed with the dead.
But a thought struck me, and I caught the attention of the others.
“Place a weapon in each of the graves. Bows, arrows, scythes. Whatever they used in life.”
Thalassa hesitated. “Do we have the weapons to spare?”
“If not, we will make more. These women were warriors, and they will be buried as warriors.”
We should have all been there. I regret that now.
Every woman among us should have stood by those graves and paid their respects to those we had lost, thanked these souls for what they had done for us.
The air should have been thick with words of love and gratitude, loud enough for every Olympian—even Hades himself—to hear.
But even though our voices were few, I know now that there was one god who heard our words, even though I refused to believe it at the time.
I cannot say why I was drawn back to my old house that night.
Perhaps it was because I hoped to feel a closeness to Melitta, to a past where I had not yet brought death upon the people I loved.
Perhaps because I knew the women would not come looking for me there, and I would be gifted the solitude I craved but did not deserve.
Either way, when I pushed open the door, which no longer snagged on the broken tile, I moved into the courtyard, closed my eyes, and breathed in the air.
Yet before I had begun to exhale, a sound caused me to start.
“Who is there!” I called, grabbing for my knife, only to curse my own skittishness.
The noise was little more than a rustle.
A mouse or a rat perhaps. That was what I assumed until my eyes landed on a shadow weaving its way toward me.
Its slender body swayed back and forth, its rippling motion as mesmerizing as the colors that danced within a flame, and its own tones were shaded to match.
The red and orange scales of the snake blurred in its motion.
With my breath held, I watched as the creature slithered past me before disappearing into a crack in the wall.
A crack directly beneath the first painting I had ever viewed in this home.
A painting of the god whose very symbol was the serpent. Ares.
I did not know it, but even then, I was being drawn closer and closer to the god of war.