by Suzanne Weyn
With a bow, Siddhartha left.
“Go!” the nameless one shouted after him. “Go sit under a bodhi tree for the rest of your life, for all I care.”
Not much afterward, my rowdy friend staggered out into the night alone, clutching his flask of wine.
This morning I found him on the side of the road. I thought him dead and stepped closer. His robe was askew and at first I thought he had been run through at the side with a sword or spear. On closer inspection I realized it was a purple birthmark in the shape of an awful gash.
I jumped back in surprise when he lifted his head and greeted me. I have never seen a happier grin on any man.
Athens, 415 B.C.E.:
Luck be with you, Artem, my son. May the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus bestow you with blessings. I leave you here with this note on your blanket, on this sea-thrown rock.
It may be that you will die here, but I would rather this than that you be born into slavery. I am a slave from Egypt sold here to Greece, the land that now rules my home. You are a son of Egypt but your father is a freeborn citizen here in Athens. He knows not whether you are boy or girl, only that you should be put out as not to bring disgrace.
Sewn into your blanket are these green peridot earrings brought from an island in the Red Sea. They have been in my family for all time, passed on from one generation to the next. They are all I have of wealth. Trade them well if you must, for they have value.
Good-bye, my little one, my Artem.
Hyacinth stood on her marble balcony, eyes intent on the spot in the woods where she’d seen the stranger emerge at sunset the day before. Tucking a loose strand of wavy brown hair into the golden cord that held her hair back, she studied the tree line for signs of movement.
Her eyes wandered over to the rocky Aegean Sea coast at the left of the woods. The dull roar of its pounding surf drifted toward her on the breeze. It was there that he’d gone yesterday after he shot the hare, and later a duck, with his arrow.
She still thought of him as the wild boy. Though it was clear enough from the glimpse she’d caught of him the other day that he’d grown into a young man.
There he was.
The orange trail of Apollo’s descending sun chariot outlined the wild boy’s tight, black curls as he stepped from the woods. His white tunic showed off a leanly muscular physique. She remembered his strikingly black, almond-shaped eyes from the times she’d seen him before.
Hyacinth hurried down the side steps, lifting her long, tan tunic dress so it wouldn’t trip her. A dull pain in her right foot abruptly slowed her, throwing her onto the railing for support.
Breathing out in exasperation, disgusted at her lameness, she cursed the weak foot that had, since birth, turned under at the most critical moments. More than once, while dancing or running, it had mortified her by bringing her crashing to her knees. No physician could account for it other than to say it was perhaps a curse from the gods for some sin of her parents.
Rubbing the offending foot, she set out at a slower pace, keeping along the edges of the wide yard that ended in acres of thick woods. Her father kept it uncultivated so he and Hyacinth’s two older brothers could hunt. Her parents had forbidden her to go too far, considering the woods unsafe for a girl.
Still, the woods weren’t wholly unfamiliar to her, since she was not, by nature, inclined toward obedience. Now she picked her way through the sun-flecked trees, taking care with her bad foot, coming ever closer to the young man who had been the wild boy.
His name was Artem. She knew because she had heard it years ago at the marketplace. He had been picking through a pig trough, looking for food, when first she saw him.
“Never you mind about him,” her slave woman, Charis, had chided roughly when she’d noticed Hyacinth studying the boy.
“But why must he eat among the pigs?” Hyacinth had asked.
Charis turned her attention to the fish laid out on the iced table before her, searching for the freshest catch. “He’s trash, no doubt abandoned by some slave,” she replied as she lifted a small octopus and stretched its tentacle to examine. “He’ll be scooped up and sold into slavery himself sometime soon. Mark my words. That’s what happens to such as he.”
Artem had looked up from the trough and had walked toward them, almost as if he had sensed he was the subject of their discussion. Hyacinth straightened her posture, brushed back her long curls, and resolved to know him better.
She tilted her head in confusion as he walked by her without even a glance.
Nadim, the fish seller, scooped an eel from the iced table and tossed it to him. Its silvery, snakelike body twisted as it sailed through the air. “Here’s supper for you, my young friend.”
With a delighted laugh, the boy caught it.
“The men have a fire out back, Artem. Tell them I said to cook it up for you,” Nadim added.
The eel undulated in his hand but Artem held tight, observing it merrily. He noticed that Hyacinth was keenly studying the eel, so he thrust the creature at her, intent on watching a young girl scream in disgusted terror.
Determined not to show the expected weakness, Hyacinth instead reached forward to pat the creature on the head.
Artem’s upper lip quirked into a grudging smile, and she knew she’d won his respect.
Since that day, Artem had been in her head. The idea of living by her own wits, as he did, inflamed her imagination. It thrilled her when she caught sight of him in the street or at the market. As the years passed, she began to think of him as attractive.
He was newly in her mind because she’d caught sight of him in the square not long ago. And then, suddenly, he had appeared — practically in her own backyard.
Her heart had leaped excitedly, so glad to see that although he was a thief, poaching a hare on her father’s land, he was not yet a slave. Now that he had appeared again this day, as she’d hoped he would; she was determined to speak to him, to learn what his life was like.
At the seaward edge of the woods, she caught sight of him again, moving toward the gently sloping, rocky shore. Reaching up for a branch, she hoisted herself onto it, shimmying out onto the limb for a better view.
His bow was drawn and aimed. Looking skyward, she spotted his target. A fat gull descended to the shoreline for its supper of fish.
His arrow whistled through the air and struck the bird while it was still in flight. The gull plummeted from the sky into the ocean surf.
He disappeared from view as he ran to claim his prey. Curious, she crawled farther onto her branch, straining to see where he’d gone.
Minutes passed as she waited for him to re-emerge.
He did not appear again, and she began to worry. Had Poseidon pulled him under?
More time passed, and still he did not return.
She had pushed herself up to get a better view when something clamped on to her right foot. Crying out in surprise, she tumbled from the tree, falling on top of Artem. The two of them landed on the ground, the dead gull he held sliding into the leaves.
“Let me go!” she demanded.
He laughed and held tight.
Lunging onto his hand with both of hers, she struggled to pry his fingers loose. “Let go, I say!” The pain in her right foot flared again. “Ow!” she shouted.
At this, he released her, jumping back. “Are you all right?”
“No! Oh, it’s not your fault — not all your fault, anyway. This cursed foot always gives me trouble!” She looked up at him sharply. “What did you do that for?”
“Spies should be prepared to be caught,” he said lightly, getting to his feet.
“You’re trespassing, you know,” she said, merely to regain some dignity as she hopped to her feet. With her weight on her left, she smoothed her skirt.
“I have not poached on your father’s land,” he defended himself. “The gull was in the air and therefore belonged to any hunter.”
“Yesterday you poached.”
His eyes narrowed. �
��How long have you been watching me?”
She simply shrugged. “Long enough. You are Artem, the wild boy,” she said.
He laughed with a bit of scorn. “So I’m called. Aren’t you frightened that I might rip you to shreds and devour you?”
She shook her head. “I’ve seen you before. And I saw you in the town square not long ago. You were listening to that old philosopher speak.”
“Socrates. I could listen to that old man speak forever. Never have I heard words spoken with such eloquence and such intelligence.”
“You speak quite eloquently yourself,” she pointed out. “Who taught you?”
“The sailors down at the docks, mostly.”
“I’ve never heard sailors to be known for their eloquence,” she commented.
This made him laugh. “No, you’re right. I’ve learned words from them I would never repeat in your presence. They can be a rough group. What I meant was that some of them know how to read and write, and through the years one or another of them has taught me. Once I could read, I taught myself by reading anything I could. And, as you say, I love to listen to the philosophers in the square.”
She pointed to a scroll tucked into the belt of his tunic. “Is that one of the things you read?” she asked.
He pulled the scroll out and handed it to her, but she shook her head, waving it away. “I wish I could read, but my father believes education is wasted on a girl.”
“That’s a shame,” he sympathized. “Though I realize it is the common opinion, it’s a stupid one.”
“I would like to learn to read,” she admitted for the first time in her life. To have said this to anyone else would have been to invite scorn and ridicule so she never said it, barely allowed herself to think it. He was so different from everyone else, though. She felt that she had always known him and could trust him with her most secret thoughts. It made no sense and yet the feeling was so strong.
“You should learn,” he said. “I will teach you if no one else will.”
“Would you?” she checked eagerly.
He nodded. “I don’t like the idea of anyone being kept down, especially you.”
“Why especially me?” she asked, surprised by her own boldness.
A flush of color came to his cheeks. “Because you’re not a silly girl. You deserve to learn.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
“I just know,” he murmured quietly. “We can start with this. It’s a copy of a work by Herodotus the historian. It is his description of life in ancient Egypt. Though Greece rules Egypt now, it hasn’t always been the case. It’s very interesting to read about their old culture. I am told my mother was of Egyptian descent, though I never knew her.”
“I can see the Egyptian in you, just a bit,” she said.
“We’ll read it together,” he agreed. “Let me put this bird down first.”
She trailed him into the woods until they came to a campsite. There he gutted his gull and tied it upside down from a tree. “Is this where you live?” she asked.
“I live wherever is convenient,” he told her. “When you have no home it’s easy to move as soon as you’re discovered.”
“Don’t you want a home?” she questioned.
“I don’t want anything other than to live each day as it comes. To want things is to be constantly disappointed.”
“You don’t want a job or a family?”
“Definitely not a job,” he said with a laugh. “Any job is a form of slavery. You toil and labor like Hercules … and for what? A few drachmas and an early death?”
“Why are you so concerned about slavery?” she asked him. “You are not a slave.”
“Aren’t you concerned about it?” he countered. “A woman in Athens is a man’s slave with no rights, no freedoms.”
Hyacinth laughed with scorn. “I do not toil or labor like a slave. In fact, I do just about nothing all day. I would almost rather be a slave.”
“You’re a silly girl to say that,” he scolded. For the first time, she sensed disapproval from him, and was sorry for it. She remembered Charis telling her that he was the child of a slave and could be dragged into slavery himself. How foolish she must have sounded to him.
“House slaves do all right,” he went on, “but in the mines and quarries slaves know only a life of grueling toil with no respite.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She was eager to change the subject, realizing that she had sounded shallow and probably stupid to him. “Tell me what you have learned about ancient Egypt.”
Artem sat beside her on a flat rock and unrolled the scroll. “I’ll point to the words as I read,” he said. “That way you’ll get the sense of how the written words and the spoken words line up. It’s how I began to learn,” he said.
Hyacinth was fascinated as he read the words of Herodotus to her. According to the Greek historian, many of the customs the Greeks thought of as their own had actually been brought back to Greece by travelers to Egypt. He claimed that even their gods and goddesses were simply versions of the Egyptian gods, that the Greek goddess of fertility, Demeter, was the same as the Egyptian goddess Isis, but only by another name, and Dionysus was known in Egypt as Osiris. “Do you know that they had gods and goddesses who were half animal and half human, like Anubis the dog-headed god? They had two goddesses who were both half cat, half woman. They were named Bast and Sempket,” he told her. “It’s similar to our Pan, and the other centaurs.”
“I heard that they worshipped cats. I have recently been given an African wildcat,” she mentioned. “My father received it from a merchant sailor who brought it on a ship from Egypt. I’ve named it Baby and love it so much.”
“Herodotus mentions the wildcats,” Artem told her, finding it in his text. “The first ones were brought here when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt.”
Herodotus described so much: the clothing, the ceremonies, the daily life of the average Egyptian, as well as the ways of the pharaohs. Artem paused in his reading and looked up from the scroll. “He writes so well. Somehow I can just see it all so clearly.”
Hyacinth nodded enthusiastically. “I feel as if I am right there.”
“It’s true,” he agreed.
“You read well,” she added. “Do you really aspire to no position in life?”
“Maybe one thing, though it sounds so foolish, you’ll laugh.”
“Tell,” she urged. She enjoyed seeing him less than sure about something.
“I have started a few poems,” he admitted sheepishly. “Not an epic like that told by Homer, telling of war and heroism, gods and monsters. My poems are about nature and its beauty. Sometimes I write about Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, whom I was named for.”
“Who named you?” she asked.
“I was found with a note pinned to me,” he revealed. “A slave woman who had been freed by her dead master found me and raised me until she died five years later. I don’t mind being named for the goddess, since she was the greatest archer.”
“Just like you,” Hyacinth noted.
“I’ve always had skill with a bow,” he admitted.
His upper lip quirked into the slightest smile. It reminded her of the way he’d smiled at her that day in the fish market. She could see he was pleased that she’d remarked on his skill. He seemed proud of it, which meant something mattered to him, at least. So she continued. “You could compete in the Olympic Games with skill such as yours. I believe there’s some sort of prize. It might improve your … situation.”
“Archery seems a blessing Artemis has bestowed on me as her namesake,” he mused aloud. “I have been able to shoot with great accuracy since I was quite small and have never really had an instructor. You’ve given me an interesting idea, though. Perhaps the Olympic Games are something I should look into. After all, they give honor to the gods of Olympus and it might please Artemis.”
“Plus, you could use the prize to better your station in life,” she repeated. “You must want
some comforts.”
He laughed. “The Spartans don’t believe in comforts. They think it weakens the mind and soul.”
“Yes, but we are not Spartans,” she replied.
“No, and nor would I want to be. You’re right. I wouldn’t mind the funds to buy a few of life’s good things,” he admitted. He looked up at her, realizing something. “What’s your name? You haven’t told me.”
“Hyacinth.”
“Ah, a lovely flower,” he said softly, looking at her hard as if trying to really see her. She wanted him to see her, longed to reveal to him all that was beneath her surface. And in the same way, she wanted to dig behind his exterior to the person she could sense was there beneath.
She felt engulfed by his gaze and was seized with the idea that their faces, their skins, were disguises. If they could only pull them off somehow, the real people inside would be revealed and these two souls would recognize each other instantly and love each other deeply.
It was crazy, maybe, but she was sure it was true.
The scroll rolled from his lap, breaking the tension of their gazes.
“Once you have learned to read,” he said, bending to retrieve the scroll, “they’ll all wonder how you know so much. I’d love to see their astonished faces when you know everything books can teach you.” He laughed at the idea, and his eyes shone. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you learn.”
His promise had been to teach her to read but she felt that it meant so much more. “I’ll teach you to read” meant he would cherish her, want the best for her, be her companion as she came to know the world. Hyacinth was as sure of this as if he had sworn it to her. She heard it in his warm tone, saw it in the smile on his face when he looked at her. And it filled her with love for him.
He was the one for her. She just knew.
There was nothing to it, now, but to confess what she had been thinking. Until this moment, the thought had stayed hidden in the back of her mind. Only now did she realize it had been there all along. She angled herself away so she would not have to look at him directly.
“I’ll be fourteen soon,” she began, “and my father is holding a contest of athletic skill in order to choose a husband for me.”