In those earliest days of my exile, there must have been times when I was terrified—when I lay awake, harried by the nightmares I knew would come, or when I wept in a paralysis of pure, unconquerable fear. But if I did, I don’t recall those moments now. I only remember life on Aeaea as a grand challenge, a rousing joy, right from the beginning.
We adapted to our new home quickly, as if the gods had fitted each one of us especially for that unfettered lifestyle—as if we had never been mortal women, but were nymphs and dryads all along. Only now, far from the conventions of the human world that had trapped us, our true natures shone forth like brilliant suns. On that first night, we built a crude hut from driftwood and downed branches; each of us took a turn standing awake beside our little fire while the others slept close together, sheltering in one another’s warmth. There were wolves on the island and, naturally, we feared them—especially Ligeia and I, who had seen first-hand what the teeth and claws of those terrible beasts could do. But by the end of our first morning, we came to understand that the island wolves were all but tame. They had never seen humans before. Artemis blessed them—and us—by removing the wolves’ fear of mankind. Because they had never known any creatures of our sort, who walked on two legs, they did not thirst for our blood.
We found a grove of fruit trees at the foot of the great stone promontory, and, sure we would not go hungry ourselves, we threw crusts of our hard, unpalatable bread to the wolves who sniffed and played around our hut with curious eyes and wagging tails. We laughed at their antics and, when our confidence grew, joined in their games, chasing and tackling the beasts, howling along with them at the rise of every moon. The wolves accompanied us gaily into the forest when, three days into our exile, we made up our minds to build the largest, most beautiful house we could manage—an estate to rival the one Heliodoros had enjoyed back in Colchis.
Our first house was not grand, being made from fallen bits of wood and the few large rocks we could roll across clearings under our combined power. But it was larger than our hut on the beach, with a tight roof and walls that kept out all but the worst wind and rain. We worked from sunrise to full dark, fashioning stones and shells into crude tools, expanding the small natural clearing we’d found at the island’s heart. Our hands blistered and our bodies seemed to grow wearier each day, but we rejoiced in our independence. Like the gods themselves, we made our own world, tailoring a new creation to suit our whims, our fantasies. There was no one to tell us we could not, we may not. Everything seemed possible and permissible; if we could dream up any wild fancy, we could make it real before our very eyes. The only price we had to pay the sweat of our brows and the aching of our energetic young bodies. No men plagued our island, with their restrictions and rules. No father or brother told us what to do, how to live. No man warned us of all the heights we must never aspire to.
We flourished on that island of blessed freedom. And, having only one another to rely on, we came to love each other like sisters. More than sisters, in truth. Love—and other passions, just as strong—blossomed and withered among us as months and years passed. But although we became so enmeshed and tangled, no jealousy lasted long in our utopia. We needed one another to survive. We could not afford the luxury of petty spite; our small, precious world would have disintegrated like a rampart made of sand if we had allowed envy or hatred to take root. The eight of us worked together seamlessly, and gave all things generously, each to the other—even our lovers and closest friends. Together, we had created a woman’s world, one that belonged entirely to us. We owned it with pride, and stewarded it with care. We would not permit anything as useless as jealousy to shatter our beautiful dream.
As much as we loved our island, we soon came to understand that if we hoped to turn Aeaea into a territory as grand as Colchis, we must obtain more resources. Aeaea could not provide everything we needed, after all. Chrysomallo hit upon the idea of lighting a fire atop the stone promontory. We did, tending the blaze in shifts; eventually the first ships approached our shore, drawn in by our smoky banner. This was a tense time for us—indeed, we never grew used to receiving visitors on our shore, for our suspicion of men grew with each passing month. We feared that men would take our island by force—or take us by force—and ruin our happiness forever. But without better tools, we had no hope of making our most ambitious dreams a reality.
Shortly after our arrival on Aeaea, I coaxed some of my precious cannabis seeds to sprout in a sunny grove near the island’s south shore. Now the plants were flourishing. That precious, potent herb was our best currency in those early days. The first men who came, seeking the source of our smoke, were eager to trade for the dried leaves and sticky, pungent buds. We secured axes, spears, and a fine bow with arrows, for a mere handful of our cannabis. At first, I worried that news of my little garden would spread, and men would come in droves, overwhelming our island and shattering our peace. Instead, my garden proved a sort of palisade. Men seemed reluctant to approach, even though the promise of my plants drew them powerfully. Now, looking back, I believe my cannabis contributed to the rumors about our island—stories of the strange society of women who spurned men, who carried out all the needful acts of life without any masculine guidance. I sat at the heart of those rumors, the exiled daughter from Colchis, cast off from her father’s house for the crime of murdering her husband, and accused of all manner of witchery. No doubt, the rare herb I cultivated became part and parcel of my legend, for it induced a trance-like state of euphoria in all who partook of it. Who but a witch could conjure such a feeling?
With time, we obtained a flock of sheep for meat, milk, and wool; we bred our herd with care until they were hardy and tough, well suited to life on Aeaea. If our friends the wolves took a sheep now and then, we considered it no more than their due. They had been kind to us, when they might have savaged us instead. We traded for spindles and distaffs, then a small but serviceable loom. Eumelia taught us all how to spin and weave; Ligeia taught us to ferment sheeps’ milk into a potent drink. She taught us, too, how to culture the milk into a fine, tasty cheese. Those goods we traded, along with the cannabis, for ever-better tools for our hunting and building, our gardening and shepherding. Furniture and finer things followed as the produce of our island grew.
The gods even blessed us with two well-made boats. They washed up on our shore, days apart—first a small one, which we used to visit nearby islands ourselves, and then a larger boat, capable of carrying us across the open waves to the peninsula. Returned to the mainland for the first time in more than a year, we found men willing to carry letters to the families we had left behind. I wrote to Pasiphaë in Minos every month, but never did I send a single word to my father or my brothers. I was dead to them, and was content to be.
We could have left Aeaea—joined society again, taken on new names and identities, made lives for ourselves in the world we had known before, among ordinary people with their expected conventions. But by that time we wanted no part of the life we had known in Colchis. Should I become a daughter and a wife again, owned and controlled by my father and husband? Should I content myself once more with the label of whore’s orphan, when I had known glory as a free woman, ruler of my own island with its own rich trade? And my friends, Anthousa and Demetria, Ligeia and Agathe—would they be glad to sink once more to the low station of kitchen servant? No. We liked Aeaea; it was ours, as no place in the world had ever been, or could ever be. The society we had made together, generous and loving, cooperative and kind, offered far more freedom than we would find anywhere in the world.
The years passed happily. Little by little, we replaced our house of fallen logs with a true estate, fine and tall, fashioned from the stone blocks we had learned to cut and the timbers we had learned to hew. We spent our days hunting in the forest, tending our gardens, and increasing the size and quality of our herds of sheep and swine. We wanted nothing from the outside world, except for the occasional exchange of goods, and a kind word now and then from the lov
ed ones we still remembered.
We certainly did not want men. But men came to Aeaea, none the less.
In the summer of our seventh year on the island, we faced especially trying times. The season had been hotter and drier than usual; our crops of barley and wheat suffered, parched and stricken by stem-blight. The disease of our small fields seemed an ill omen to me, a harbinger of dark times to come. I had not felt such foreboding since my friends and I had first set foot on Aeaea. Later, the figs in our orchard aborted more than half their fruits long before they could ripen, and my apprehension deepened.
My presentiment proved heart-rendingly accurate. As summer neared its end, the happy little cosmos we had made for ourselves was struck by its first tragedy. Knowing our barley and wheat stores would fall well short of our needs, most of our number took to the sea. Only Anthousa and I stayed behind to mind the animals. The women planned to bring in a fine, fat haul of fish, which we would smoke or salt or pickle, and thus keep our bellies full through the cold months of winter. They took both boats, rowing south and east toward the next-nearest cluster of islands. It was an area we had fished before, many times—but something had changed in current and tide.
My friends told me what had happened when they struggled back to Aeaea’s shore. A force like a god’s hand, unseen but all-powerful, had seized both boats, sucking them toward the sharp rocks and high, jagged cliffs of the island we called Anthemoessa. There were four in the large boat, the one we used to visit the peninsula and communicate with our distant families. The smaller boat, manned by Demetria and Ligeia, was more agile, despite having fewer women at its oars. Demetria and Ligeia rowed clear of that unexpectedly violent current and escaped danger. But the larger boat…alas, it could be neither turned nor slowed. When the women saw that our best boat would surely smash upon the rocks of Anthemoessa, three of them jumped overboard, swimming to the smaller, clinging to its sides and oars. But Chrysomallo remained, struggling with the tiller, trying in vain to save one of our most important assets. Demetria and Ligeia shouted at Chrysomallo to abandon the vessel, to leap in the water and swim to them while she still had some hope of survival. But if Chrysomallo heard their desperate pleas over the crash of surf against sharp black stone, she paid no heed.
The loss of the larger boat was one we could bear. We had long since grown used to life on our island—to making do with what we had, and caring for ourselves. In time, we could trade for another boat, anyhow—though a vessel as large as the one we lost would have cost us dearly.
But Chrysomallo’s death was a catastrophe from which we will never wholly recover. She was friend and lover to each of us; Chrysomallo took a piece of every woman’s heart down into the Underworld. Our world had consisted of eight women. We were eight members of the same body, living as one, functioning in perfect coordination, little thought or compromise required. Now we are seven, and a full year after her death, none of us quite understand how to live without our beloved.
Anthousa felt the death most keenly of all. She had loved Chrysomallo more than the rest of us put together—they had been lovers more often than any other pair. The fact that we’d been unable to recover the body weighed heavily on Anthousa’s heart. When the women had recuperated from their ordeal--physically, at least—we held a ceremony at the water’s edge, entreating Poseidon to look kindly on our lost friend’s spirit, to guide Chrysomallo gently to the shore of that dark and final river.
Anthousa sulked throughout our ceremony, and cast her portion of salt and oil into the sea with a scowl upon her face. “I could have found her body, if you’d only allowed me to take the small boat to Anthemoessa,” she fumed at me later that night. “Those creatures who live on that cursed rock have no doubt eaten her flesh by now!”
“The poor women who dwell on Anthemoessa are not creatures,” I rejoined, as gently as I could manage. The very thought of humans eating the flesh of their own raised stinging bile to the back of my throat. “They are wretches, stranded there by a shipwreck. They are only trying to scratch out a living on their small island, as we do. I am sure they would never think to eat the flesh of a dead woman.”
“If you think them so benign, why haven’t you rescued them from Anthemoessa?” Anthousa shot back at me.
In truth, the wretches of Anthemoessa filled me with a superstitious dread. I was not proud of the feeling, but I could not deny it, either. I had caught sight of them often enough as we’d fished near their island’s shore—so thin and ragged they seemed more bird than human, waving to us in rhythmic but hopeless entreaty. Sometimes, when the wind was right, we could hear them singing hymns to indifferent gods. They seemed to me an omen of terrible luck, of evil and danger. But after defending them, I could never admit as much to my friend.
Before I could think of a sensible reply, Anthousa stormed out of our stone-and-timber house into the cool night. A gust of air blew in as she slammed the door behind her; it guttered the flames of our little clay lamps. The air smelled of cold salt, and tasted like bitter tears.
After that evil day, Anthousa spent almost every waking hour with her falcons. We had traded for a breeding pair of birds four years ago, and Anthousa had taken to the falcons straight away, making them her specialty. She taught herself to fashion hoods and anklets out of soft pigs’ leather, and habituated the fierce creatures to wearing all the trappings of their bondage. When they reproduced, Anthousa reared the downy white chicks by hand, and, when they had grown as large and strong as their parents, she trained her birds to hunt sea birds and ducks. We often ate well, thanks to Anthousa’s falcons—and after Chrysomallo’s death, I was doubly grateful to the birds for the distraction they offered. All of us were content to leave Anthousa to the company of her falcons until her spirit had healed its deep and terrible wound.
Several weeks after the disaster at Anthemoessa, I found myself repairing the fence of the swine-yard for the third time in as many days. One of the posts was rotted through where it sank into the muddy ground; I shored up its base with stones, but it seemed a dubious fix. Even if the post managed to stay upright, the slats pegged to that post seemed spongier and weaker than ever. I sighed as I straightened, working my knuckles into my back to ease my aching muscles. We realized early on that we must be careful to use wood sparingly. It could only be obtained by trade, which was sporadic at the best of times, or by harvesting some of our trees—and if we cut down too many trees, we would quickly strip Aeaea of the forest that sustained us.
I prodded a softening plank with the toe of my shoe; a bit of wood flaked away beneath that gentle pressure. Perhaps after all, I thought, it would be best to sacrifice a few trees to the cause. This year’s herd of swine was getting large and strong—a rare blessing, in this season of ill luck—and I doubted whether the old, oft-reused planks could hold the beasts for much longer.
Chrysomallo had been far better with fences and walls than I. She had possessed a fine mind for solving puzzles and building sturdy, weather-proof structures. My strengths, aside from gathering and administering herbs, ran more toward spinning and weaving. I had seldom been without a spindle in my hand since we’d brought our first sheep to Aeaea; without my spindle now, I felt clumsy and useless as a fish out of water. As I stared dismally at the stones piled around the base of the fence post, the pain of Chrysomallo’s loss swept over me again, a suffocating wave. How long would it take us to learn to live without her?
Beyond the swine-yard, at the edge of our wide clearing, Anthousa spun a lure for one of her young falcons. She was teaching the bird to dive upon its prey, attacking when it heard her whistle. I watched woman and bird for a moment. The lure was a stuffed bit of rag, sewn all over with the battered gray feathers of a gull; Anthousa whirled it round and round, high above her head, by a long, thin strip of leather. She gave the command, a high, piercing whistle that was like the shriek of a harpy. The bird did not dive; it circled ever higher over the clearing, emitting a repetitive cluck. The falcon sounded distinctly upset.
Anthousa cursed.
“What has happened?” I called across the clearing.
She let the lure fall into the weeds, then coiled the leather thong in her hand. “I don’t know. Something has caught Cloud’s eye. He doesn’t like ships; he squawks at them whenever they come too close to our shore.”
“There must be a ship coming in for trading, then.”
“I suppose that must be it.”
I climbed gingerly over the pigs’ fence and went to Anthousa. “We need more wood for the swine yard. If it’s traders, I’ll welcome them, so long as they have a few planks to spare. Let’s go up to the promontory and see who has come.”
It took a quarter of an hour to make our way through the forest and climb to the high, bare peak of our rocky overlook. By then, the ship that had angered Anthousa’s falcon had drawn quite near. As soon as we reached the promontory’s crest, we saw the vast tanbark sail of the newcomers’ vessel. In the afternoon sun, the sail glowed red—wide as a field of blood, blocking all sight of waves and beach below. We crept nearer to the edge of our overlook and peered down.
The ship was so huge, it almost seemed an island unto itself. The pitch-darkened hull sprouted at least two dozen pairs of oars from its sides like the legs of a centipede. There was something sinister about the prow, with its sharp backward curve above two painted, glaring eyes. Just below the foam that danced along the ship’s forward edge, I could see the long, black jut of a wicked ram.
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