by Diana Tyler
Overwhelmed with shame, I ran home as fast I could, my throat tightening as I tried in vain to restrain a surge of tears. Jasper could barely understand me as I begged him, in between heavy, inconsolable sobs, to bandage the broken wing.
“You must be careful, Iris. Had she been a larger animal, she would’ve defended herself, and then you might have been the one in need of mending,” Jasper warned with a facetious smile. But there was truth in what he said, and I thought to myself I wouldn’t harm another creature unless it first threatened me.
I’m glad I don’t have to stab the wolf again. Within a few seconds, his whimpering stops and his belly stops rising. I drag him by the hind legs onto shore, then walk back down to the water and wash my hands and knife.
Before I leave, I peer into the water. And though it’s unrecognizable at first, I know the face looking back at me by the pain and weariness that encircle its dark blue eyes. It’s the face of the woman I will be until my journey is done – this is Hunter.
CHAPTER FIVE
RUNAWAY
By nightfall I make it to the Port of Ourania. Unlike Enochos, home to the executioner’s lonely vessel and the few combustible pyres of criminals, Ourania’s waters are crowded with cargo ships and fishing boats bringing everything from wood and wheat to squid and silver into the arms of the bustling harbor. Only a half circle of sun sits on the soft, flame-orange horizon, and yet sailors and dockworkers scurry like nocturnal ants, carrying load after load to and from their assigned crafts.
I stop and sit on an empty crate and heave the dead wolf off of my burning shoulders. I’ve been tempted countless times to stop and skin him, making my journey easier, but I talked myself out of it, thinking it wise to keep him as he is so that I can handily prove my skill when I find a tanner to work for. I also hope that it can serve as a reminder – to myself and to others – that I can fend for myself.
Setting my limp and lifeless trophy on the ground, I’m suddenly struck by a nausea that feels strangely like sea sickness, and I realize I’ve traveled nearly fifteen miles today with nothing more than Niobe’s lentil soup to keep me moving.
“You must be starved!”
My empty stomach leaps into my throat as I jump at the deep voice calling to me. I hear the stranger chuckle at my reaction, and as I turn angrily to face the irritant, I’m met with the likeness of a hideous serpent stained into the olive skin of a muscular forearm. I follow its forked tongue up to the familiar face of Tycho, the outspoken outlaw who found it prudent to deem me a Guardian’s killer.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, my lady,” he says, his smile fading at the sight of my furrowed brow framing exhausted eyes.
I look over my shoulder, then back at Tycho with a feeble shrug.
“Expecting someone?” he asks.
“No. I was looking for this lady you speak of,” I joke, with immediate regret. I can’t let this stranger get too close. He’s a Pythonian who has seen the doma I possess. It could be very valuable to him…
“What else am I to call you? Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt?” he says, pointing at the dead wolf at my feet.
“That’s funny. Most people believe that I was named to honor the rainbow goddess.” Most…except for Jasper…
My gaze drifts out to sea, and with my mind I create a faraway world of the wine-dark water, remembering the day I first beat Jasper in a hundred-yard foot race through a field of wildflowers.
“I’d say you are swifter than Iris of the Rainbow, sister!” he’d exclaimed, hands on his knees as he caught his breath.
I watched as his earnest eyes searched the multi-colored meadow beneath us until they settled on a favorite; he picked a purple flower from the earth, shook off the dirt, and examined the specimen proudly. “Now…this is what you are named for,” he said, tucking the Iris blossom behind my ear. “All of the beauty of the rainbow bursting out of one little girl, just like papa said.”
“I don’t think much of the gods, my lady. But you’ve got a pretty flower named for you.” My reverie is shattered as I jump once more at Tycho’s words. Does this Pythonian know my thoughts?
“I don’t mean to scare you.” He pauses, as if contemplating how he might ease my nerves, and then extends his right hand for me to grasp. I stand to take it, trying not to focus on the python’s beady black eyes staring up at me from Tycho’s arm. “Don’t mind him, my lady. He doesn’t bite,” he jests with a broad, dimpled grin that I can’t help but find disarming.
I check myself, recalling the countless times I was warned as a child never to fraternize with a Pythonian:
“Beware the venom of the Pythonian mark.”
It is said that the dark god’s disciples can be as quick to draw blood as they are to offer aid. I think of Tycho interceding on my behalf, stopping Lysander from sending me to the River Styx to join Niobe as her soul floated toward an afterlife I’m terrified to face. He offered help, even saved my life, and now he slithers onto my path again, full of wiles and lethal fangs.
“You’re a servant of Python. It’s your bite I should be wary of,” I say, lowering my hand and returning to my seat. Tycho’s eyes turn with sadness to the sea, and I wonder what troubling memory the quiet waves conjure in his mind’s eye, what depth of evil his devotion to Python has led him to.
“You think I don’t know what your tattoo means? I want nothing to do with you,” I announce tersely. Hoisting the wolf around my shoulders, I turn and make for the nearest cargo ship, one being filled with bushels of barley, beans, dates and figs.
“Wait!” Tycho’s voice shouts the word with the same measure of boldness and desperation it possessed one day ago, when it seized Lysander and prevented an orphan’s homicide. He was determined to keep me alive then, and now I sense it was purely to advance a nefarious mission, perhaps to sacrifice my doma to his god, or offer me as a priestess to be clothed in white and stripped of virtue.
I stop and stand still for a minute, spending every second of it listening to the logic that scolds my halted feet and urges me to keep walking, to forget this Odysseus, this sly deceiver, and hurry onto the boat before he can utter another word. But I turn in spite of myself, ready to spit out the honeyed words he’ll speak, to avert my eyes should he flash a smile that would put handsome Achilles to shame.
But he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t smile. He only skims the sand with his topaz eyes and begins twisting his left hand around his tattooed forearm, as if trying to strangle the ineffaceable serpent.
“I may have to chop off this arm,” he says, giving a half-hearted laugh. I return his good humor with a frown and expel a dissatisfied sigh.
“I renounced my vows to Python nearly a decade ago. I give you my word,” Tycho says, the deep timbre of his voice pleading with me to believe him.
Discerning the suspicion on my face, he continues. “I was – am – a Eusebian also. Perhaps not an orthodox one,” he laughs. “I always wanted to know more about good and evil and where it all came from, to go deeper, beyond what the old stories tell us. I guess you could say it got me into trouble – for a while, at least.”
Not caring to hear Tycho’s testimony of prodigality, nor about any spiritual epiphany, I take a deep breath and look restlessly toward the ship.
“And like your brother,” Tycho continues, changing the subject to appease me, “I wanted a better life for our people, wanted to do everything in my power to drive the Petrodians out of Eirene and win our freedom.”
“What power?” I say, unable to keep the snide remark from sliding off my tongue.
“Exactly, my lady. I had none. I have no doma,” he jokes. I must not look amused because he clears his throat and proceeds as though he never mentioned my gift. “But I found someone who claimed to have all the power in the world,” Tycho says. “And he was willing to give me access to it if I only served him and accepted his mark.” He releases his forearm and looks past me to the cargo ship. “It’s getting dark. That trading ship is headed to Limén. And it appe
ars to be carrying plenty of food. Was I right when I said you must be hungry?” I nod. My stomach churns, and I begin to salivate as I imagine biting into the sweet, pulpy flesh of a fresh ripe fig.
“I’m famished,” I reply, feeling my empty stomach twist itself into an intolerable knot, punishing me for neglecting it so long.
Tycho approaches me and lifts the dead wolf from my back and places it on his own. “Come on then, my lady. We can use your friend here to pay our way!”
“I can’t sell the wolf,” I say, my voice losing strength with every breath. “I have to use it to get work.”
“You can’t get work without having some food first,” Tycho reasons. “And there will be other wolves for you to kill.”
His smile slams the door on a likely trap, and I follow him to the dock. Even if I am being led away to be made a slave again, I am too tired to turn away for caution’s sake, too hungry to care.
The captain was pleased to accept the wolf carcass in return for passage and supper aboard his ship. He laughed that I had not skinned it yet, but I didn’t mind; I was simply glad to be rid of the weight and stench of it. The helmsmen greeted Tycho like they were all old friends, and indeed, they seemed to regard him as one of their own and promptly enlisted him to help ready the oars and sails. Before they could ask me any questions, I sneaked away to the bow like a stowaway and ate voraciously of olives and figs until my stomach could hold no more.
Groaning, I lie back on the boat and rest my hands on a full belly. Staring up at an ill-boding blanket of cloud cover, I feel reason and good sense returning to me, and I silently scream to myself:
How weak you are! You’ve joined yourself to a Pythonian, and perhaps a whole ship of them. If you die tonight, no one could say you didn’t deserve it.
“Please, Tycho…don’t tell us that pretty girl you brought along is your sister…” I hear one say.
“She’s mine if she isn’t!” another shouts.
My cheeks begin to burn with both embarrassment and rage, and I rise to hear what Tycho might say.
“Yes. She is my sister,” he answers. “And she’ll be treated with respect.”
Grumbling and laughter emanate from the deck as the sailors assure him no harm will come to me, then go on about their business until finally oars are grasped and Poseidon prayed to for safe voyage, a ritual of superstitious sailors, no matter their religion.
Moments later, Tycho taps me on the shoulder. “You can sleep in there,” he says, pointing to a small tent two yards behind me. I must appear dubious because he crouches to me and adds, “I’ll be right here. No one will bother you. I’ll wake you when we’re in Limén.”
“I can take care of myself,” I say, wishing my hands would warm just enough for him to see them glow.
“All right, then,” is all he says.
I wait a few minutes after he leaves, then settle into the sackcloth shelter. Quickly, I am lulled to sleep by the ship at sea before regret can collapse this cocoon of safety, as fleeting as it may be.
CHAPTER SIX
LIMÉN
Tonight my dreams are spared from the pyres of Enochos. In its place, the Alpha tale of an ill-fated goddess lifts itself from somewhere deep within my psyche, from a forgotten fragment of my childhood spent beside my Alpha schoolmates who danced and sang her story as if it were a wedding march. It’s the legend of Persephone, one of Zeus’s daughters whose beauty caught the lustful eye of Hades, god-king of the underworld.
“ … He wanted her as his queen, and he called to her by name.
Beside the glowing narcissus, she plucked irises of blue,
And when his chariot rode past her, their dainty petals flew … ”
After Persephone’s abduction, her mother Demeter forbade the earth to produce its bounty. The world would hunger and wallow in winter as long as she was without the daughter she loved more than life itself, more than immortality...
“The seeds made stubborn did not grow; oxen curved their plows in vain,
Cruel famine brought no sacrifices, and priests’ tears brought no rain.
When Zeus perceived this in his heart, he sent Iris down below,
But not even heaven’s aid could melt Demeter’s heart of snow.”
Neither mighty Zeus nor Hades could contend with Demeter’s wrath. But Hades could outwit her. Before he allowed his bride to be ushered back to the realm of mortals, he nourished her with fruit grown in sun-starved orchards, plucked by bloodless hands.
“But with the pomegranate seeds, Hades sealed her infernal reign,
For when spring wilts and cold winds blow, she is his queen again.”
Persephone had seeds of hell itself inside her. And so she was destined to dwell below the earth for one third of the year. During her absence, the earth was forsaken, plagued with barrenness until the day she would emerge like a shining white lily in spring.
The dream wounds me with memories of a past that is not my own. I long for Persephone. I sense my soul reaching out to her as though she were Jasper upon the pyre. If I were a goddess, I would turn Petros into a bitter wasteland until he returned from the underworld. If Zeus truly did exist, I would implore him every hour of every day to intercede and end Hades’s heartless reign before he could destroy another life or curse another world.
But Zeus does not exist. And Duna has been more foe than friend. At least the Alphas have come to see that their myths have no more substance than the funereal dreams of an orphan slave. My people insist their prophecies are true, that their deity cares for them. They gasp prayers into the air and swear that they are heard. Some, like Jasper, are so deeply deceived that they revere the Moonbow as a symbol of Phos’ victory over Python in the Great Sea seven years ago.
In my dream, I look out through Demeter’s eyes as she sways back and forth on an ocean of fading blue irises, a Narcissus petal from her daughter’s hair dangling from her hand. I can feel her heart aching, eyes burning as her gaze penetrates the cloud cover. She is yearning to pray. She wants nothing more than to call upon heaven to save her from her misery. But she dares not; she knows nothing worthy of prayer lies beyond that wall of sky. Nothing could be more futile than waiting for answers from an unseen god or aid from his unknown army. So she will tear her eyes from Mount Olympus forever and exile herself to this gray, grief-stricken sea...
“Mighty Poseidon! Brother of Almighty Zeus! I beseech you! End this storm!”
The melody of my night song shatters as I awaken to the sound of the captain howling like a crazed wolf at the sky. I find myself in hazy twilight, trapped between slumber and the waking world as the shards of the myth continue to pierce me, and my eyes open up to another nightmare.
I peek outside the tent as two great arms of lilac lightning seize the sea just a hundred yards from the ship. I wonder if Duna could see my dreams; perhaps he’s punishing me for recanting the faith I followed blindly as a child.
Staring out into the storm with Demeter’s stubbornness coursing through me, I stagger out of the tent onto slick wet wood to let the Eusebian god get a better look at his rebel orphan. I slip and fall several times as I make my way to the opposite edge of the boat. The thunder vibrates inside my chest as I watch rain, wind, and flashing light thrash against each other, pushing the wrathful waves ever closer to my clenched, unyielding hands. I hear the captain bark orders through the downpour and the frantic feet of the crew scurrying and sliding behind me. Some mutter curses, other shout out prayers, but the storm only grows fiercer.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Tycho takes me by the shoulders and pulls me away from my defiant perch.
I feel my tongue pressing hard into the roof of my mouth, fighting back a torrent of tears, and I cannot free it to offer him an answer. The truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing. Only that I want to know why Duna has taken away everyone I love and why I’m still here, alive and alone with nothing but nightmares and a doma that is of no good to me.
“You’ll die out here,
” Tycho grunts as he yanks me back by the wrist and in one swift motion throws me over his shoulder.
I kick and punch and scream and flail, but Tycho ignores me like a bull ignores a fly buzzing around its horns. And now, as a bounty hunter returning dutifully with his prisoner in tow, Tycho thrusts open the door to the captain’s cabin, turns around, slides me off his back like a wet winter cloak, and sets me down on the last dry deck of the ship.
“Like I told you earlier, I’ll wake you when we’re in Limén,” he says, shutting the door.
A few moments later, I crawl quietly toward the door, but am stopped by the sound of a key locking me in, keeping me safe from the roaring waves that tempt my wandering spirit.
From under the door, a long faint line of yellow light points itself at me like the tip of a sword, and I cannot help but notice that even warm morning sunshine, welcomed by most, can remind me of death. I roll through the diaphanous blade, stretch my arms, and then remember where I am. I jump to my feet and begin pounding my fists against my prison door. Seconds later, I hear the key inside the lock, smell the salty air, and feel my lungs expand in longing for it.
Tycho opens the door and presents his palm, occupied by a plump, purple fig. He takes it in his other hand, twists off its stem and offers it to me, his idea of an olive branch, I assume.
“Never touch me again!” I yell. “I told you…I can take care of myself!” With that, I pinch the fig between my fingers, split it open, take a bite, and step out into a blinding brightness.
“The ugliest storms make the most beautiful mornings, don’t they?” I hear Tycho say. Did he even hear me shout at him?
I slowly open my eyes and see the sailors busy unloading the ship and sweeping the deck, smiling and carrying on - last night’s terror already long forgotten. “We arrived an hour ago. I thought it best to let you sleep a while longer.” Tycho pats me on the shoulder, then jumps over the side of the ship and onto the dock. He pushes a wooden ramp against the ship and waits as I clumsily stumble down it.