My mother stared at me for a long moment. She looked so tired, so sad, soold. Tenderly, she pried the ruined gown from my fingers and slipped her hand into mine.
“The princess has gone back home,” she told me in her gentlest voice.
“Home?”
“To Acarnania with her father.”
“Why…why didn’t you wake me when she said goodbye?”
My mother brought my fingers to her lips and brushed a light kiss against them. “She didn’t say goodbye, my heart.”
“But she visited,” I insisted.
My mother shook her head.
“I saw her here. I heard her.”
“I’ve been at your side every moment, Melantho.” Her voice was frayed with exhaustion. “The princess did not visit.”
It was then that I remembered Penelope’s words. Those horrible, cruel words.
She is not my friend.
The realization sank into me, slowly at first, then crashing all at once.
Though not as painful as the lashes I had endured, Penelope’s betrayal cut me far deeper, opening wounds my body did not recognize, did not know how to heal.
I buried my face in the blankets and wept furious, hot tears.
Penelope had gone.
She had not said goodbye.
She did not even care.
***
Three summers passed.
I did not see Penelope again.
I told myself that I was glad she stayed away, that I had forgotten all about her. By the time the fourth summer rolled around, I began to actually believe the lie.
I was thirteen now and supposed myself a woman, far older and wiser than the foolish girl who had thought she could befriend a princess. I was beginning to look like a woman, too, my body marked by unfamiliar swells and dips, ones that made the boys’ eyes linger. I liked the way they stared, the way they jabbed each other with their elbows when I passed them. It made me feel powerful, knowing I could make their cheeks redden and mouths gape.
Still, even this newfound interest did not stave off the boredom, not now that I knew how small my world truly was. Once, those confines had felt like a comfort, familiar edges that kept me tucked in safe and warm. But now, the boundaries pressed in from all around me, making the days chafe irritably.
This was what it meant to be a slave, I realized: being expected to take up as little space as possible and be grateful for that tiny scrap of existence we were offered.
“Don’t you ever wantmore?” I asked my mother one day while we worked, dough rolling between our worn palms.
She glanced sidelong at me. “More?”
I waved at the kitchen around us. It was early that morning, the sun still rising, and yet the air was already laced with acrid sweat. It was the stink of too many people worked too hard in too small a space. I was sick of it, and I knew I was not the only one. Complaints about the kitchen’s overcrowding had been rumbling all summer.
“Than spending our lives stuck here, serving others, never able to live for ourselves.” I slapped the dough down onto the counter. “Than making the same breadeverymorning, day after day.”
“There are people far worse off, Melantho. People like us.”
