I watched Penelope smile as Odysseus paraded her around the courtyard. She might have been sixteen, but she looked like a child beside him.
“She’s not,” I said.
Hippodamia seemed to deflate at that. “Oh.”
“What’s up with your face?” another Ithacan slave asked me. A small boy with mousy hair and missing teeth. “Looks like you got beat bad. Did ya? Get beat bad?”
“Shh. You can’t ask that. It’s rude,” Hippodamia scolded.
“You’re right. I did get beaten,” I told the boy. “And do you know whose fault it was?” I pointed at Penelope before turning back to Hippodamia. “You want to know what she’s like?Thisis what she’s like. So good luck.”
Fear crept into the girl’s pretty face, stealing away her smile.
She did not speak to me again.
***
After the welcoming ceremony, we were given a brisk tour.
The palace seemed as tired as I felt and nowhere near as large or imposing as Tyndareus’s home. Yet there was a certain character to the strange, rambling building.
The woman leading our tour introduced herself as Eurycleia, the household’s head slave. She was a short, stout woman with a face as cold and coarsened as Ithaca’s mountains. Her light brown hair was tied back, shot through with shocks of gray. She looked like a woman whose dedication to her duty had scrubbed her clean of any humor or sense of joy.
I knew immediately we would not get along.
My feet grew heavier with every step as we traipsed through our new prison. Everywhere we went, I could smell the sea, its salty scent painting the air, filling each room with the gentle murmur of hushing waves. It was the only part of the palace I liked.
Once the tour was over, Eurycleia divided the ten of us into our new duties. To my relief, I was to work in the kitchens, a role that would keep me tucked far away from the world and Penelope.
“What do you do?” Eurycleia asked my father, her voice as clipped and precise as freshly sharpened shears.
“My name is Dolios. I am a gardener, have been all my life,” he replied.
“Good. We need one of those.” She nodded before turning to my brother, her expression souring as she studied his black eye. “And you?”
“Stables,” he muttered.
“We have enough stable boys.”
Melanthius stared at her. “I’ve worked the stables since I could walk. It’s all I know.”
“My brother is the best with horses. He—”
“Did I ask you?” the old witch snapped at me. She then observed our matching bruises with a click of her tongue. “Seems you two are the troublemakers then.”
Our father glanced away, shame staining his face.
“We need a goatherd,” Eurycleia continued. “If you can handle horses, you can handle goats. Yes?”
I braced, readying myself for Melanthius to argue, to fight for his place. But he simply nodded. “Fine.”
The utter defeat in his eyes frightened me.
“You.”
I stiffened under Eurycleia’s hawkish glare.
“How old are you?”
