Medea looked into the flickering fire, its brightness leached by the morning sun. “I see a woman, walking in a forest,” she said, unblinking, as if in a trance. “A yellow dog follows her, and she leads a donkey. She wears a quiver of arrows strapped to her waist and carries a spear.”
Procris. It was her, it must be. The breath left my lungs.
“She... oh!” Medea covered her mouth in shock. “An arrow hits her. The donkey panics, the dog barks helplessly. A mandashes out of the woods just as she falls. He’s well dressed, and his hair is golden. He knows her, I think. Maybe he thought she was a deer?”
No.
Medea shook her head. “Why doesn’t he do anything? Why doesn’t he help her?”
My eyes burned. I became aware of a high keening sound and realized it was issuing from my own mouth.
Nonono.
He thought she was a deer.Had he? The man was Cephalus, I was certain, judging from the description of his fine clothes and golden hair. I recalled the little cruelties Procris described, the slights, slaps, and shoves leading to this final act of ultimate violence.
Cephalus had conducted an affair with the goddess of the dawn, Eos, a far more ambitious match than a mere princess like Procris. A hunting accident would be a ready excuse to get rid of an inconvenient first wife.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Medea said.
I staggered to my feet, swaying.
Procris was dead. The earth would no longer know the blessing of her footsteps; the forests would be bereft. A light had gone out of the world. The bright thread that carried me across the sea and through all the hazards of the journey was abruptly severed.
“Atalanta.” Medea was trying to take my hands in hers, to soothe me. “Atalanta! Please, talk to me. Who was Procris to you? A friend, a sister?”
“She... she was everything,” I replied.
“If you want to avenge her, I will help you.”
Kill Cephalus, she meant. I considered it briefly, then shook my head. Vengeance was an unfamiliar concept, picked up from my recent proximity to humans. Animals rarely bothered with revenge, and I still had an animal’s practicality, even if I had chosena human life. Besides, killing Cephalus would not bring Procris back.
She was gone. Untethered, I fell into the abyss.
Love—for me, perhaps for everyone—was always doomed to end in heartbreak or death. Artemis tried to warn me, but I had not listened. There was a weight on my chest threatening to crush me, and tears burned in my eyes.
“Atalanta, please. Stay with me. Let me help you.” Medea’s face was near mine. Her gentle concern was as intolerable as the brush of fabric against a burn, and I pulled away. My greatest flaw has always been that I withdraw at the moments I most wish to connect. But how could I seek solace through love when love was doomed to hurt me?
A bellow echoed through the forests: The voice of Heracles, summoning all the Argonauts back to the ship. Time to continue our journey.
I ran from Medea back to theArgo, and to the crawlspace under the stairs, and to the merciful waiting darkness.
38
Atalanta
Images paraded before my closed eyes.
Procris as she had been on that fateful day when I met her in the forest. Procris at the temple of Brauron, looking up at the statue of the goddess. Procris kissing me beyond the reach of the fire as the little bears cheered.
Could I have saved her if I’d been there, deflecting Cephalus’s arrows and driving him off? Perhaps I could have done so, or perhaps I would have been as helpless as I was when Meleager burned. But at least Procris would not have died far from anyone who loved her, staring up at the indifferent trees. Her death was worse than Meleager’s—at least I had been there with him and, in his final moments, let my friend know that he was not alone.
Deep in the hold of theArgo, I curled on my side like a wounded animal and wept for Procris, and Meleager, and myself.
If you love, you will lose yourself,the goddess told me.
I closed my eyes and was lost.
After a time, my weeping lapsed into silence and the heavy weight of finality descended. The stillness that comes with the utter certainty of even a terrible outcome; the cold peace of knowing one’s search has come to an end. She was dead, and she would never return to me.
