Authors: Tracy Barrett
And although I have worked so hard to find this, and although I know—or at least hope—that it will provide me with a way out of Troizena, where everybody knows me as Theseus the Bastard, Theseus the "son" of Poseidon, still I hesitate.
My life isn't so bad,
I think.
Maybe I don't need to change it.
But then I remember Arkas and his thugs, and the teasing girls. I fumble with the knots holding the pouch closed. I finally break the rotten strings and reach inside, to find two hard packets wrapped in what feels like oiled cloth. One is squarish and light in weight, and the other is long and heavier. I pull them both out and lay them on top of the open pouch. With both my mother and stepfather looking on, I unwrap the smaller packet. I stare at its contents, unbelieving.
"What is this?" My voice sounds harsh as I swallow blood, but I don't try to soften it. "Is this a joke?"
WELL, DARLING," my mother says, anxious, as always, to avoid discord. "Well, they're very
nice
sandals."
I hold one up by its strap. This is a mistake, as the strip of leather has rotted through and the sandal falls to the ground. I pick up the other by its sole and inspect it. Perhaps at one time they were nice, but that time is long past, and lying squashed under a boulder hasn't helped them stay at their best. Still, the buckles are large and solid, and the leather was once thick and must have been stout. Not inexpensive, certainly, but not what I've been hoping for.
"Why would he leave me
sandals?
He must have known that they wouldn't last until I was grown. And how did he know they would even fit me?" I realize I'm whining.
"Open the other one," Konnidas urges. "Maybe there's something more practical in it."
I'm not hoping for something practical. I'm hoping for something valuable—gold or jewels or at least a silver ingot. What I find in the other packet, though, is a long dagger or a short sword, and whatever it's made of has corroded until it's covered with greenish crust. I'm not familiar with metals (anything that rare and expensive seldom comes as far as Troizena), but this must be bronze. I feel a little glimmer of hope. If it
is
bronze, then it's certainly worth something.
Konnidas reaches for it. "May I?" I nod and pass it to him. He holds the hilt in one hand and rests the blade in the other. "A good weight." I'm surprised; I didn't know my stepfather had knowledge of metalwork. With a thumbnail, he scrapes at the crust on the blade, and as it flakes away, a dull yellow gleam leaps out. Konnidas raises his brows and places the sword back on the oiled cloth. "Be worth cleaning." He picks up his spade again and returns to his vines.
I spend the rest of the day rubbing the blade. Konnidas leaves me to it, even though I could be useful in the garden, and I'm grateful to him.
By the time my stepfather heads into the house to prepare our meal, I'm ready to show him and my mother what I've uncovered. I sit at a stool, the sword on my lap. My mother sets a bowl at each place. The fish stew that my stepfather ladles into them smells savory. My hard work with the boulder has made me hungry, and Konnidas, too, seems to have a good appetite. We eat without speaking, occasionally pulling a fish bone off our tongues and balancing it on the edge of the bowl. My mother merely picks at hers and lets the dog lick the broth off her fingers. Both seem to be avoiding my eye.
When I have sopped up the last of my soup with a crust of bread, I clear my throat and put the sword on the table. It looks out of place among the wooden bowls with fish bones perched on their rims.
Konnidas is the first to speak. "A fine blade." I'm still surprised that he knows about metal, and now it appears that he's familiar with weapons as well. I realize with a little jolt that I don't know much about him.
My mother runs a tentative fingertip along the bright figures inlaid in the blade. They appear to be of gold: an owl, with two sparkling dark red gems representing its eyes; a coiling snake whose scales have been picked out minutely by an engraver; and a shape that I don't recognize, a rectangle with one corner cut out of it.
"What does it mean?" I ask. Maybe Konnidas's knowledge will extend this far.
"It means," he says as he picks up the sword and examines its hilt, which I have yet to clean, "it means that our boy here is not only the grandson of a king. He is also the son of a king. The man who left this sword under the stone is—or was—the king of Athens. See, here is the snake. It represents Erechtheus, the first king of the Athenians, and their god. The owl stands for Athena, their patron goddess. This other mark"—his long index finger brushes against the strange shape—"stands for the throne. It means the man who owned this was the king. Those sandals..." He pauses.
"Well?" I try not to sound impatient.
"Well, obviously, he means that you are to go on a journey."
"What kind of journey?"
Konnidas looks at my mother, who suddenly becomes interested in feeding her pet. "A journey to find him," he says.
"Is this true?" I turn to my mother. She shrugs and offers a bit of cheese to the dog, who takes it delicately in her white teeth. "Mother! My father wants me to come to him and you never told me so? I could have found some way to move that rock long ago." I stand and pick up the bowls from the table. "I could have been out of here, out of this hole of a town, with a father who could teach me how to be a man..." I let my voice trail off when I see the hurt on Konnidas's gentle face. I long to tell him that wanting to know my real father doesn't mean that I esteem him less. I don't know how to say this, so I turn and put the bowls into the washbasin. I start to go fetch water when something Konnidas said makes me turn back.
"Erechtheus," I say, remembering tong-ago talk about Athens in the temple. "Isn't he also called Erechtheus Poseidon?" I look over at my mother, who drops her hands and her gaze to her lap. "Mother, did the man—did my father
really
say he was Poseidon? Or did he merely say something about Erechtheus Poseidon?"
"It's so long ago." I detect a tremble in her voice. "I don't remember what he—I don't remember exactly what he said."
"Oh,
Mother.
" A red rage swells in my chest and blocks off my speech. I stalk out and stand in the yard, fuming.
I hear footsteps, but I don't turn around. It can't be my mother; she will take offense at my storming out and refuse to speak to me until I have apologized. When Konnidas clasps my shoulder, I close my eyes and feel my muscles unclench. Until then, I had not known that I had tightened them. He hands me a cloth that he has soaked in spring water, and I lay it against my face, which is hot and swollen.
"Don't be angry." His voice is mild, as always. "She's worried, and that makes her unreasonable." I snort. She has never
not
been unreasonable. Konnidas's next words startle me. "It's time for you to leave, anyway. This place is too small for you."
"What do you mean, too small for me?" I rub my arms against a sudden chill.
My stepfather turns me around and looks into my eyes with his gray ones. I realize that I am almost as tall as he. Konnidas doesn't smile often, but he usually wears a pleasant expression. Now his solemn face strikes dread in my heart.
"What do you mean?" I repeat, and my tight throat makes the last word squeak.
He asks me a question himself. "Why do you think they hate you?"
I don't ask who. It seems that everybody in the village hates me. "Because of what she says," I answer. "Because she insists that my father is Poseidon. They think that I think I'm better than they are."
"Do you?"
"No!"
"Have you ever said that you were?"
"No, of course not." I'm indignant.
"Then why would they hate
you
for it?"
That brings me up short. I look at my stepfather in silence, confused.
"That's not why they hate you," he says. "They wouldn't hold you responsible for something she says. They know her—at least, their parents know her. She's never been—she's always been different."
"Then, what is it? If it's not what she says that makes them angry at me, what?"
It's you.
"And this is
better
—that they hate me for myself and not for my parentage?"
"Not better. They see something in you that frightens them."
"What do they see?"
"You're too—too big, too strong, for this place. Not"—he raises a hand as he sees me about to speak—"not your body, although that's bigger and stronger than I think you know. No, it's
you,
it's Theseus. Without knowing it, they see that you're greater than any of them, and they're frightened and jealous. So they attack you. It's like wolves—you've seen how the leader has to continually fight to maintain his position?" I nod. "It's the same thing."
This is perhaps the longest speech I have ever heard my stepfather make, and I have no idea how to respond. The silence stretches between us. I hear a
pat-pat-pat,
and the dog comes trotting out of the house. She sits and looks up at me. I look down at her, then across at my stepfather. Both stare back at me.
"All right," I say. "I'll go."
WHEN MY COUSIN Maera was sent to Korinthos to marry an ally of our grandfather, King Pittheus, her mother wept and wailed for days as though Maera had died, and as though she didn't leave behind four sisters to occupy my aunt's time. When Kastor, the son of a fisherman, joined the crew of a merchant ship heading for far-off Lydia, his father threw a feast that lasted all night and into the next day, with wine and roast goat and sweet cakes for all who attended.
When I leave for Athens in search of my father, my mother looks up from where she's arranging dried flowers just long enough to smile and remark that it's a lovely day for a walk.
Konnidas accompanies me to the place where the path to the sea forks and turns into the road running northwest along the edge of the water and thence to Athens. He carries a pack, and before we part he helps me hoist it onto my back. "There's a warm blanket in there." He adjusts the straps and settles it firmly on my shoulders. "And enough food to last you for a few days, if you're careful, and as much water as I thought you could carry."
"Surely there are springs leading down to the sea." I busy myself tightening the buckles and hope he doesn't hear the catch in my voice.
"Maybe. Maybe not. Can't be too careful." My stepfather looks searchingly at my face. "I have tried to be a father to you, Theseus. When I first arrived at your house and you threw rocks at me—remember?" I shake my head. "Oh yes, you were quite the little defender of your home and your mother. I took no offense, and I convinced you that I was harmless. When I stayed, it was as much for your sake as your mother's." At my raised eyebrows, he breaks into one of his rare grins. "All right, then,
almost
as much. I've loved you as I would have loved any son of my own, and I know that this journey is necessary to you. I just ask that you not forget us."
This speech is so unexpected that I have nothing to say beyond, "I never will." A swift embrace, and he thrusts a small pouch into my hand, and then I'm on the road.
The day is chilly, and I know that as I near the sea it will only grow colder. In the weeks I've had to wait for the winter storms to end, the spring has drawn closer but warmth has proven elusive. I'm glad for the cloak that Konnidas bought me, even though my mother pouted when she saw it and accused him of thinking that her weaving wasn't good enough for me (she was right).
I carry the rotten sandals in my pack. My father's sword is belted to my waist, the side with the gold figures toward me so that their gleam won't attract the eye, and the greed, of anyone I might encounter on the road. It slaps against my thigh at each step with a reassuring sound. I'm not expecting trouble, but you never know.
"Why don't you take a boat?" Arkas asked me when I said that I was going to Athens. "It's so much faster."
"Safer, too," said one of his dull-witted friends, unwittingly showing me the honorable way out.
"Do you think I'm a coward?" I asked, feigning astonishment. "Of course I'm going by the overland route. More adventure that way." So, although they must have known that the real reason was that I had no money for boat passage, they had nothing to say.
I haven't gone very far when I hear a soft, high sound behind me. My hand flies to the hilt of my sword, and then I lower it, feeling foolish. It sounds like a baby.
How cruel,
I think.
If someone exposes an unwanted child, they should leave it where someone might find it and care for it, not out here in this wasteland.
The odds of a passerby finding an exposed child are slim, and the hope that someone might adopt such a child slimmer yet, but it's nothing short of murder to leave it where no one is likely to pass for weeks. I poke around in the brush. No baby. I'm about to look further, when I hear a rustling, and the dog that my mother has been caring for these last weeks bounds out of a thicket.
She runs to me on her long legs, her ears streaming behind her, and jumps up, her paws scraping at my waist, her mouth open in what looks like a smile, her tail wagging. If anyone were present I would be embarrassed at how glad I am to see her. I squat and rub her head, scratching her behind the ears, then cup her face in my hands and gaze into her eyes.
"What am I to do with you?" Her tail wags even faster. I consider. My mother has made no effort to train her, and even if she had, I don't know if the dog would obey if I told her to go home. I can't take her back myself; the last thing I want to do is turn around and go slinking into Troizena as though I've changed my mind. Some are expecting that, and the thought of the satisfaction on Arkas's ugly face as he sees me enter the village mere hours after my departure turns my stomach.
I wonder if the dog can keep up with me. She's large but young, and she already appears tired. She'll probably manage for a while and then will lag behind. I can't stand the thought of leaving her alone on the road, hearing her whine grow fainter as I continue on my way. Besides, I have barely enough food for myself, much less a large dog, and I don't carry any hunting weapons. I'm not much of a hunter anyway, and I don't think that she is any better.