Eternal Spring A Young Adult Short Story Collection (12 page)

"I looked for Styx," he says, making his way
through the shrubbery. "She has a taste for tall grasses, so I thought she
might take you to the lake."

Picking at the wild grass, I say nothing, which Cassander
takes as invitation to sit beside me.

"I don't want to marry your father," I blurt out.
"I don't want to go to Thrace."

Cassander nods, taking up a handful of pebbles and skipping
one across the surface of the lake. "So what do you plan to do then? Jump
into one of those reed boats and offer yourself as a wife to a local
fisherman?"

His mockery gives me sharp offense. "I am a royal
princess. Do you think I would lower myself?"

Cassander shrugs. "I'm just a bastard boy; what do I
know of royal honor?"

He skips another stone over the water. To his surprise, this
one comes up under a rush of white froth. And a hippo lifts its snout from the
water to roar at him.

"Zeus Almighty!" Cassander shouts, scrambling to
his feet.

The hippo must have slipped past the patch of reeds without
our notice. Now it has our full attention. Styx whinnies in sharp fear. I'm the
only one who doesn't move, even though I know how truly dangerous a
hippopotamus is. This one fixes black eyes on me, rivulets of water streaming
down its pinkish grey flesh. It opens its mouth in another roar and shows
enormous teeth.

Then it rushes me.

"Run!" Cassander cries.

As the great creature closes in on me, I only close my eyes.
I'm too terrified to move, or too resigned to my fate. Perhaps this is no
ordinary hippo, but the Egyptian goddess Taweret come to claim me for Egypt
forever. I wait for the painful crush of a hippo's jaws. Instead, Cassander's
steely grip closes around my wrists and I'm yanked to my feet.

He's strong and swift. "I said, run!"

So we run.

With my horse, we clamber up the bank onto the road, away
from the hippo—
who
, in spite of its blubber
could probably catch us if it really tried. We don't speak until we are well
away, leaning against the city wall, doubling over from our efforts.

Styx is still on alert from our narrow escape. She trots in
a circle, head high, making her outrage plain.

I rub the sore spot on my wrists where Cassander's grip left
marks. "You saved me."

"Only by a hair!" His eyes are clouded with anger,
his face red with exertion, and he pants like the breath has been stolen from
his lungs. "Why didn't you run?"

"I don't know."

He stares at me. "Did you
want
to be eaten alive?"

I lower my eyes to the ground. "I don't know."

"What's wrong with you? Thrace isn't so bad. It's a
barbarous land, but there is a palace and all the luxuries you find here."

"You don't know me well if you think all I care about
is luxury."

Cassander snorts. "I don't know you at all, Princess.
And I can't get to know you better if you're inside the belly of a hippo."

Dusty and glowing with perspiration, I'm surprised he wishes
to know me better. Moreover, given his rank, I'm acutely aware that he should
not be so familiar with me. Nonetheless, he's become my own personal hero, so I
confess, "I'm afraid."

"You can't know what will come, Princess. None of us
can. The world turns in strange ways. We can't change how we're born, but we
have some say over everything after."

I marry before Lysandra
does. In this one thing, I finally come first.

Before the wedding, I sacrifice all my girlhood toys to
Artemis. It's a goodbye, for the virgin goddess can't protect me anymore. I
will belong to Hera now. After, I wash in a sweet-smelling bath of milk, honey
and water drawn from a ritual spring and carried by a special vase. The
servants anoint me with oils, style my hair, and swath me in veils.

My brother Ptolemy is garbed in a crown of thorn and nuts.
He is to be my companion at the wedding and pass out bread at the wedding
feast. "I'll miss you, Arsinoë," my brother says, his voice thick
with emotion.

I wish he could come with me to Thrace, but he's part of my
mother's plans. When she becomes the Pharaoh's chief wife, my brother will
become the heir to the throne. He must stay here and be King of Egypt after my
father.

It now seems like a childish thought that I should have ever
remained here, so I embrace him in fond farewell.

The wedding feast is a raucous affair with men and women
celebrating together, though they eat separately on either side of the hall.
All the while, Lysandra sneers at me, as if hoping to provoke me to tears. She
nearly does. Or perhaps I am upset only because when I look for Cassander, I
don't see him.

At last, my father calls to me. I go swiftly because it may
be the last time I ever hear the Pharaoh speak my name.

I'm presented to my groom, Lysimachus, the King of Thrace.
"Before this assembly," my father intones. "I give this girl to
you that you may beget legitimate children upon her."

Daring to peek at my groom from beneath my veils, I see a
hard face with a furrowed brow and hollows in his cheeks. This stranger will be
my husband. My lord. He's at least sixty years old; his hair thins over his
brow. He is old. I make the mistake of thinking he is also frail.

I'm surprised when he grabs me hard by both wrists, his
fingers digging in where Cassander's had been the day before. My new husband
shakes me like a captive, for that's what I am, and a cheer goes up from the
crowd.

Then I am carried off into the night to be unveiled.

Thrace is not Egypt. My
husband is not Pharaoh. The land he rules holds no wonders. No pyramids rise up
from the sand to amaze and inspire. Thracians are fierce fur-clad tribesmen who
dwell in the mountains, climbing up to their fortress villages each night like
sure-footed goats.

"They are barbarians who must be
taught
to live like civilized men,"
my husband says to me in the early days of our marriage.

It's one of the few things Lysimachus says to me at all.
Like my father, he takes little notice of me. If there is anyone or anything my
husband loves, it is his hunting dog. The hound is always close at his master's
knee, peering up with open adoration, keen to amuse by fetching sticks or
performing tricks.

But the dog hates all others. Come too close to the king and
the dog snarls and growls. Try to pet the dog, and you may lose a hand to his
snapping jaws. The king never scolds his dog for this. To the contrary, I think
it makes him love the dog more.

I'm given a banquet to welcome me as the new queen of
Thrace. The host is Prince Agathocles, a youth of no more than eighteen years.
He looks like Cassander, but with a narrower mouth and a haughty bearing. I
worry that he might resent me; a replacement for his dead mother. But he
welcomes me to Thrace with a toast. Lifting a goblet he cries, "To Queen
Arsinoë. May she give comfort to my father in these golden years of his
life."

The guests all cheer to honor us, but I see that my husband
the king isn't pleased. He doesn't like to think of himself as elderly and he
narrows his eyes at his son as if he were a danger to him and not the bearer of
his blood and his legacy.

Nonetheless, the prince offers me a place of honor and I'm
obliged to take it. "My father is a hard man to please," Prince
Agathocles says to me. "As I'm sure you've noticed."

I lower my eyes. I don't want to speak ill of his father.
And with my eyes lowered, I spy a young girl under the table feeding the dogs
from her fingers. When I gasp, Prince Agathocles reaches down and hauls her up
into his arms. "There you are, Bunny! Meet our new step-mother."

I thought she was a slave because princesses do not crawl
under tables to feed dogs. But I soon learn that like the king's favorite
hound, this girl is allowed a very long leash. "She is my father's
darling," Agathocles announces. "My father calls her his little
bunny, so we all do."

Bunny is a girl of twelve with fair hair who curtseys to me.
"I am the Princess Eurydice."

An unfortunate name. It's the name of my father's chief
wife--my mother's rival. It's a name that makes me think of my stepsister
Lysandra. But
this
little girl with her pink cheeks and upturned nose could never be so cruel. I
smile at her. She cleaves to my side, so giggly that I realize she's had wine.
Girls aren't supposed to have wine. Someone should send her to bed. But it's my
celebration and I don't want to make trouble.

"Later, I'll show you the palace," Bunny says.
"I'll teach you our dances and our songs. We'll stay up late."

"I should retire early," I say, remembering my
mother's example. "In the morning, I'll weave with the women in the harem.
Would that please your father?"

"Let the
old
women do the weaving," Bunny says,
removing her sandals so she can join the dancing girls. "You're young,
like we are. You should have fun."

As we watch his sister spin away, Prince Agathocles agrees.
"You need not worry about pleasing my father
too
much. His last woman was a Persian
witch. Most of his concubines are leftovers from the harem in Susa. You won't
have many rivals here."

I glance over to where the king's women gather. I wonder if
one of these women is Cassander's mother, but I'm afraid to ask and give
insult. Most of the harem women are as old as my mother--some of them much
older. They don't stare at me with resentment, but my mother would tell me to
view them as deadly enemies.

For once, I'm glad she isn't here. I don't
want
to see
enemies behind every pillar.

"And what about you?" I ask Prince Agathocles.
"Do you have rivals here?"

"None here or anywhere," he boasts, then leans in
as if to charm me. "And no wife, either."

I wonder why he mentions this to me. Does he want me to speak
to his father on his behalf?

Then he stuns me by saying, "Perhaps when my father
passes into the underworld,
you
can be my wife, Arsinoë."

My mouth falls open and I fight the urge to whip round and
see
who
is listening. Surely this is a jest. A cruel trick
mean to humiliate me. The kind of trick Lysandra used to play on me in Egypt. I
choose my words carefully. I have my duty to my father to think of. To my
family. To Egypt. "I'm quite happy to be your father's wife."

It is a bald-faced lie. I think Prince Agathocles knows it
because he smirks. "Then my father chose the most virtuous bride in the
world. You see. Other girls might resent being forced to touch wrinkled old
flesh. They would prefer young arms, like these." He holds up his arms so
that I can look at them. "Other girls would cringe at kissing a mouth
filled with yellowed teeth--"

"You've had too much to drink," I break in, the
heat of offense burning from my toes to the tips of my ears. "In the
morning, you'll wish you didn't say these things. As a kindness, I'll pretend
you didn't."

He reels back as if I slapped him. He's a handsome prince;
perhaps no girl has ever turned away his flirtations. I worry that
I
wouldn't
have turned him away if he weren't so reckless...or if my heart didn't already
belong to someone else.

"
My queen,"
Cassander says with a flourishing bow, as if we stood in the marbled palace
instead of the straw-laden stables. A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth as I
stroke Styx. It's the first moment since I arrived in Thrace that I have been
able to visit my horse...or Cassander. And now I feel shy.

"I haven't seen you since the wedding, Your
Majesty," Cassander says courteously.

I gasp. "I didn't think you were there!"

"Of course I was there."

"But I didn't see you..."

Holding a piece of fruit for Styx to munch on, Cassander
looks absurdly pleased. "So you were looking for me? My place was in the
shadows; my father likes for me to make myself scarce with the other servants
at court."

"But you aren't a servant," I say, as it seems to
be an injustice. Certainly the children of my father's concubines never made
themselves scarce. "You're the king's son."

"But not a royal one," Cassander says with a
rueful smile. "That is my brother."

"I've met him."

"Did you like him?" he asks.

No. I did not like Prince Agathocles. But I'm afraid to say
so.

At my silence, Cassander tilts his head. "Did he
mistreat you?"

"Why would he?"

"Because you can destroy all his dreams. If you bear my
father a son, Prince Agathocles will no longer be the uncontested heir to the
throne."

I stare so long that Cassander raises a brow. "Don't
tell me you haven't dreamed of bearing sons for my father."

"I've never dreamed of such a thing," I say. Those
were my mother's dreams, not mine.

"No?" Cassander asks. "What else does a queen
dream of?"

I dream of Cassander.

On my wedding night, I dreamed of Cassander.

In the journey across the sea, I dreamed of Cassander.

I have dreamed of Cassander every night since he rescued me
from the hippo. I can't tell him this. I'm married. I'm his father's wife. I'm
his queen. Even if none of that were true, I wouldn't be brave enough to say it
aloud. Nonetheless, the words lodge themselves painfully in my throat.

And I can say nothing at all.

"
Did you have sisters
in Egypt?" Bunny asks. She is always at my side now. She's a clever girl
for her age, quick at games and funny, too. I think this must be why she is her
father's favorite.

"Yes, I had sisters," I say, remembering Lysandra.

"Do you miss them?"

I don't know how to answer. I don't miss Lysandra. My life
is easier now with no one to taunt me; none of the girls in Thrace would dare.
And yet, there is an emptiness in my life where Lysandra used to be. "Why
do you ask?"