I gave her a startled look. “Are you saying that you want me to go back to training with my brothers?”
My mother held my hands in both of hers. “That would be easy, wouldn’t it?” she said. “So easy to let someone else make your choices for you. That way, if you fail, it isn’t your fault.” She clasped my hands more tightly. “You deserve to live a better life than that.”
“I—I don’t understand.” My mother’s words confused me. I was only ten years old.
She let go of my hands and leaned back. “You will, if you think about it. Then, whichever choice you make—sword or spindle or both—will be truly yours.”
As I stepped out of the bedroom doorway, one last question made me pause. “Mother?” I rested one hand on the doorpost, with its carved pattern of palm branches. “Mother, will you teach me how to hunt?”
She gave me a strange look. “Gladly. But why?”
“Because if I do choose to go back to the training ground and Father finds out and wants me to stop, I want to bring him a whole cauldron of stewed rabbit so he’ll change his mind.”
When Mother stopped laughing, she took me outside, off into the olive grove, and gave me my first archery lesson. I didn’t hit anything, but as Mother told me (with a perfectly straight face), I did manage to scare the olives off a couple of trees.
I went back to the training ground the next morning. Glaucus didn’t say a word about my absence. He was busy working with my brothers, so the only welcome I got from him was a silent nod and the hint of a satisfied smile.
He had the boys practicing with wooden swords, fighting both of them at once and winning. He made it look so easy, even though they outnumbered him and were younger and faster on their feet. When he smacked Castor’s sword aside with one blow and disarmed Polydeuces on the backstroke, I first thought: There’s no shame in losing a match to someone like that.
While my brothers scrambled to pick up their swords, Glaucus turned to me. “Well, princess,” he said. “Will you be staying, or is this just a visit?”
I let his sarcasm wash past me. “I’m staying,” I said simply. “If you’ll take me back.”
This time his smile was wide. “She spoke with you, didn’t she,” he stated. “The queen. I thought I caught sight of her in the woods that day.”
“What? Mother told you to come back?” Castor exchanged a bewildered look with his twin.
“She didn’t tell me to do anything,” I said.
“No,” Glaucus said, looking at me thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose anyone could do that.” I didn’t know whether to be pleased or insulted.
The first day of my return to training didn’t go well. I was rusty, and my brothers each took full advantage of that when paired off against me. Wooden swords leave wide, purple bruises, but by the end of the day I’d given back one for every five I got, which was good enough for me.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to outshine my brothers anytime soon. Even if I trained with them daily and sacrificed a whole herd of sheep to Ares, it couldn’t happen: They were five years older than me, and they’d begun their training when I was still an infant. Worse for me, at fifteen my brothers were already tough and strong. How I envied them for the way their bodies had changed, and how I wished mine would do the same!
6
NEWS FROM MYKENAE
I got my wish for a changed body the year I turned twelve, though not the changes I’d been hoping for. Overnight, my legs and arms became so long that I couldn’t govern them. That made me clumsy, both in the house and on the training ground. Clytemnestra hadn’t been cursed by any such sudden growth. She was still small and graceful. I hoped no one else had noticed how awkward, how different I’d become.
I had to give up that hope once and for all on a late-winter day halfway through my twelfth year. While cold rain pelted down outdoors, I stayed in the palace, helping Mother, Clytemnestra, and Ione store some of my sister’s bride goods. Father came in to see how we were doing. If he intended to inspect the piles of carefully folded cloth, he forgot all about it when he took a good look at me.
“By Ceres, Ione, what have you been feeding her?” Father exclaimed, resting his hands on my shoulders. “She’s taller than a boar spear!”
“You needn’t tell me.” My nurse snorted. “I’m the one who’s got to make her new clothes all the time, so she still looks like she’s wearing a dress instead of a boy’s tunic.”
“Well, Helen, whatever you’ve been eating that’s made you sprout up like this, you could use a little more,” he told me. He held out one of my arms. “Tsk. It’s a reed.” His tone was fond, but his words stung me anyhow.
Clytemnestra chimed in, oh-so-sweetly. “Father, don’t make fun of Helen. I’m sure she feels bad enough about her face without you teasing about what’s happened to the rest of her.”
“What’s this nonsense?” Father demanded, giving her a severe look. “There’s nothing wrong with Helen’s face!”
“Of course not,” Mother said calmly. “My looks changed in just the same way when I was her age—my face, my body, everything so bony and bumbling! But after a couple more years passed, it was quite a different story.” She smiled.