“Get down, little squirrel,” she commanded me. “I won’t hurt you.”
I hung by my hands from the branch for a moment, then dropped to the ground in front of her, landing on an oak root and sprawling into last autumn’s fallen leaves. My tumble startled her horse, but she controlled the huge creature with just a touch of her knees to his barrel.
When I stumbled back to my feet, brushing crushed leaves from my clothes, the horsewoman studied me closely. “Ah,” she said at last. “I was wrong. You’re no boy. You’re the twins’ sister Helen, the Spartan princess. I’ve seen you at dinner, always sitting next to Prince Meleager. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that queens-to-be don’t belong in trees?”
“And you’re Atalanta the huntress, the one all the men are talking about. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that women don’t belong on horseback?” I shot back deliberately.
That made her laugh even more. “You tell me where we belong,” she said, and before I could catch a breath, she leaned down, hooked one arm around me, and swept me up in front of her on the horse. With a shout and a light flick of her heels, she set the stallion into a gallop through the forest.
We left the little clearing far behind. The horse laid back his ears and ran flat out, threading a breakneck path around the trees. Atalanta shoved me forward just in time to dodge low-hanging branches and kept me from slipping off sideways whenever her steed made a sharp turn. I felt the wind whip across my face and thought, So this is what it’s like to fly! I knotted my hands into the horse’s mane and felt all my fears blow away behind us like so many dead leaves. I let out a whoop of joy and didn’t want our wild ride to end until we’d ridden across the world.
Atalanta finally reined the horse back to a canter, then a trot, and finally a slow walk. We were on a rise just above the royal palace of Calydon. She dismounted gracefully and offered me a hand down, but I decided I’d show her I could do that for myself.
I swung one leg up and back, lost my balance for the second time that day, and hit the ground, splayed out like a starfish on a rock. I took the sheepskin pad with me. Atalanta’s horse looked down at me, snorted, and walked away, flicking his tail disdainfully.
“Did he just laugh at me?” I asked, slowly sitting up. Every bone in my body felt like it’d been beaten with sticks.
“I hope so,” she replied, grinning. “You earned it.” She picked up the sheepskin, sat down on a large boulder, and rested one arm across her updrawn knees. “Now, care to tell me why you’re wandering through the woods, dressed like that?” She indicated the sleeveless tunic I’d filched from Castor. It was much too big for me, even belted tightly. “Is it some Spartan custom, raising daughters to be sons?”
“My father’s got sons,” I said, standing up and shaking the dirt from my “borrowed” clothes.
“Mine didn’t.” Atalanta’s mouth turned up at one corner, but it wasn’t a smile. “When I was born, he was so disappointed that he ordered one of his servants to take me out to the mountains and leave me there to die.” She gave me a sudden, penetrating stare. “I guess you’ve heard the stories?”
“The men say that you were fed and protected by a she-bear until a party of hunters found you.” I looked her in the eye. “I don’t believe it.”
“Good for you, girl,” she said. “The part about the she-bear makes a good story, but it’s not the truth. The rest is.” She shrugged, then spoke matter-of-factly about what came of her father’s coldhearted decision. “I was abandoned to die but found by the sort of people my father wouldn’t understand. To them, a child was a child. To him, children were…tools. He only wanted a certain number and a specific kind; the rest were disposable. It was probably good that he didn’t need a daughter; otherwise, I’d have spent my life being forced to fit the mold of what he decided I should be.”
Her face was grim, and I saw her hands tighten into fists as she told me her story. I didn’t want to make her dwell on so much ugliness, but I had to ask. “How do you know all this? About your father, I mean.”
She relaxed a little and even smiled. “Oh, I like you! You can think. Yes, how would I know anything about either of my parents if I was abandoned as a baby? Well, the person my father sent off to do his dirty work was a slave, a man with no choice except to obey. The king might have owned his body, but his heart was his own. He wrapped me in a good, warm blanket before he followed my father’s orders to abandon me in the wilderness, and he didn’t lay me on the ground until he caught sight of a hunting party coming through the trees. Even then, he hid until he saw they’d found me.” She looked into the forest, as if hoping to catch sight of that good man’s spirit. “Then he came forward and told them who I was and why I’d been thrown away like an old rag. The only thing of any value that he owned was a single carnelian bead with a bear carved on it, but he offered the huntsmen that if they’d agree to help me.”
“So that’s where the she-bear in the story comes from,” I said.