She tossed her hair, making the gold leaves tinkle. “My name is Eunike.”
“You saw my brothers today,” I said.
She nodded. “They talked about lots of things while they were waiting to hear me, including you and how you were growing up to be the most stubborn woman in the world. Lord Castor told the man waiting next to him that you were lucky to be so pretty or you’d never find a husband.”
“Now Castor claims I’m pretty?” I shook my head. I couldn’t believe he’d said that. I knew it wasn’t true. I still remembered what that Calydonian noblewoman had said about my looks. That I believed. “Everyone else at home used to say I was pretty, but when I was five he’d call me Frog-face, and even Polydeuces once called me a toad.”
“What brothers say to tease their sisters has nothing to do with what they really think of them,” Eunike said.
“I don’t care about Castor’s opinion of my chances at marriage or my looks. I’m just surprised that he chose to talk about me when he was in your presence. It’s disrespectful to you and Apollo. Polydeuces must have been ready to kill him!”
“Oh, he didn’t tell me himself,” Eunike said. “First the priests bring the pilgrims into the sacred underground chamber and let them wait there, while they kindle the brazier and make sure that my tripod is properly positioned above the crack in the earth where the god’s breath rises. I wait in another room, well aboveground, until they come to fetch me.”
“Then how did you hear what Castor said about me?” I asked.
“Sound travels very well inside Apollo’s house. Even when people think no one else can hear them, my priests always do, and they always make sure to tell me what they’ve overheard.”
“Is that where your prophecies come from? From whispers and spies?” I’d really wanted to believe that there was something truly divine at the heart of Delphi, in spite of my encounters with those first two greedy priests. I narrowed my eyes at Eunike. “Why are you telling me this, about how you and the priests fool everyone?”
“I didn’t say that.” The Pythia’s lighthearted expression became more serious. “Now you’re interpreting my words to suit yourself, just like some of the priests do. I’m telling you about what happens in Apollo’s shrine because you’d figure it out for yourself, sooner or later. You never simply accept what you’re told, Lady Helen. You ask questions. You challenge things as they are.”
My mouth twisted into a mocking smile. “Is that something you saw in a vision or something else your priests overheard my brother Castor say?”
“I won’t lie to you: It didn’t come from any vision. The priests insist on telling me everything they hear, whether I want to know it or not,” she replied.
“Well then, I hope both of my brothers paid your priests enough to buy themselves a lucky prophe—”
The words died on my lips. Eunike was staring at me. I swear I’d never met another human being with such intense eyes. They went from emerald to onyx in an instant and held an inner glow that was unnerving to see. Their vision penetrated straight to the secret places of my heart, to the dreams where I wasn’t tied to a skirt or a loom or a throne or any future but the one I’d make for myself.
“What I learn from spies and whispers isn’t what I prophesy,” the Pythia said gravely. “The priests don’t need to translate my words for the people. Some of them do try to persuade our visitors that if I say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ it really means, ‘Your wife will give you five sons,’ but only the most foolish pay to hear such nonsense.
“It wasn’t always like this. Some of the women who served Apollo before me needed to know as much as possible about each visitor so that, when they spoke, it would seem as though the all-seeing sun shared his infinite sight with them. But some of the Pythias were like me: I see things, Helen. I don’t know why or how, but I do. It doesn’t only happen when I breathe the god’s breath. My visions come when and where they will.”
“What about the things you said to Theseus?” I asked, curious to learn more. “It’s no secret that his father’s dead. Everyone in Lord Oeneus’s palace knew that. But what about the rest? The lost princess…?”
“Lady Ariadne, King Minos’s daughter,” Eunike said. “Visitors from Crete said she and Theseus fell in love when he made a raid on their island. They ran off together, yet when he finally came home to Athens, there was no Cretan princess on his ship.”
“Do you think he—?” I didn’t want to finish the awful thought. Theseus had shown me that he had no qualms about hurting people, but I couldn’t imagine him as a murderer.
“His eyes fill with tears when he remembers her,” Eunike said. “Whatever became of her, he mourns her memory. His hands are clean.”
“Ah.” Much as I despised Theseus, I felt relieved to know that. “And I’ll bet Poseidon’s his father the same way Zeus is mine,” I said sarcastically.
“He’s not the only man to pretend he was fathered by a god. They think it adds to their reputation as heroes. But the other things I said to him…” The Pythia sighed like someone carrying a heavy burden.
“Those were what I saw waiting for him, whether or not he let you go. His mother, his son, his city, he’ll lose them all.” And she began to cry.
The priest with the fly whisk hurried forward to take her into his arms and murmur words of comfort in her ears. I was afraid he’d blame me for her tears, but when he looked at me it was only with kindness.