Her lips curved up. “If it were a prophecy, you’d have to make an offering to Apollo first. You know the rules.” She was pleased when her joke cheered me up a little. Then she added, “When do you leave, Helen?”
“The day after tomorrow. I’m surprised you didn’t know. I’m being hauled down to the port, loaded onto a ship, carried to Corinth, then piled into an oxcart and sent home.”
“You make it sound like you’re cargo.”
“That’s what I feel like.” I clasped my arms around my updrawn knees and rested my chin there. “I wish you could stay with me until then, Eunike. I miss my brothers already, teasing and all, but it hurts less when I can talk to someone.”
The Pythia’s green eyes filled with regret. “I’d be happy to stay, Helen, but I’d be poor company. I have to be ready to answer at any time that the god calls to me. My life’s not my own.”
“I know what that feels like,” I said.
My friend stood up and stretched. “Maybe I can’t help you, but someone else can. I have to go.” And, that simply, she was gone. Everyone leaves me behind, I thought.
Not long after, as I sat sunk in lonely misery, I heard soft footsteps behind me and a voice I knew well. “Lady Helen?” Milo stood in the doorway of my room, looking unsure of his welcome. The old priest who’d carried the fly whisk was with him.
“Go on, boy, it’s all right,” he said, giving Milo a gentle push forward. To me he said, “Your servant will be permitted to stay within the temple grounds, to escort and attend you wherever you choose to go during your remaining time in Delphi. Your guards and my fellow priests here have been informed of this.”
“And they didn’t object?” I asked. I didn’t want to get my hopes up and then find out that Eunike’s decision could be overruled by someone else. “No one objected, not even the other priests?”
The old man shrugged. “What would be the use of their objections? The Pythia has spoken.”
I raised my hands in reverence. “Bless the Pythia,” I said solemnly, holding back my joyful smile.
15
THE PLOTTERS AND THE PLAN
The following day, my last full day in Delphi, I woke up at dawn, determined to take advantage of the precious gift that Eunike had given me. Apollo’s shrine was already busy. The sun god’s servants always rose to greet their divine master’s first appearance in the east. Milo was up with the rest of them, having been given sleeping space with the shrine’s other male servants.
“What can I do for you, Lady Helen?” he said happily. “Bring you something to eat? Clean your room? Get your things ready for tomorrow?”
“Come with me somewhere that isn’t inside city walls, Milo,” I said. “Delphi’s amazing, but I miss seeing trees.”
Milo flew to fulfill my wishes, and soon, with some helpful information from the old priest, the two of us were sitting under an oak tree not too far beyond the gates of Delphi. A pair of our Spartan soldiers loitered in the shadow of the city walls, keeping watch over me at a distance, but if I turned away I could pretend they weren’t there. For a time I just sat, feeling the warm breeze on my face and listening to the song of the leaves overhead. I’d once heard a visitor to Sparta tell about his trip to Zeus’s oracle at Dodona, where the god spoke to mortals through the rustling branches of his sacred oak trees.
If I really were Zeus’s daughter, would he speak to me that way? I mused. Would he even listen?
It was good to be there with Milo. When had I stopped thinking of him as merely the slave boy I’d freed and started thinking of him as a friend? The question was, did he think about me in the same way? I didn’t know how to tell. I’d never had many friends, not even back home in Sparta. When I wasn’t spending time with my brothers and sister, I preferred to keep to myself or to practice the lessons Glaucus gave me rather than share the company of the nobles’ daughters. Those girls and I had nothing to talk about.
It was different with Atalanta and Eunike. I could talk to them, but with Atalanta gone and Eunike so busy, I’d have to look elsewhere for friendship. That left Milo. He’d proved his devotion to me that day in the wineshop, but did he distract the soldiers just because I’d told him to or because he really wanted to help me? I glanced his way, watching the dappled shadows of the oak leaves play across his face. He saw me looking at him and smiled.
“Do you need anything, Lady Helen?” he asked. (Would he laugh if I said, “A friend”?)
“No thanks, Milo. It’s just nice to be out here, lazing in the shade. There’ll be no more time for it once we get on the road tomorrow. It’s a long, long way back to Sparta.” I sighed loudly.
Milo sat up attentively at the sound. “Why are you troubled, Lady Helen?” he asked. “Aren’t you happy to be going home?”
“I am,” I replied. “And I’m not. I’m sorry if that sounds like nonsense.”
“Not to me,” Milo said. “When Calydon was my home, I was happy to be there with my mother, but even then I wished I had the freedom to go elsewhere. The palace kept me safe, but it also kept me imprisoned.” He peeled a bit of bark from the oak’s root. “After my mother died, it became a cage.”
“Things will be different for you when we reach Sparta,” I said. “I promise.”
He looked at me closely. “Except you don’t want to go back there. You want to go to Iolkos and sail on to Colchis with your brothers.”
“Who are you, the Pythia?” I said. “How do you know where I want to go?”