Stop! I shouted at the charging beast, holding the great boar spear steady. Stop! I order you, as Sparta’s future queen!
The boar kept coming. I jammed the spear’s butt against the earth and dug in my feet to meet his attack, but when I glanced down, I saw a blood-chilling change. Instead of wearing a boy’s tunic, I was weighed down by a heavily flounced dress. Instead of a spear, I held a spindle tangled with gleaming gold thread. A strand leaped out and lashed itself around my wrists.
Then the boar struck. One moment I was standing, the next I sprawled across the beast’s back. The boar tore on down the mountain, through the trees. My thoughts were thunder. With one win-all/lose-all motion I jerked my bound hands down and slashed the thread apart on the boar’s own tusk. I gave a shout of triumph as I grabbed the creature’s shaggy pelt and threw one leg over his spine, ready to ride him to the edge of the world.
“Wake up! Lady Helen, wake up! You’re having a bad dream.” A strong hand on my shoulder shook me. I bolted upright. The sky was just beginning to turn light, the horizon shimmering with a pearly glow soft and rosy as the smile of Aphrodite. As I rubbed grit from my eyes, I felt my hair stir in the dawn breeze. My nostrils filled with the clean, briny smell of the sea, my ears with the cries of gulls and other seabirds.
“You’ve got to stop calling me ‘Lady Helen,’” I said drowsily.
“I’m sorry, Lady Hel—” Milo squatted beside me on the beach, biting his lower lip.
“Never mind, it’s all right.” I wanted to take that look off his face. Milo was my friend, but he always took anything I said to him much too seriously. It was as if I were already queen of Sparta instead of just fourteen, probably not much older than he was himself. Of course, it was impossible to say exactly how old he was: No one kept track of a slave boy’s age.
Milo was no slave now. I had bought his freedom from my uncle, the king of Calydon. I had bought my own freedom as well, freedom from skirts and spindles and the life everyone said a royal daughter must lead, but I hadn’t made that bargain using gold. I’d bought my liberty with a decision, choosing to turn away from the safe road home to Sparta to go on the quest for the Golden Fleece.
I got up and stretched, then patted Milo’s shoulder. “There’s no harm in you calling me by my real name when there’s only the two of us. I’m just worried about what could happen if you slipped up in front of other people.”
“You can trust me,” Milo replied. “I’d die to protect your secret.”
“You won’t have to.” I spoke quickly. “Just watch how you speak to me. The moment we set foot in Iolkos, there is no Lady Helen of Sparta, understood?”
He ventured a small smile. “I’ll guard my tongue, but who’s going to guard yours?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you were asleep, you kept yelling about who you are, how you’re Sparta’s next queen—” He spread his hands, letting go of any blame. “It woke me up.”
It was my turn to feel embarrassed.
“People say all sorts of things in their dreams,” he reassured me. “Once we’re aboard the Argo, I’ll look out for you, awake or asleep.”
“And what happens when you topple overboard and drown because you’ve spent your nights standing guard over my dreams?” I teased.
“If it was for your sake, I’d be glad to—”
“What are you two jabbering about?” The fisherman appeared from behind the far side of his beached boat, a wooden spear in one hand, a string of fat fish in the other. “Not bad for a little wading in the shallows, eh?” He held up his catch proudly. “Now build up the fire or we’ll have to eat these beauties raw.”
Later, as we picked the last of the fishes’ meat from their bones, our host looked at me and said, “Today we part ways. You’ve brought me good fortune and safe seas on this journey…Glaucus. Is there any favor I can do for you when I return to Delphi?”
I didn’t have to think twice to answer that. “Tell Eunike I send her my love and thanks for everything she’s done for me,” I replied. “Tell her that you left Milo and me well, safe, and happy at Iolkos.”
The fisherman made a face. “As if it’s that simple for a man like me to get an audience with the holy Pythia.”
I gave him a knowing smile. “You’ll be able to do it easily enough if Lady Helen of Sparta puts in a good word for you.”
Then we both laughed, for we shared a secret: The only reason I’d been able to steal away to Iolkos was because people have eyes and ears, yet most don’t use them. My friend Eunike was the Pythia, priestess and prophet of Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. When she spoke, people heard the all-seeing sun god’s own words, predicting the future. When she declared that Lady Helen would not leave Delphi when her guardsmen headed home, everyone assumed it was Apollo’s will. (She didn’t lie: My guards marched off to Sparta one day before Milo and I sailed for Iolkos.) After that, whenever any of the priests who kept Apollo’s shrine saw a royally dressed girl walking through the temple grounds, who else could she be but Lady Helen? In reality she was the daughter of the same fisherman who’d brought me this far in my journey.
I hoped that the same trick that let a fisherman’s daughter pass for a Spartan princess would also fool my brothers on the Argo. Even the largest ship is a small, enclosed world. We would run into one another, unless I spent the whole voyage hiding in a chest, and what would be the point of that? When my brothers saw me, I wanted them to look right at me and say to each other:
Is that our sister?
What, here? Did you get too much sun? That’s just one of the other men’s weapons bearers.