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The maiden sits at the shore.
The Black Sea is not lavender and soft like the Aegean she knows, not here up north. There are no islets, no inlets to break the gale. The hills to her right, to meet it, plunge, dark, into the sea. The beach is one of gravel where she crouches now, where she reaches down to brush a rock from between her toes.
She comes here every day to greet the harsh winds. They are soothing, after the sickly warmth of the Aulis war camp. Soothing to her mind, too. They alone disperse the memories of days - it was only a day and a half, in truth - spent in her father’s tent, the stagnant air filthy with his anger.
With every swell of his voice, despair came into hers - she had agreed to the marriage, what else could she do? Was even the offer of all her life too little to appease him? But Agamemnon was a man possessed. Possessed with his rage he strutted about the camp, bringing new pieces of it every time he came back to the tent. Now it was Odysseus’ doubts he was raging about, now it was Achilles’ capriciousness.
She met him once, that great warrior to whom she was pledged. More slight than she had imagined him, not at all the threat her dreams had painted since their departure from Mycenae. She could take him in a fight, she thought, if it wasn’t for the demigod’s speed. But even then she knew he would not give her cause to fight, would not want her often, take only from their marriage what honour bid him take. She saw it when he looked at the young soldier sprawled across the bed, with longing she could only hope to feel. She saw it when he looked at her, too, with the same regretful distance which informed her own movements inside his tent.
She feels no pity for that girl now as the pebbles bite her heels. Her mother had not raised her to be gullible, and yet the promise of a safe, uneventful marriage had sufficed to make her walk, unquestioning, into her father’s knife. She should’ve been better than that.
I am better than that, she cries and hurls a handful of rocks towards the tide. They land as an anticlimactic drizzle. Force without impact, like the sacrificial blade that came down on her that night. She, too, had woken on this shore, wondering where death had gone.
Her tunic billows as she rises. It does not need to hide much, she thinks - limbs like branches, wide-set shoulders, bones harsh like the pebbles underneath.
But her purpose now is not of the body. She turns to look with reverence to the hill from whence she came. Even against clouded skies, the temple’s pillars are an untouchable white.
Nearly without thought, her feet carry her back up the path, back towards the Sanctuary, back towards the statue shining there with that same untouchable white; the Goddess she serves. She falls on her knees before it, feet still wet from rinsing off the shore’s salty soil.
It is hard to imagine what about her was worth saving from sacrifice, she who cannot hold a candle to that wild and blinding beauty. Perhaps it is simply that she is not a worthy sacrifice. A noblewoman from the seed of proud and greedy men, raised on gold and figs and a sense of entitlement - who but her father would dare to offer her to the Great Huntress?
Or perhaps she has some purpose left to serve, beyond the hallowed words this place has her speak, beyond the throats it has her cut. The thought fills her veins with buzzing electricity. To be of use to the Goddess. Yes, that would be enough.