Atalanta

by Jennifer Saint

we tossed into the mud. But I couldn’t hold the thoughts clearly enough, they were too slippery, arching free from my grasp like the fish I tried to pluck from the river as the bears did all those years ago. I shook my head, trying to clear it. Hippomenes’ eyes were dreamy and unfocused, succumbing to the same trance as me. Aphrodite’s trance, Aphrodite’s bewitchment, that she cast on us now in punishment for the Apples we had disdained. Somewhere in my mind, the lucid part of me screamed in warning, but I couldn’t fight against it, and neither could he. ‘Rhea,’ he said, gesturing at a carving on the wall, dragging his thumb over the shapes standing out in relief. I peered at them through the shifting shadows. Rhea, the goddess that Artemis had told me of once. Rhea who had ruled this forest before anyone else. Rhea, the mother of gods, mother of mountains, mother of the world. She was outlined in gold, glinting in the dim light, her high crown and flowing dress, stone lions prowling at her feet. So, this had been her temple, her sacred place of worship. It seemed right that it was so nearly swallowed up by nature, that the vines and plants had taken it back, working between the stones, claiming it back to the earth again, making it wild.