Atalanta

by Jennifer Saint

ATALANTA: From the Greek Ἀταλάντη (Atalante) meaning “equal in strength.”

how rare a thing it was to be the protégée of a goddess, to spend my childhood in the wild simplicity and raw magic of the woods.

she let those days of freedom slip away like the glass beads of a necklace dropped carelessly to the floor, never knowing how they would shatter.”

“A woman alone among men is always in danger.” His gaze ran up and down my body as he opened his arms wide to the others, eliciting mutters of agreement.

Orpheus the man no longer existed; he was the conduit through which the music came, as though it flowed from the roots buried deep in the earth up through his lyre and out toward the heavens, sweeping us up along with it.

I couldn’t believe that a woman as powerful as Medea could bind herself to a man like Jason, that she would willingly reduce herself to be his wife.

I saw her, squashed into such a life as she described, and however I imagined it, I couldn’t make it fit. A woman who could scale a mountain in the dead of night to conjure her potions; a woman who could tame a mighty serpent, take charge of a ship full of men, plot the death of her brother and carry it out without a shudder of remorse—she wanted to bear Jason’s children and live quietly for the rest of her years?

I wondered how Persephone felt when she stepped between her two worlds. If, when she came back home, she ever missed what she had left behind.