Atalanta

by Jennifer Saint

“He’s underestimated me. He thinks I’m not fast enough. He doesn’t realize what I can do, even after I showed him.” “And when he runs out of suitors willing to risk their lives?” “Then I’ll set my terms.”

I needed to remember who I was, who I had always been. A woman who was unafraid.

“Hippomenes? You put yourself forward as a potential husband?” “I do.” I closed my eyes, willing him to stop with every sinew in my body.

“I’m a worthy suitor for your daughter,” Hippomenes said. “I’m the son of a king. I was part of the famed Calydonian boar hunt.”

His words repeated in my mind: No one has to die. Did that mean he thought I’d let him win? Was he so sure of our friendship that he would gamble his life on it?

“What would my reputation be worth if I let my friend die? What kind of a hero would I be?”

“You didn’t do this to be my husband?” His cheeks, already flushed from the race, flooded with a darker red. “Of course not. You told me about the oracle. You told me you’d never marry. I wanted to help you find a way out of the bargain, without any needless deaths, without you having to compromise your fame.”

Aphrodite would have given him these trophies on the promise that I would be married, to ensure that Artemis could never claim me again.

I didn’t have to be an obedient follower of Artemis, jumping to serve her every command; I didn’t have to be a hero in the mold of Jason or Heracles or the angry boar hunters at Calydon. I wasn’t going to try to shape myself to be like one of them, a ruthless, self-serving, glory-seeking man. I was something different from them all.

“Since I saw your face after the centaurs knocked me unconscious, I’ve thought of nothing but you.”

I knew it was true. I hadn’t admitted to myself that I loved him, too, until now. I hadn’t been holding any part of myself separate from our kiss; I wasn’t fearful of the tenderness, of the emotion between us. With Hippomenes, I could let myself feel it all—the passion and the love, together.

If it was Aphrodite’s spell that had us ensnared, our wits clouded by her magic, we were caught in it together. The night beyond the temple’s walls was still poised and watchful, but within its dark sanctuary, we were all that mattered.

Aphrodite had led us in here, into Rhea’s temple, and let passion overwhelm us.

I saw her fingers twisting in the tawny mane of the lion at my side, my lover, but it was joy that pulsed through me as she commanded us to run, a pure animal joy that eclipsed any I had felt before. We fled into the night together.

The oracle warned that I would lose myself, but the opposite is true. I am more myself than I have ever been. I am wild, I am free. I am Atalanta.