Atalanta

by Jennifer Saint

“And I trust your judgment better than anyone’s.” “Why is that?” “You see people as they are,” he said. “Perhaps it’s because you don’t conceal anything about yourself. Artifice stands out to you.”

and felt her absence again. I wondered that it felt harder to leave my dog than my son, but I reasoned that this journey was for his benefit.

“I would never have married him, prophecy or not.” It had been a reckless, joyful abandon that I’d gambled on getting away with. “So many of the Argonauts were married, so many of them must have left children in their wake. I didn’t behave any worse than any of the men. Better, in fact, because I didn’t leave Parthenopaios.”

had been among too many people, living according to their rules for too long. It was clouding my vision, gnawing away at my confidence and certainty, making me doubt the instincts that had kept me alive all these years. I needed to remember who I was, who I had always been. A woman who was unafraid.

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.

anymore. Whatever he might have given us—treasure or ships or quests—anything I did with his resources would have been in his name, and I would never let that happen. It was nothing to me if my name was forgotten in halls like his, left unspoken by men like him, if it faded away from the songs and memories of men whose opinions were worthless to me. It had taken the sight of the Golden Apples for me to realize, but I knew it now.

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.