Atalanta

by Jennifer Saint

Men, hounds, and horses. They intruded on our forest every now and again,

Men r always intruding on us girls!

“But in exchange, we’ve all made the same vow: that we have nothing to do with men.”

Ok fr!

“Well, there’s no other woman who would have joined this quest,” he said. “It’s taken them so much by surprise. Most of them don’t know what to think of you at all.” “I’m here because I’m good enough.”

“There’s Atalanta,” he called. “Who among you will be beaten by a woman first?”

Fuck off heracles

But this, this I wished she could see. I had done this on my own, and I had done it for every nymph I’d shared the forest with.

I had a sinking feeling none of the men would judge him the same way as they would me.

The mention of Persephone’s name made me think of Artemis. I wondered if she knew her friend was grieved all the way across the seas.

“These men were wrong to deny Atalanta’s victory.”

“They’re jealous—bitter that a woman was first. They didn’t know what she can do.”

I’d conquered every doubt and misgiving that anyone could have held about me, but this is what I’d brought back—no golden fruits tended by immortals, no glorious prize, but an encumbrance nurtured by my own body, the body that had never let me down before.

Who could count the number of babies my traveling companions might have left in their wake? And not one of them would ever give it a second thought. So why should I?

“None of them wants to remember. None of them wants it immortalized in their halls that Atalanta was one of their number. That a woman was as good as them, certainly not that you were better.

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