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Pirithous
Pirithous cursed himself when the car door slammed, watching Thalia kick a stone and send it flying. He did not want to follow her too closely, nor did he want to force his company upon her when she so clearly wished him elsewhere, but they had come here for a purpose, and with or without her kindness, he needed to learn about this world.
He gave her another moment to calm herself, then climbed out of the car and closed the door quietly. She stopped her pacing, crossing her arms over her chest, and glared at him as if he were her enemy.
“Would you have kidnapped me, too?” she demanded. “Raped me, if I hadn’t invited you along willingly?”
He held his hands up, palm out, and kept his distance. “I have never needed to force anyone to bed me.”
“So what, you stole them and then they asked for it?” She sneered at the words. “That’s what every rapist says. She wanted it. She asked for it! Never mind that the girl says no! She was wearing sexy clothes so she deserved it.”
“A life as a palace woman is a good one. The women are much freer than they would be in their father’s house, and they are cared for, fed well, showered with gifts and luxuries by kings and princes.” He kept his voice even and low, but the tears in her eyes cut him. “Thalia, I swear to you, it is not what you think. I am not a cruel man.”
“You just steal women away from their families!”
“And if I were not stealing their women, they would be stealing mine. It was the way of things. Even at my own wedding, I was forced to bloody my hands to protect my women, my wife!”
Her mouth, open to argue, snapped shut again. She scowled. “You’re married?” It was more accusation than question.
“Once,” he told her, his throat thick with the memory. Hippodamia had fought with him over the palace women, too, once. Before they were married. He wished he had not mentioned it at all. “She died of an illness. By now, my son is lost, too.”
“Oh,” she murmured, dropping her eyes. She scuffed her toe against the black stone. “I’m sorry. I thought—I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“But you can’t be more than thirty?”
“We married young.” It was not a lie, precisely, but he did not want to address his age when he was not certain how old he truly was anymore. More than fifty when he left for the Underworld with Theseus, and another three thousand after that. Did those years count against him? He did not seem to have aged while he sat in the trap of the chair. Persephone, why did you not tell me?
“You said if I took your gift, you couldn’t hurt me,” Thalia said.
He sighed. “I would not have hurt you regardless, Thalia. I do not go around butchering women, even in war. I am in a strange country among strange people, and I cannot afford to make enemies of anyone, though I will admit that if I had found you inside the palace of my enemy, I would have stolen you. For your spirit and your beauty. But at least then you would have lived.”
“As your whore.”
“As my wife,” he corrected her firmly. Less than a day, and he knew that much for certain. If Thalia had lived in his time, he would have had no desire to go in search of Persephone. “You are too brave and too quick to be anything less than a queen.”
“What if I didn’t want to be your wife?”
He shrugged. “You would have, in time. I would have waited.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You arrogant ass!”
His jaw clenched, and he felt the hum of his father’s blood in his veins. If she weren’t a woman. But she was. And he was bound by honor and the gods. “It is unwise to repay an honor with insult simply because you do not wish to hear the truth.”
“You don’t get to tell me what I would or wouldn’t want!” She spun away, storming toward the building behind them. “You barely even know me!”
He wanted to grab her, to jerk her back to him, to stop her foolish argument with the same kiss they had shared that morning. He could have persuaded her to spread her legs for him right there in the gravel, if he’d wished to, if he did not care so much for her dignity and did not honor her for the generosity she had shown.
Instead, he ground his teeth on a reply and reminded himself he wanted her willing. Not because he had persuaded her to be. Not because he had encouraged her in any way. And he wanted it even more to prove he was not the man she feared he was, no matter how tempting it might be.
“Well?” she called back over her shoulder when she reached the doors. “Are you coming?”
He exhaled the tension in his body, forcing himself to calm, and then followed. All in all, she’d taken things better than he’d hoped. And true to her word, she had not abandoned him along the road. Yet. If he could just keep them both from further argument until they returned to her home, the rest would sort itself out. And if it didn’t, the forest would shelter him. Now that he knew the cars weren’t beasts, and the only predators he need fear in the woods were bears, he had no doubt that he could live quite well off the land if the gods allowed it.
But of course that was always the greatest trouble, and if the gods had other plans for him, there would be little he could do to stop it.
***
THE BUILDING WAS IMMENSE. Larger than the largest megaron he had ever seen, and filled with more clothing than all the women of Athens could ever weave in their entire lives. Not even Troy had such variety, such quantity of goods all in one place. No market in Egypt could compare, even if all the goods sold were reams of cloth. The richest store rooms of the pharaoh would be a peasant’s wealth, compared to this.
“What is this place?”
“The mall. Well. Penney’s. If you don’t find anything you like here, we can go somewhere else.”
It took a moment for him to parse the meaning from the words he didn’t recognize. “There is more than one place like this? Filled with clothing?”
“It isn’t just clothes, but yeah. I always hoped we’d get a Macy’s one day, but it never happened. Probably never will, now. Frankly we’re lucky to have a Penney’s still, at all.” She glanced at the signs hanging from the ceiling and started down an aisle to the right. “Menswear is over here.”
He followed her, staring at all the fabrics and colors as they passed. So many designs and patterns. He had never seen such variety. And the skill it must have required to weave them all. Not even Arachne could have done all this, though she had been known as the most skilled woman in all the world, until Athena had taken offense. And where was Athena to smite these women who wove so beautifully? He could not imagine that the goddess was not jealous. She had turned Arachne into a spider for daring to weave as well as a goddess, and these garments were woven even more finely still.
“How is this possible?” he asked. “Is this the only market in your country, to have so much to choose from?”
Thalia had stopped in front of a set of shelves. A statue stood on one corner of a table, dressed in long trousers. Useless for running and fighting, tight as they were, but perhaps these people did not feel they needed to run or fight.
“It’s a store, Pirithous. That’s the whole point. What size are you, do you think?”
Stores, indeed. He fingered the material, heavy and with a tighter weave than he’d ever seen. “But who weaves all this?”
She gave him a strange look. “Companies have it made. Usually in China or India, now.”
Companies. He could only imagine rooms upon rooms of slaves all weaving at once. Companies of slaves on finer looms than any they had in Achaea, to result in fabric such as this.
Thalia held the material against his waist, frowning. She folded it back up and reached for another, measuring his hips with it. “You’ll just have to try it on, I guess. Here.”
He took the cloth that she pressed into his hand. “Is it not limiting?” he asked, studying the statue again. “Covering the knee this way?”
“Well, yes, I suppose. But you’ll want long pants in winter. And the nights here can get cool, even in the summer.” She glanced over him. “You don’t have any shoes but those sandals either, do you?”
“They serve me well enough.”
“Maybe in Thessaly you can get away with it, but here it gets too cold. Do you want boots or sneakers?”
“It is summer warm outside, Thalia. Surely winter cannot be coming so soon.”
She tapped her fingers against the table top for a moment. “If you wait you’ll have more choices, I guess. But we still need to get shirts that don’t look like they’re straining across your shoulders, and some underwear, probably.”
He said nothing, not sure what was expected. Everything was so different and strange, and he was sick of proving his ignorance. The gods were mocking him, sending him here. Laughing from Olympus while he struggled to make sense of even the most simple customs. He was not a child that he could not dress himself, yet here, he felt like one.
Thalia had moved on to another table, this one filled with tunics, all shorter than he would have liked. He looked over the other clothing on display, searching for a simple kilt. He did not need anything more than that, and as long as the weather held, he could go bare-chested.
“What are you looking for?” Thalia called, as he moved deeper into the aisle.
He saw something that looked similar, but when he examined it more closely it was more of the same, shortened trousers falling all the way to his knee. “Are there no kilts?”
Thalia made a strangled noise, and he glanced back at her. She bit her lip, and he thought she was trying not to laugh. “Um,” she said. “Not for men, no. And if you went out in public wearing one, you’d never hear the end of it. Unless you were Scottish. But even then, there would be a lot of laughing behind your back.”
Just as the gods laughed now. He ground his teeth. “Long tunics then, that can be belted at the waist?”
She shook her head, her eyes still dancing with amusement. “Shorts and a t-shirt like you’re wearing are probably the closest you’ll get. You can barely get most guys to wear pink or purple, never mind a dress.”
“Purple is one of the finest dyes, so hard to come by only the richest kings wear it. Is this not so, here?”
She laughed then and came to join him, sorting through the hanging garments. “Definitely not. Purple is as easy to find as anything else, except that insecure assholes pitch fits about it being, um. Effeminate, I guess. You have the confidence to pull it off, though.” She held up a black pair of trousers, the fabric supple and soft. “How about this?”
“I suppose you will tell me it must do.”
She smiled, and even though her eyes laughed at him, he was relieved to see no sign of the anger and pain she had betrayed earlier. He would have her laugh at him always, if it would keep the tears and accusation from her eyes.
“I won’t say must, but I will say that you won’t find anything better. Just try them on and see how they fit.”
His hands went to the waist of the short trousers he wore.
“No!” she cried, grabbing his hands and pulling him back toward one of the far walls. “Not here! In the fitting room.”
He grinned. “I promise you I have nothing offensive beneath my kilt, Thalia. Many people have found it quite pleasurable.”
“That’s hardly the point. You can’t just undress in the middle of a store. Go in there.” She gave him a gentle shove toward the entrance into a small set of rooms. “And put these on.” She slapped two pairs of the short trousers against his chest along with two tunics he had not seen her pick up, and the first pair of long trousers. “If they fit, we’ll buy them. If not, we’ll find something bigger, or smaller, or whatever.”
He pressed his lips together, eyeing the fastenings. More metal. Did these people find metal growing upon trees?
“Go on,” she said.
“Thalia—” He bit his tongue on the rest of his sentence. He was a man. He’d seen fifty summers come and go, married, had children and taught them to dress themselves. Hubris or not, he could not bring himself to ask for her help.
“What is it?” she asked.
He forced himself to smile. “You have my thanks.”
Her cheeks flushed. “You won’t thank me if we don’t get back before Nikki and she sees us carrying in your bags, and I definitely won’t thank you if she finds out about all this. So hurry up.”
He left her then, pushing open the door to a small room with a low bench and an immense mirror. Smaller even than a store room in the least palace, and brightly lit. It unnerved him to see his reflection so clearly, but these people hung mirrors everywhere, and of such fine quality that he could not fault them for wishing to flaunt the craftsmanship, even if he did not understand why they would wish to stare at their own faces with such frequency.
Pulling the tunic Thalia had lent him over his head, he could not help but notice the red scar across his ribs, like the burn from a rope, where the shadows had bound him to the chair in Hades. He cast the tunic aside and replaced it with one of the others so he could not dwell on the mark.
Purple, he realized, so deep it was almost blue. Sweet Thalia, bright and bold. He tested his movement, but the tunic allowed him complete freedom. If he had to draw a sword, this would not slow him. When he tried the second one, a pale blue, it fit just as well. But the long trousers were a different matter.
Pirithous stared at the metal teeth of the closure and wished once more for the simplicity of a kilt. And then there was the metal peg above it, like the head of a nail, but at least that seemed to match a hole on the other side of the cut. He fastened it without trouble at his waist, but judging by Thalia’s response when he meant to pull the trousers down, it could not be possible that the metal teeth were meant to hang open, jagged around his spearhead. Who would subject himself to such a thing?
The teeth were locked together still, on the pair of knee-length trousers, but he could not determine how it was meant to be accomplished while wearing it. He took the long trousers off again and set the teeth against one another, forcing them together. The metal twisted, giving beneath the pressure of his fingers. The teeth stuck to one another, but it looked nothing like the neat line of the shorts.
“Pirithous?” Thalia called. “Is everything all right?”
He cursed under his breath.
“Do those pants fit or do you need something bigger?”
Of course she would not leave him to this humiliation in peace. “I am not certain as yet.”
“If you let me see, I can go look for something else if you need it.”
He shoved his legs into the sleeves of clothing, pulling them back on. They stuck around his hips and he cursed again, then yanked them up, gritting his teeth against the discomfort as the jagged metal scraped over his body.
“Pirithous?”
He pulled the door open, and stepped out.
She frowned at the place just below his waist, tugging at the loops of material at the top. “They seem to fit all right, but no wonder you’re having trouble. The zipper’s completely mangled. Why didn’t you say something?”
The touch of her hand so close made him ache. He grabbed her by the wrist, stilling her movements before he forgot himself a second time. She looked up, and he could feel the beat of her heart beneath the skin. Hard and fast.
“Where I come from,” he said quietly, “we use ties, or belts.”
“Oh,” she murmured. Her pulse skipped. “I should have thought of that.”
He ran his thumb over the smooth skin at her wrist, and her breath caught with that same flash of desire. This time, he didn’t fan the flame, but his body still tightened with anticipation. With need.
Too much.
He let his fingers slip away from her arm and her hand fell from the fabric at his waist.
“I’ll um.” She rubbed her palm against her thigh. “Go find another pair of those. With a zipper that works.”