2

The procession stuttered to a halt behind me. Someone called, “Why aren’t we moving?” Someone else yelled, “Apollo, forgive us!” A priest began a prayer.

The basket steadied. I wanted to shake my foot to get the pebble out, but then I’d certainly topple the basket.

Had I angered a god, who was punishing me?

Ouch! I started walking again and somehow kept my steps even. In a few minutes, my foot felt wet. Mother gasped.

Soon, my blood greased the pebble so that it swam out, though the spot still stung. Would the pebble and my blood anger the gods, even though the basket didn’t fall? Was I no longer without a blemish?

Feel the ground. Shift my weight. Good foot. Pebble foot. I didn’t falter.

We continued onward to the altar, where I lifted the basket from my head and lowered it to the ground without spilling anything. I rolled my shoulders in relief.

Sacrifice and prayers followed while my toe stopped bleeding.

Still uneasy about being a bloody kanephoros, I waited in the front row of the stands just south of the sacred grove for the games to begin. Aminta sat next to me, not touching me but with her arm across Melo’s shoulders. I wished Maera were here, pressing herself against my legs.

Kynthia, on my other side, congratulated me on my performance and added, “Last year, Apollo’s kanephoros kept a steady gait. A whisper about your bloody foot ran through the priests to the mamas and then to us. The mamas may wonder what kind of wife you’ll make, prone to scrapes as you seem to be. And the sons may have the image of your oozing toes lodged in their minds.”

Hush, Kynthia!

My favorite brother, Hector, rushed to me and stopped abruptly. He declaimed in a big voice from his athlete’s chest, “On Mount Olympus, the gods are praising my sister! The wounded kanephoros who didn’t falter.”

I smiled up at him, forgetting Kynthia. Hector was always my champion, but he wouldn’t lie. If he believed I’d done well, then I had.

He bounced a little, always full of warm energy. His black curls bounced too. We had the same round eyebrows that Father had praised. If they meant sweetness in me, they meant a hive’s worth of honey in him.

He raised his arms in a vee, then dropped to his knees. “Does it hurt?”

I tossed back my head, the wordless way to say no. “Not much.”

Mother came to me from her chair next to Father. Hector jumped up and held her elbow while she bent down. “Let me see your foot.”

I took off my sandal.

“Mm. Youth! Cuts don’t last.” She patted my knee. “People are marveling—your father and I are marveling too—that you didn’t drop the basket. You showed remarkable determination.”

She’d never described me as determined before. I wondered if I was.

Kynthia squirmed next to me. Good.

Hector said, “I would have stumbled.”

“You wouldn’t have!” Troy’s best athlete.

“Since you don’t mind pain,” he added, “I could teach you to wrestle.”

We laughed. Girls and women didn’t wrestle. But it would have been fun.

“I can’t stay. I have to take my place.” He held out his arm for Mother, who leaned on him back to her chair.

I watched them go, the two tilting into each other. Father held his hands out to Mother when they were close.

Three young men rushed to us and saluted my cousins with raised arms. Their faces were scarlet. Melo and Aminta blushed too, but Kynthia pursed her lips as if she’d eaten a lemon.

My cousins were betrothed to the three and had two years left in their engagements. Married or not, they’d continue to serve me until I married too and went to live in my husband’s house.

None of them had ever had a conversation with their intendeds. Kynthia, however, had listened to rumors that hers was dull. She often said, “Imagine me with a boring man!”

I pitied him.

Unless everyone really was disgusted by my bleeding toe, among the other contestants were young men who’d be put forward by their parents as my suitors. Succeeding as kanephoros took me a step closer from girlhood to womanhood. I’d cross entirely when I became a wife.

I watched the players intently. This one was graceful, that one strong, another easily distracted. Some seemed merry, some grim with concentration. What would be best in a husband? Hector, my ideal of a man, laughed and shouted to his friends. Once he waved to me.

But the games came easily to him. My best future husband might have to work harder and have no attention left over for waving. He might still be sweet and kind. How would I tell since I could only ever watch him from a distance?

Once again, I wished for future sight. Then I’d know which one I was fated to marry. If we weren’t going to like each other, I might be able to persuade Mother and Father to choose someone else.

Hector won the wrestling. I snapped my fingers raw.

My twin, Helenus, won nothing, but he did better in every competition than our brother Deiphobus, which was all he cared about. Helenus couldn’t stand to lose, and I’d learned early to let him win our little games. I preferred not to endure his angry silences and sometimes elbow jabs, which he pretended were accidental.

I loved him anyway. We were always together when we were very little.

At first, Deiphobus, older by four years, simply wanted to play fair, and he made allowances when Helenus was smaller and weaker. But now that they were evenly matched, Deiphobus wanted victory as much as my twin did.

After the competitions, everyone feasted on the sacrificial oxen and the sacrificial fruit and straggled home. I asked Mother if I could linger in the sacred grove.

“Your toe is all right?”

“It feels just like my other toes.” Not quite.

“You can stay. Don’t worry if you fall asleep and don’t wake up until morning. Apollo may send you a prophetic dream.”

Maera would miss me, but I might glimpse the future! I’d pet her and tell her everything.

Gods could do more than send dreams. They might visit favorites and help them.

Or harm them. Zeus, ruler of the gods, sometimes carried off maidens he fancied.

But Apollo didn’t behave as he did—or not often.

When everyone was gone, I sat on the bench in front of his altar and the marble statue of him under the branches of an ancient oak tree. In May in our warm land, the sacred grove was a wilderness of laurel shrubs, olive bushes, grapevines, and dwarf pine trees. A dove cooed. Leaves rustled. The scent of pine pleased my nose.

I smiled at the statue: the sweetness of the god’s mouth, his powerful arms and legs, even the graceful fall of his tunic. His fingers on his lyre looked sensitive and purposeful.

The fingers plucked the strings, beginning a lively tune.

The statue plucked the strings!

My breath stuck in my throat. I blinked, but the vision continued. The statue tinted rosy with life.

After a little while, it—the god?—sat next to me. I trembled and shivered.

“They chose well when they made you kanephoros. I’ve never been so pleased.”

His velvet voice relaxed me. For joy, I snapped my fingers over my head. “Thank you.”

“You hurt your foot.” He knelt in front of me—a god kneeling to me! Gently, he eased off my sandal.

How safe my foot felt in his hand!

“A valiant wound. You didn’t drop my basket.” He rubbed his finger across the scab. “There.”

The cut closed. The last twinge of pain faded away. No sign remained that a pebble had cut me.

“You’re the best god!”

He sat next to me again and mock frowned. “I’ll tell Zeus you didn’t mean that.”

I laughed.

“Your brother Hector’s wrestling pleased me. He will be beloved by the gods.” The god of truth corrected himself. “Some gods.”

“He’s my best brother.” Bravely, I added, “He’s worthy of admiration even by the gods.”

Three crows flapped over the grove and landed on a branch of the oak tree. They cawed words. Truly! Words!

“A minnow doesn’t sense the rapids ahead.

Apollo, god of light and truth (not wisdom)—

Cassandra, the determined kanephoros—

nothing bad has happened yet.

God and princess, watch your step!”

“Did you hear that?” I blurted. “Did they really speak?” Crows thought me determined too!

“They’re just my crows.” He waved a hand. Crows were his sacred birds. “Few mortals can hear them.” He put down his lyre and stroked my hair. “Let me love you in a little while, dear, and right now I’ll give you the power to see the future.”

I already loved Apollo. How blessed I was that he wanted to love me too, which had to mean that, really, he already did.

“If you’d like something else, tell me.”

I tossed back my head.

“You won’t see my future or the future of any deity.” Feather light, his hand caressed my cheek. “You won’t see the near future of yourself or any other mortal seer because seers can act against their own predictions. You’ll see only their more distant future. It isn’t in my power to give you those abilities. Understand?”

I nodded. The enormous, important future! If I’d been good for Troy as kanephoros, how much better I’d be as a prophet.

And I’d discover which man I was destined to marry.

“You’ll be the mortal of truth as I’m the god.”

“I’ll help people avoid their mistakes.”

He corrected me. “Small mistakes, not big ones. The dread ship of fate is almost impossible to turn.”

A sea breeze brushed my face. Why would the ship of fate sail to Troy? And why was it dread? Father was a good king, and we’d lived in peace for as long as anyone could remember.

Apollo’s eyes shifted from me and then returned. He raised one eyebrow. “It seems I can’t grant future sight to you without also bestowing it on your twin. Do you mind?”

I pitied Deiphobus, Helenus’s rival, because my twin would certainly use prophecy against him. Still, I tossed back my head. I’d balance Helenus’s mischief with my power.

Apollo told me to lie back on the bench. He spread his hand across my forehead. A cloud of shining dust motes collected around me. I gasped for breath as specks of the future in tiny instants poured into my mouth. My nostrils filled with them. They pounded in my ears. I gagged, then inhaled, and they tingled down my throat.

Deep within, they melted into me. Memories of the past joined visions of the future.

I could examine them later, but the god was waiting. I opened my eyes and sat up. That wasn’t so bad. I smiled shakily at him.

He moved closer, so near I smelled the clove oil on his skin. He tipped up my chin. His face neared my face—his ageless, unchanging god’s face! My stomach rose into my throat. He kissed my lips.

Ai! I swallowed the bile and pushed—no, shoved!—him away.

His face reddened. “You do this to me?” He stood.

I collapsed back. I’d angered a god. And I’d been a fool to think that loving me had merely meant I was dear to him.

Over the fear drumming in my ears, I heard him say, “I’ll return tomorrow. Do not offend me again.”