WE WERE ALMOST to the forest line when I heard the whistle of loosed bows. Then a wild scream erupted overhead, followed by a thump as a mass of feathers dropped to the ground ahead of us. A Harpy. She lay fluttering on her side, one wing pinned to her chest. A second arrow was lodged in her throat, and geysers of black gore bubbled up around it whenever she breathed. Diomedes, who was several steps ahead, halted beside her and drew his sword.
“You go on,” he called. “I’ll finish this one. It’ll send a message to the others.”
He raised his sword, but I reached him in time to catch his arm. “No, Diomedes.”
He groaned. “Not again! Look, we don’t have time for this.”
I ignored his protest and knelt beside the Harpy, examining first one wound, then the other. She struggled feebly but was too weakened to resist. The pinned wing was a minor sort of wound and required only that the arrow’s fletching be broken off before the wing could be freed, but the wound to her neck was serious. I looked into her face, pale for lack of blood and air. She wouldn’t be breathing much longer if the arrow weren’t removed.
“What are you doing?” asked Diomedes.
“Mercy over justice,” I muttered, reaching into my quiver. I found the sharp, white-fletched arrow and broke off the head.
“Odysseus, you fool!”
“Have faith, Diomedes.” I pressed the blade into the wound and opened it. Again, the Harpy struggled, but there was no strength in her. A wide puddle of blood spread around us.
“He’s torturing her!” cried a Harpy from the cover of the forest. The trees shook.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I pulled the arrow from her throat. “This will help.” But the wound was too wide and deep. Every breath blew a spray of black blood; and, if truth be told, the Harpy looked worse now than before.
I took Chiron’s flask from my belt and examined the murky oil.
Diomedes touched my shoulder. “Odysseus, save it for someone important.”
But I was too far along to turn back. I emptied half the oil into my palm and spread it over her throat. Then—and I honestly don’t know what came over me—I kissed the wound and blessed her. It was an awkward and irrational act, and just thinking of that creature’s foul stench makes me gag even now. It was clumsy, revolting, and foolish, yet I felt compelled to make some gesture of real sympathy. A gesture that would go beyond pity. I wanted the Harpy to know that I was moved by her suffering—that she was my equal, my friend. But why I felt so sorry for her, or how I found the strength to show my sorrow in such a dramatic way, I will never know. I think perhaps it was a greater power than my own that possessed me. Or perhaps I was simply trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t as wicked as the Centaurs thought—that there was more to my nature than villainy and deceit. But whatever the case, I know that when I pressed my lips to her throat and felt the heat of her blood on my face, something broke inside of me, something knit into the fabric of my soul. When I drew back, I was a different man.
And the wound had healed.
Diomedes gasped.
I sat back on my haunches and stared, wiping the blood from my face.
The Harpy lumbered to her feet.
All the howls and screeches and curses ceased. There was a sudden stillness in the woods. There was an awed silence among the Centaurs. The monsters overhead folded their wings and dropped to the sand. And as both sides looked on, I bowed to the Harpy, placed my broken arrow in her hands, and walked past her into the forest with Diomedes at my side.
We walked into the forest, and the Harpies, silent as stone, watched us pass, turning only their heads.