LEARNING
Otrera refused to invite men to our island after the fight. The men who had come there previously, old grandfathers or lame sons, were not forced to go but asked politely to leave and not return. The fury of Otrera was something none of us had seen before and a wrath none of us wished to incur. Even Hippolyta, wild and free-spirited as she was, shrank back when mother spun through with her orders and her new commands.
The biggest change in our lives then was the weapons training. Since we had no men to rely on—nor could we have realistically relied upon the guardianship of a handful of ancient ancestors—Otrera commenced the full-scale training of women in arms of war. She did not let us use the arms and weapons gifted us by our father yet, but we were given fresh spears and a bow each and told to fashion our own arrows for killing men and not hunting in the underbrush. The transition went smoothly. We became accustomed to following the various trails about our island, scanning the trees and grasses with increasingly trained eyes to spot signs of male incursion. It was not a question of would the men return but when.
One night, all of us sweating from bouts of spear-fight training, Otrera called us close to the hearth in our small home.
“My daughters,” she said and smiled. Both Lyta and I curled our legs under ourselves and settled down on the woven rug before the hearth. We had grown much over the last winter, and Mother barely needed to look down at us any longer. “My daughters, there is much for me to teach you.”
Hippolyta laughed in that sparkly, dreamy way of hers. “Oh, Mother, I doubt there is time enough in the night, or the year, for all the things we have to learn from you.”
Otrera chortled at that, and I smiled though I waited more patiently for our mother to explain herself.
“There is talk among us of sending some of the daughters away,” began Mother. “The girls would be taught the ways of the world in a larger city and learn to fight and defend themselves by the greatest warriors.” She paused and looked at both of us. “The purpose behind this fosterage would be to make our daughters greater warriors—greater than we could hope to train here.”
“But you are the greatest warrior, Mother!” exclaimed Lyta. “Why send girls to train with someone else?”
Mother composed her thoughts to answer when I cut in, “Are you sending us, too?”
Silence reigned, not even a breath, besides the crickle crackle of the gentle fire. Then, Mother bowed her head. I had never seen such obeisance in her before. There was something strange about it. It made me edgy, but we did not argue with her.
“Yes, my dears,” she said at last. “I need you to learn to be strong warriors. And I know of a king who has the best training in all these lands. His name is King Priam, and he rules a city called Ilium. I have already sent word to him that you will be traveling there, along with some of the other girls from our island, to learn the ways of the weapons of man.”
I did not argue, nor did Hippolyta. How could we? Our beloved mother, whom we trusted in all things, had made a decision. We were expected to obey her. And it was not so hard a thing to obey someone whom we both adored. It was hard to think of leaving the island, though, our homes for all the time we could recall. I realized I didn’t even know if we’d been born here or not, but truthfully, it did not matter because this island was our home.
And so we spent our time waiting for the men of Priam to come and take us all away. For my part, I filled my time with training and exercise. I had a vague notion that women were not usually cast as fighters and decided that I wanted there to be no doubt in this Priam’s mind that I could wield a blade as well as any boy my age could. A few of the other girls joined me in racing around the sandy shores, the thick, sucking sand an extra difficulty in our training regimens. We were all becoming older together, but not so old that we could not laugh and jest and joke with one another still.
Hippolyta began to drift from us, joining our sparring matches occasionally but mostly spending time on her own in the woods far from the village. I did not like her growing distance from us and especially from me. I felt like a spool of thread, unwinding slowly. The farther she went and the more time we spent apart. Did Lyta not love me? Why was she not at my side, leading the other girls through our practices? Mother, preoccupied with fortifying the island and forging plans for our futures, hardly noticed Lyta’s remoteness. I tried to mention it to her, but she was too busy to listen to her half-grown daughter’s laments.
And so one day, after weeks of such growing separation, I, too, left the other girls to their own work and slunk into the woods. High overhead, the sun shone brightly, but the tree branches latticed themselves across the sky and kept most of the harshness from my eyes. With the care of a burgeoning hunter, I stalked down the path that Lyta had taken that morning. The reason I’d chosen that particular day to follow her was what she had carried with her when she left—a small satchel tucked under one arm. Why, I wondered, would she need such a thing out here? What was she doing off in the forest? I kept to the shadows as much as I could, which wasn’t hard and soon found myself halfway across the island, still pursuing my errant sister.
Then, a sound reached my ears.
A giggle. Then a throaty, hearty laugh.
One belonged to my sister. The other—I did not recognize.
I crouched in the brush, suddenly feeling very out of place. I had never felt out of place on the island before, not when we found the man’s corpse, not when the leopard attacked. But the hushed words and the escaping mirth from Hippolyta and her mysterious someone caused me to shrink in my sandals. I was not supposed to be here. I was not meant to hear or see any of this.
Lyta was hiding something—no, someone—from me.
I crawled forwards and peered through the fronds of a dense fern. There were two figures reclining in the grass.
Lyta was hiding a man from me.
I supposed I had never seen a naked man before, or not one this young and vigorous. Though young, younger than the old grandfathers who’d lived in our village as of late, this man was still older than Hippolyta and me by a good many years. His hair was tousled golden-brown and fell around his thick, muscular shoulders. The shoulders and the rest of him glowed like a flame, ruddy and gilded from the sun. He threw back his head and laughed at something humorous Lyta had whispered in his ear. My sister was entwined between well-muscled legs, with her fingers playing lightly against his golden flesh. The intimacy, the connection between them, almost sent me flying back towards home. But I knew that if I got up and ran away, they would certainly notice me. And I still needed to understand what was happening, understand why Lyta had kept this strange man from me and Otrera.
The sack Hippolyta had carried was sprawled open at their sides. In it were bits of food and a cask of wine. And a dagger in its sheath. I could tell it was not one of the daggers from our father, and I sighed with relief. At least those items, my inheritance, was safe. For some reason, in this odd interval, that notion comforted me.
Lyta reached out a hand and coyly caressed the man’s cheek. Rumbling like an animal, he grabbed her wrist. She laughed, he growled some more, and they crashed into each other with passion. I watched for only a moment, then turned away, tears filling my eyes for no reason at all.
I scurried away as quickly as I could, though they had no concern for anything but each other. As I raced back home, the unshed tears now dripped down my face, mixing with the dirt and dust I kicked up. I felt too young but trapped in a body that didn’t understand the desires and wants of others, too stupid to know what men and women did together, and too dispassionate to crave what came naturally to others.
I held my tongue about the man, even when Lyta returned home that night glowing like a firebrand and smiling like a loon. Maybe Otrera assumed we had spent the day together. I did not know. I turned aside from them as we dined in silence, choking on the unspoken thoughts filling my mind. A man! And here on the island, after Mother forbade it. Oh, Lyta, what game are you playing?
I could see shortly that it was no game. For she stole nothing more than handfuls of food from our home over the course of the next few days. I knew the man must still be hiding himself in our woods, though I refused to go again lest I catch sight of them taking their pleasures together. The idea of it nauseated me. I knew it was a natural act, that much I knew, not the mechanics really, but the human need for it. But I didn’t feel the desire, the ache to belong to someone else. I wanted nothing. I desired nothing. For some reason, most of my disgust faced inwards rather than at Hippolyta. She was the normal one, I thought. And I was someone wrong or broken for not feeling as she did.
It hurt, and I turned away from the other girls. At last, Otrera seemed to notice something was wrong now that I was sullen and dour and keeping to myself.
“What is wrong, my little warrior?” she asked. “Why are you so distant from us?”
I shrugged. What could I say that wouldn’t betray Hippolyta or paint myself as a freak?
“Are you upset I am sending you to Ilium to train?” When I shook my head, she patted my hair down. “Whatever is wrong, Pen, trust that I love you. You’re my strong girl. My warrior girl.”
“If I’m a warrior, what is Lyta?” I asked. I was starting to see differences between me and my sister, but I couldn’t understand them or why they existed in the first place. Weren’t we all just people? Mortals? And so I asked my mother to know what she thought of Hippolyta.
Mother smiled and twisted dark strands of my hair around her finger. “Lyta is strong as any warrior, too. But she is a dreamer, a queen of dreams.” She released the curl, which sprung upwards. “And so I have a dreamer queen and a warrior queen. Neither one is bad, Pen. Don’t look upset.”
I wasn’t upset, not as I understood it. I was just confused. I fidgeted where I sat and suddenly realized I was almost as tall as Otrera, if not the same height. When had I grown? When had Hippolyta and I grown from girls into women? That idea terrified me. I did not feel ready to be my own person, to fight, to love, to dive into the world on my own—not yet, not yet. Not yet.
Otrera must have read the feelings struggling their way across my face and, whether she understood exactly their cause or not, tucked me into her arms like she had done when I was little and hummed away my pain. Sleep came a little easier after that, but my dreams were still filled with confusion and sorrow.
Several more days went by before I realized Hippolyta’s man was a problem. I had still practiced some with the other girls, training as my mother desired, but one day in the afternoon, I was filled with the desire to look upon my father’s weaponry and armor. My heart swelled at the thought of seeing his glorious helmet, of taking his bronze sword into my hand.
But when I opened the woven trunk wherein Mother had stored the relics, I found none. The helmet, the cuffs, the belt, the blade—all gone.
Mother was not there, and I was glad, for I knew where the items had gone. Or who had taken them. And why.
I raced out of the house and into the forest. My bare feet flew almost silently across the forest floor, fleet as a deer. Hippolyta’s presence tugged at me like a lodestone, and though I did not know exactly where on the island she might be cavorting with her lover, my feet found her soon enough. They were stretched out beside each other on a beach on the far side of the island. I burst from the treeline onto their sands and saw the detritus of my father’s legacy strewn around them.
“Pen!” cried Lyta, bouncing up when she saw me. She tugged her chiton closer around her body. The man with her rose slowly, so much like the leopard moved, his eyes never leaving my face.
“What are you doing, Lyta?” I shouted. No tears formed in my eyes, but I felt my face burn red. “Are you stealing for him? Did he ask you for our father’s things?”
Lyta reached one hand to me and another to her lover, meant to calm one or both of us. It did not work.
“I’m not stealing anything, Pen,” Lyta tried to explain. “I just wanted to show him.” She smiled at me. “Don’t be upset with me. Here, let me introduce you. This is my friend. His name is Heracles.”
The young man straightened himself up to his full height, which was taller than both Hippolyta and myself. He inclined his head wearily. “I take it this is your sister, then?” he asked of Lyta.
I didn’t wait for an introduction or response of my own. “Why do you want to see our father’s arms? Are there more men here? Are you alone?”
My sister rolled her eyes. “He’s alone, Pen. It’s just him. He arrived a few weeks ago. But you know I couldn’t tell Mother about him, not after she just forbade men from the island.”
Heracles’ brow furrowed. “I was just stopping here. I don’t want any trouble from you or your man-hating kind.”
Hippolyta turned to him in shock, losing grip a little on her dress as she did. More of her golden skin slipped into the sunlight. “‘Man-hating?’ We don’t hate men here. Wherever did you get that idea?”
But Heracles was also reaching for his own belt to clasp around his waist. A sword hung from it. “We’ve all heard of your island of women. All the girl-lovers and moon-worshippers. The killing of any man who sets foot here, even infants. I see now it’s true.” He shook his head to Lyta, but his attention still sulked around me. “I should leave. A man does belong here.”
Hippolyta tried to argue, but Heracles would have none of it. I watched as he dragged a small boat out from under the brush and pushed it through the sands to the beach. He dumped his few belongings into the bottom of the round craft and accepted only a tankard of water from my sister before he made to set sea. After a few minutes of working in silence, Lyta accepted that he was leaving and helped him push the little craft out towards the sun-glittering waters.
I watched it all like a hidden observer, like a bird on a branch, not the cause of the disruption itself. I felt angry—at myself for exploding at a stranger, at Lyta for lying to us all, and at Heracles, whose eyes lingered greedily on the bronze weapons and armor that littered the beach. For a moment, I thought he might take Lyta with him, but she remained firmly planted with her feet in the sands.
“It was a pleasure, Hippolyta,” he said, one foot swung over the bow of his boat, the other calf-deep in seawater. “Maybe I’ll see you again someday.”
Hippolyta looked upset, but no tears had yet stained her cheeks. “I shall miss you, Heracles.”
He grinned. “I hope so.”
“Wait!” Before he could climb aboard his little craft, Hippolyta raced back to the beach and grabbed up one of my father’s items, the gleaming metal belt. “Here,” she said, placing it in his hands and letting her fingers trace their way across his forearms the way I’d spied her do days ago. “To always remember.”
I bit down my arguments at my sister, deciding it was better to wait until the interloper was gone. But this, I did not like. How had she the right to give away our father’s things? Were they not also mine? And what of our mother?
Heracles leaned forward and kissed Lyta full on the mouth. I hated the intimacy of it and being forced to watch. “I don’t think I could ever forget my beautiful sea queen.” He ran his finger down the curve of her jawline before climbing into his boat with the belt clutched to his breast.
I wanted to shout my apologies to Hippolyta as I watched her stand at the edge of the sea while Heracles drifted further and further away. But when she turned around, I found her eyes clear and her face clean of any anger or resentment. How she did not hate me, I could not understand. In fact, I could understand little of what had happened here.
“Lyta….” I began haltingly.
“Pen, please,” she cut in. She walked up to me and took my hand in hers. “I know I shouldn’t have let him stay so long. And I should have known I couldn’t keep a secret from you.” She smiled with a ruefulness I had never seen her express before. “All things have their time, and ours was just about over anyway.” She tugged at my hand. “Come, let us go home.”
Silently, almost peacefully, we gathered up the arms of our father and other items Lyta had brought here, brushing off the sand and fallen leaves. I felt an inner anguish at myself, at her, at our mother, at the man, at the other men who started the fight in the village, at the leopard, and even at the Moon Goddess. Bitterness soured the day as we trudged back home, my face dark and Lyta’s bright with the memories of first love, laughter, and ardor.