Page 18 of Odette's Vow

The horror of that moment caused something to snap, and immediately I prayed that I had not severed the tie to my husband.

I had deliberately and rationally attempted to empty myself of all selfish emotions, as widows were expected to do, aiming to remain as ghost-like as possible so that I could stay close tothem. To Alcander and Lykas. Yet here, that emptiness had been filled with warmth for the very man who had torn my world apart. To find any semblance of desire for him was shameful. I deserved to be sentenced to a punishment befitting my crime by the Judges of the Dead.

Was this normal? When you lost all that you loved, to teeter between the two worlds?

I had already tried to kill myself once; would Hera really intervene a second time? I did not care if they would forgive “the coward’s way out” as it was known. What did I want with their forgiveness? They weren’t capable of it as far as I was concerned. My husband would understand, should we find each other, provided I cleared this stain on my soul, this vow, as I made my way to the Underworld. Little Lykas would be there too, and we would be reunited. All I had to do was reach the river, Styx. If I could get there, then once I passed Charon’s crossing, I could ask Hades to allow me to fulfill my vow in death. Surely that wouldsate their appetite for divine retribution, wouldn’t it? Then, I needed only to ask for my family’s forgiveness as I completed my sacred obligation in a corporal form. They would understand.

It had been my first clear thought in days. The rest of what had happened was a shrouded haze in my mind, as if I had watched it unfold from outside my own body. But this,this, I was certain of.

So I decided, once again, to die.

I waited until the Greeks had set out for the day. Then, I donned the oversized chiton that belonged to Odysseus, leaving my own dirty one along with a bunch of soiled towels, rags, and other garments in a basket, that I could take down to the river under the guise of doing washing. Exiting the tent, I followed the path that Τ?ιλορ?α had laid out for me the day she’d shown me around.

At least, I thought it was the path. There were many well-worn trails trodden daily by the women in the camp. They were always slightly narrower than the soldiers’ tracks. My feet wandered around the tents and makeshift structures, the ground still damp with dew, as I tried to avoid the more frequented areas where the soldiers gathered. Like that first night.

I kept my eyes downcast, a shield against the stares of any others. I didn’t want them to see me, to stop me. Ineededto get to the river. It was a lifeline to the besieged city of Troy and the great Grecian Army alike. It would be to me, too. Once I reached there, I could find a deep enough area in the weeds for the river gods to take me down to Hades’ world.

Reaching the edge of the camp, I descended a gentle slope that led to the water. I slipped off my buskins and left them discarded on the hard earth, before the spurts of mud and grass gave way to sinking sands, as I found my bare feet wading into the golden-green reeds. The river flowed quietly here, theoccasional soft ripple gently distorting the reflections in the water.

I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror of the river. I didn’t want to be alive; I wanted this to be the afterlife it felt like. As if I truly had died that night after drinking hemlock and this was what happened when you didn’t have the coins to cross Styx – that you wandered the earth as if you were still alive. Playing out what would have happened if you lived. That was the only way my brain could make sense of how I was still functioning without my little Lykas in the world. Perhaps it was a small mercy that still kept me numb.

I could see other slaves, mostly women, at other points along the riverbank. They all had spaces carved out for themselves to set about their work. Some were talking to one another, some were minding their own business.

None of them were paying attention to me.

I placed the basket on the bank behind me and knelt in the shallow water, making a show of beating the clothes against the stones. It was a practised movement I’d done so many times back in my village, the thwacking sound mixing with the gentle lap of the water. I would dunk each swathe of fabric in the water, dragging it and myself deeper into the river. Leaning down to grapple with the material that got heavier with every passing second, my fingers skimmed the edge of the riverbed, searching for rocks large enough to hold the folds of this chiton down.

In the rhythm of washing, as I scrubbed each stain and wrung out the fabric, the water rippling with and against the turns of my body, I forgot where I was. It was quiet here. There were no sounds of soldiers or battle. The quiet hum of women chatting felt like a sound I’d heard a thousand times before and would a thousand times again.

For a moment I forgot my purpose, and then it was torn from me forever as Τ?ιλορ?α’s eyes locked onto mine.

“There you are, little duckling. What are you doing so deep in the reeds?”

The look on her face said she knew exactly what I was trying to do, and that she wasn’t going to let me do it. No, Τ?ιλορ?α struck me as a woman who would wade in after me and drag me out kicking and spluttering.

“Why do you care?” I asked quietly.

She didn’t pretend not to understand. “You wouldn’t be the first, and it never does any good.”

“I don’t understand how you can all stand it.”

Τ?ιλορ?α shrugged one shoulder, her other arm holding a washing basket of her own, balanced on her hip. “Like I said, it is not so bad once you get used to it.”

The look on my face must have conveyed what I thought of that sentiment.

Τ?ιλορ?α just smiled sadly. “It is war, little duck. The men pick the battles and the women pick up the rest.”

I scoffed. It had not been like that between Alcander and myself.

At that moment, another spear-wife approached Τ?ιλορ?α. In the basket on her hip were three dead rabbits lying on a bed of herbs and other plants she had picked, I assumed, from the forest on the other edge of the river.

“Shamera.” Τ?ιλορ?α greeted her, then gave a nod towards her belly. “You’re looking well.”

Shamera turned, and then I saw the bump her basket had been hiding. She stroked the rounded mound of her stomach and smiled at Τ?ιλορ?α. Given the size of her belly, I guessed she was perhaps two months away from giving birth. She looked … happy.

I stared at her, mouth agape.

“This is Odette,” Τ?ιλορ?α said, with a nod towards me, still thick in the reeds.

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