Page 19 of Odette's Vow

“Ah,” Shamera murmured, her eyes cutting toward me, as if she were fully aware of exactly what I was up to.

“You’re pregnant.” It was all I could think to say.

Shamera smiled, her hand once again stroking her belly. “Yes.”

“And you’re happy about it?”

Shamera’s smile spread, her eyes crinkling with knowing kindness. “Yes.”

She turned back towards Τ?ιλορ?α. “One of these rabbits is for Diomedes, if you could manage to get me one of the better jugs of sweet wine for tonight. Not that bitter stuff they keep passing around.” She pulled a face.

Τ?ιλορ?α grabbed one of the rabbits by the arms and held it up. “Ah, this should do nicely. Diomedes will happily part with one of his bottles for this.”

I continued to gape at them, at thebusinessof it all. As if this was simply an exchange at the marketplace. As if sensing my bewilderment, both of them turned towards me.

“You’ll catch a cold if you stay in there much longer, duckling,” Τ?ιλορ?α warned.

“Who’s her pairing?” Shamera asked, as she continued to peer at me.

“Odysseus.”

“Really …”

I narrowed my eyes in suspicion at the sound she had made that was more a statement than a question.

Shamera shrugged one of her shoulders in turn, swapping the basket to her other hip as she did so. “To be paired with one of the generals is no easy thing. They are often demanding, in more …” She seemed to be searching for the word, though we all spoke in Thracian. “Strenuousways than the other soldiers.”

“How so?”

“The other soldiers want sex. They want taking care of. Then, you’ll find they want mothering, loving, someone to make this place more tolerable. If you’re paired with one who loses his male companion, like I was, you quickly find your circumstances change for the better.” Shamera rubbed her belly again, and the action was not lost on me with her words. “But generals have other demands. Harsher. Their reputations are more closely watched, their authority more likely to be questioned. To be a spear-wife to a general is to be able to hold your own.”

I shook my head. “We are all just slaves to them, nothing more.”

“We might be slaves to them, but we are women to ourselves and each other.”

I cocked my head at Shamera, desperate to know more but loathe to ask.

She seemed to sense it, but it was Τ?ιλορ?α that answered this time.

“If you wish to remain a victim, little duck, then by all means, carry on as you are. We have all been where you are; some have even drowned in that very spot you have chosen. But those of us who chose to live? We keep ourselves busy so we do not get sucked into that endless despair. Stay there, and you’ll die, while the world continues turning. The war will continue, you will be forgotten, and nothing good will come of it. But if you stay, perhaps Tyche might find you yet, weaving her thread into the Fates’ cruel design. Some good could still come of you.”

I shook my head. “You have no idea what I have done.”

“As you have no idea what I have,” Τ?ιλορ?α countered.

There was a pause, where only the wind nymphs seemed to rustle through the reeds and grass.

Then Shamera gazed into the distance as though recalling something long buried in memory. She started speaking, her voice breathy but loud enough to drift on the air. “Men are themasters of death, because they can never bring forth life. They can never hold and know the power we can, so they had to create their own. Their own pain, their own suffering. Theirs exists outside their body, while ours all happens within. Such is the nature of the world and has been long before we were here, and will be long after we are gone. If you choose death, if you choose to die, you let them win. Or, you can choose tolive. Take the hand the Fates have dealt you and show themwho you are.”

She blinked, then turned her focus back on me until I felt uncomfortable under the weight of it and found my feet, of their own volition, wading out of the water.

“Smarter than you look,” Τ?ιλορ?α muttered.

I cast her a withering glare that was patently ignored.

“Here,” Τ?ιλορ?α said, taking the second rabbit from Shamera’s basket along with a bunch of the herbs, wrapping it in a fresh towel of her own and handing it over to me. “Take this back to Odysseus this evening. Have a good meal. Try to find the good moments, however fleeting. Focus on them. Trust us – those moments matter more than you know. They can be everything, if you remember to notice them.”

Despite the wordsof the fellow Trojan women still ringing in my ear, I could not bring myself to play the obedient servant once again to the man who held me captive. Instead, the hours stretched on and I remained rooted to my spot in the corner pallet again, the food untouched, my mind desperately searching for a tether to pull me back to life.

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