Ink of Ages Fiction Prize

Myrrhine

Homer sang of those chosen by the gods: armour glittering in battle; delivering heroic speeches; agonising between long life or glorious death. But he never once harped about them dodging horse shit on the road.

I stepped around the latest pile in our path, and tugged my veil further over my head. The sun mocked this attempt to shade myself, and seemed to beat down with more intensity than ever. Grit and dust, kicked up by the carts idling past us, clung to my face, working its way into my nose and eyes.

"Why did I let Father and Kinesias put my name forward..." I muttered to Lysiades. My brother glanced down, and silently offered the near-empty waterskin to me again. I waved it away, so he raised it to his own lips instead. And, before us, the city gates loomed ever closer. 

Athens had always crested our horizon. As children, playing out in the terraces, Lysiades and I would be able to cover the acropolis with a single hand. We had watched as the Parthenon grew, year by year, as a small speck on top of it: like a beetle, clinging to that rocky outcrop. It had felt so distant then. Father often went on trips there when we were that age. Carts would be loaded with jars of olive oil, grown from the trees we climbed. Father would declare, with pride, it was for the athletes in the gymnasium. On his return, he would have a new scarf for me, or a wooden horse for Lysiades. But then the war came. And the Spartans, from the Peloponnese. And the stink of burning wood for months in our hair, our clothes, our nightmares.

Lysiades remained mute as we weaved our way through the Kerameikos, for which I was silently grateful. Since that messenger had arrived in our deme, calling for "Myrrhine, daughter of Kallimachus!", Father was a man possessed. "Athena. Athena herself chose us," he would whisper at any given moment, squeezing my hand a little too tightly. Us, I remembered sullenly. Not me. In his defence, I barely remembered the day they scratched Myrrhine on a little pinakion for the same messenger, who had tucked it away and rode off to Athens with it. And now, I was glad someone wasn't mentioning Athena. Or how much honour I was going to bring to the family, or how Tyche was finally smiling upon us: even as we approached the very cause of Father's ecstatic ramblings.

It was left to Lysiades to escort me to Athens: Kinesias had left a week ago to prepare room and board at his uncle's house. I had done better than anyone expected in marrying him, but carpentry wasn't enough to even dream of hiring a horse. So, here I was: trudging along on foot, and trying not to sweat through my peplos. The sun's heat radiated off the roadside stelai as we trudged past, and I allowed myself to study a few. Here and there, some women were carved onto the blocks of marble. Beautiful and impossibly symmetrical tresses were pinned to their hair. One lifted a necklace from a box held by a girl half her size: her own head was covered with a neat cap. Another brushed the hand of her child as she stepped away into death, forever caught in the moment of turning away. As I stared, I realised Lysiades was already passing through the Dipylon itself. I gathered my peplos in one hand and hurried after him.

"Kinesias said to just keep following the same road," I said as I caught up, even though he already knew. We squeezed past a group of women carrying heavy vases balanced on their heads, sweat glistening on their brows. "We should pass through the market."

Which was more crowded than the banks of the Styx. More people than I had ever seen in my life were all clamouring, jeering, shouting at once. Lysiades waved away the vendors and pushed us towards the acropolis, ignoring the fabrics and food and toys. Now we could see a set of stairs cut through the incline, zig-zagging their way back and forth all the way to the Propylaea.

"Maybe they'll make the climb easier?" Lysiades asked drily. I let my face drop in an unimpressed response, and he chuckled, patting my shoulder. The climb wouldn't have been gruelling if it had been all we had done that day. But after a dawn start with endless walking since, it was all I could do to push myself up the final few steps.

As I turned to look at how far we had come, breath ragged in my chest, I couldn't help myself. The whole of Athens was spread before me. The Piraeus glittered beyond it, and tiny specks of ships pocked the surface of the sea. The sea. A stone's throw away. The Long Walls lay right before me, beckoning me to the shore: a safe passage directly there and back. Whenever I wanted.

Just as I turned to point out the ships to Lysiades, something collided with my back. A teenage girl, arms bundled around a swathe of intricately woven cloth, was stooped over on the stairs, having tripped into me. She caught my gaze, mild terror in the whites of her eyes as she straightened.

"Gods, look where you're going, girl."

A sour voice called out from behind her. Its owner was a woman in a veil, with threads so thin and light it almost seemed translucent. Her hair was just visible through it, so I could see it was pinned just like the women on the stelai earlier: her expression was as cold as their marble faces, too. A silent man shadowed her. He gazed into the distance beyond us, his expression fixed into a bored stare, but his hand rested lazily on a short sword hanging from his hip.

"Useless..." she muttered under her breath, snatching the bundle from the girl's arms. "Go back to the Philaidae, and get something you can actually carry this time. Hurry."

The girl bowed her head, murmured, "Yes, priestess," then scurried away. This priestess, meanwhile, had already cast an arched eyebrow over Lysiades and myself.

"You'll do." She pushed the fabric into Lysiades' hands, looking him directly in the eye. "Your priestess of Athena Polias commands you carry this." Without another word, she pushed between us and started walking further into the acropolis.

Lysiades stood, his arms filled, trying to process what had just happened. I began to hiss at him, "We don't have time—"

"Hurry up!" The same voice called us, but she didn't deign to look back. "That fabric won't get to the new priestess by itself."

I froze. Lysiades and I turned to look at one another. His face broke into a grin, and I felt myself return it, despite my heart beating fast in my chest. I knew that look. It was the same one he gave me when we snuck into old Antiochis' vineyard and gorged ourselves on grapes until we were sick. He moved forward to keep pace, and I hurried alongside him.

Lysiades cleared his throat, drawing up alongside her. "The new priestess?"

"Of Athena Nike." She cast a glance at Lysiades out of the side of her eye. "Haven't you heard? The talk of the city, not that it's taken years of bickering to fund her measly salary. And for what?" She sniffed. "Gods give me strength. The last thing we need is some clueless country bumpkin muscling in, without a clue what she's doing." She flicked a hand at the man shadowing her, who pushed ahead into a crowd of people gathering around the Propylaea. They parted before his towering bulk, and he ushered through the priestess. Lysiades and I hurried behind in her wake.

"She's already stealing some offerings," she continued airily. "For years, the women of the Philaidae dedicated their weavework to the Eteoboutadae of Athena Polias. But now they're tripping over the other families to lavish that awful new statue." She tugged at the fabric in Lysiades' arms: her lip curled in disgust before she let it drop, as if it rotted in her grasp. "Frankly, I'm glad I'm not stuck with it."

As we emerged from the Propylaea, the cool shade gave way to the beating sun once more. Despite myself, I stopped in my tracks, drinking in the temple of Athena Nike itself. Its pristine marble shone in the light. Shields, taken from the latest victory at Pylos, hung on the bastion surrounding it, shining like a halo of stars. The doors were flung open to invite in the warm air. And, inside, I could see the faint, pale ivory of the statue of Athena herself.

"Ah, Lysimache." A new voice broke my brief reverie, and a man in a pristine chiton stepped forward from the temple's threshold. "Awfully kind of you to bring the offerings yourself."

Lysimache sniffed again, somehow managing to look down her nose at the man despite being half a foot his inferior. "Still waiting around for her, Kallias? Perhaps she's not going to bother to turn up."

"On the contrary." Kallias had looked past her to me. "Greetings, priestess. Welcome to the city: I hope your journey was pleasant." 

Lysimache turned so quickly that her veil slipped down her head. It exposed a single rogue curl which fell over her eyes, opened wide in confusion. I wiped the sweat and dust from my brow with the back of my hand, allowed a glowing smile to envelope my face, and stepped forward to grasp Lysimache's hand with my own.

"A pleasure. My name is Myrrhine: the new priestess of Athena Nike. Chosen by Athena herself, I should say."

I managed half of the first sentence before Lysimache shot her hand out of mine, and she stood, aghast, for the rest. She turned to Kallias, half-spluttered a word, before spitting out, "This has to be some kind of trick: she heard me talk about the temple, she can't be—" She waved frantically at my dusty peplos, the worn sandals, my entire attire. "This can't be a priestess!"

"I'm afraid I met her myself in her deme, about a month ago. To finalise the practicalities, you see." Kallias' smile had the air of well-practiced, feigned politeness. His eyes met mine for a second, before darting back to Lysimache's reddening face.

"I can show you my father's name in the citizen lists there, if you'd like to check." I chipped in, matching Kallias' tone. I stepped back in line with Lysiades, lifted the fabric from his arms, and clutched it to my chest. "The country air is quite refreshing this time of year."

Lysimache looked between us, the hand which I shook clenched into a white-knuckled fist. After a beat, she stormed past me, her shadow of a man keeping in step. For the briefest of moments, I saw a hint of a smile pull at his stoic jaw: and then they were both gone.

Watching them leave, I took a deep, giddy breath. On the road, the nerves had twisted a tight knot in the pit of my stomach: but the absurdity of this introduction cut through them entirely. Father might have thought this was for him. For our family. And, in the end, that might be all that anyone remembers of my time here. But for now, I was going to make it my own.

I turned back to Kallias, still beaming. "Any cold water for the new priestess?"