Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ONE SMALL DEATH

THE THUNDERSTORM WAS PASSING now, but even as the clouds cleared, night rolled in across the wine-dark sky. Atalanta found a spot in the cave across from Melanion and next to Evenor, and circled it like a dog getting ready for sleep. Ancaeus was stretched out at her feet, dozing fitfully, exhausted by his wounds.

Lying down across the entrance to their little den, his spears on his lap, Orion was clearly ready to defend the gap should the mantiger try to take the cave.

Atalanta’s mind was reeling, her thoughts flying about like leaves in a gale. She’d suspected the truth of her parentage the moment she’d seen the royal banner. The queen’s face in the morning light had confirmed those suspicions. Still Atalanta had refused to really credit such a possibility until now.

Now she could look away from the truth no longer. Iasus was her father, Queen Clymene her mother, and the child in Clymene’s womb was her brother.

But how could she love them when they had given her away with such ease? Her real mother and father were the ones she’d buried by the little house in the woods.

She thought about all this muzzily, fighting sleep; but eventually sleep won the battle, though it was a sleep haunted by dreams. In her dreams Atalanta saw Queen Clymene lying prostrate on her bed, hands across her milky breasts, weeping for the loss of her child. She heard the baby on the hillside crying out in hunger and in fear, its wails growing louder and louder until she was startled from her dream by the noise.

Only then did she realize that what she was hearing was no dream-child at all. It was the sobbing of a grown man.

She sat up quickly in the half dark, wondering who among them could be weeping so. Prince Ancaeus in pain? Melanion in fear? Evenor missing his family?

“What’s wrong?” she called out.

“Are we being attacked?” That was Evenor, his voice fuzzed by sleep.

“Atalanta, is that you?” Melanion called.

Prince Ancaeus struggled up, leaning heavily on one arm. “What? What? What?”

The awful cries went on and on.

There was only one of them left who hadn’t responded.

“Orion!” they all said together.

The great hunter, clutching his head and screaming in pain, was suddenly outlined against the lightening sky.

“Aieeeee! Aieeeee!”

It was an awful cry that echoed inside the little cave until it sounded as if his voice were coming from everywhere. He stood shakily, lurching from side to side, slapping at his right ear, shaking his head till his hair stood up like flames.

“Aieeeee! Aieeeee!”

He bounced against the stone walls, staggering as if drunk, his limbs trembling.

“Aieeeee! Aieeeee!”

Then all at once he fell to the ground and lay still.

“Orion—what is it?” Melanion scrambled toward him.

But Atalanta was already there at the body, cradling Orion’s head in her lap. She watched as a small shape dropped past her arm and scuttled away across the ground. Holding out her hand, she stopped Melanion from coming any closer.

“Scorpion!” she cautioned, setting Orion back down on the stone floor and standing up carefully.

It was the most dangerous kind of scorpion, its back marked with a pattern of green and red, and its tail the length of her hand. The deadly stinger was curved forward over its body, twitching, as if looking for another victim.

“Keep still!” she hissed at the others.

Pulling out her knife, she waited for a second, then leaned over and drove the blade right through the scorpion’s jointed body, impaling it. Its pincers and eight legs wriggled helplessly until Melanion picked up a rock and crushed its head with a single blow.

Evenor hurried over and put his ear to Orion’s mouth, listening for a breath that didn’t come. Atalanta laid a hand over his heart. She couldn’t find any beat.

They sat in that attitude for almost an hour, silent, not knowing what else to do. Then dawn broke across the valley and by its light they could all see that Orion’s ear was red and swollen and his face discolored with the scorpion’s deadly poison.

“It must have stung him in the ear while he slept,” Atalanta said.

Evenor spoke in a harsh whisper, “We came to kill a mighty monster, but the mightiest hunter has been killed by one of the smallest creatures on the earth.”

“One great man, one small death,” Melanion said.

“But why…?” asked Evenor.

Indeed, why? Atalanta thought. Why should he have been the one punished? He didn’t have any of Iasus’ blood.

Suddenly she remembered her dream in the palace, how Artemis had said that Orion had his own sins to pay for. Was this what she meant?

“Orion was our hope,” groaned Ancaeus getting to his knees. “Our only hope. What are we to do now?”

“The first thing we must do,” said Atalanta, “is to give him the proper honor.” She struck her breast with her fist. “I, Atalanta, daughter of the forest, sister to the bear Urso, will avenge your death, Orion. I dedicate this hunt to you and to my father, who also died because of the king’s sins.”

The others struck their own chests and said similar words. It was little enough that they could do. Then, when the sun had risen fully, they buried Orion under a cairn of rocks within the cave, to keep off the wild beasts.

Evenor spoke a brief prayer before they left. “May this hunter’s brave soul pass peacefully from the world.”

Atalanta noticed that he’d said nothing about the gods. Just as well, she thought bitterly. For this is their fault, and none of ours.