Sparrows in the wind, p.5
Sparrows in the Wind, page 5
“She won’t!”
He sobered. “Be a coward? No. But there won’t be a war. You should be careful about believing your twin.” He kissed my forehead and stood.
I didn’t want him to go. “Have you heard of someone called Paris?” Hector had traveled as far as the city of Mygdonia in Thrace. He knew the world.
He sat again. His voice was tight. “He was our brother.”
Was?
A brother I’d never heard of?
“How do you know his name?”
I lied again. “Helenus mentioned him but didn’t explain.”
“I wonder how he knows.” Hector rubbed Maera’s shoulders. “I was too young to understand when it happened, but as I got older, I heard whispers. Finally, I asked Mother. Have you ever seen her look anguished?”
I tossed back my head. Only in the future.
“Paris was born three years after I was. A seer warned that the baby would bring down Troy when he grew up and said our parents should kill him.”
My hand crept to my chest and felt my thudding heart.
“They believed.” Hector looked at the painting on the ceiling, where Aphrodite’s swans flew against a blue-sky background. “But they couldn’t bring themselves to do it, so they told their chief herdsman to slay him. He took the baby and brought back his tongue. Mother said she wept for a year.”
I wet my lips. “No! Mother and Father wouldn’t!”
Hector stroked my back. “It’s true.”
Maera licked my hand. I petted her head.
He smiled grimly. “I’m glad the prediction wasn’t made about any of the rest of us.”
I could barely breathe.
“I’ve forgiven them. I’m sure they were thinking of me and their unborn children and everyone else in the city.”
“Couldn’t they have done something else? Sacrificed to Zeus? Gone to Delphi to see if a god or goddess could be appeased to save him and us?”
“They may have sacrificed to all the gods and gone to Delphi without changing the prophecy.” He paused. “Can you forgive them too? They love us.”
When Helenus and I were six and suffered a month-long fever, Mother never left us. She let us have honey cake three times a day if we could eat it. Father came often too and stayed to tell us long-ago stories of Troy. “I think I can forgive them. But . . .” I trailed off.
How was Paris still alive?
Hector left me. Maera and I mounted the stairs to the women’s quarters.
This brother, Paris, would enrage two goddesses. If he was bitter because Mother and Father had tried to kill him, would he direct the goddesses’ wrath at Troy?
Upstairs, Mother was the only one still weaving. I paused before she saw me. At her feet were a glowing lamp and a tray, the dinner she had kept for me, including two thick slices of honey cake. How good she was to me and my brothers and sisters! How frightened she must have been when she heard the seer’s prophecy all those years ago. I loved her too much to judge her.
She looked up. “You’ve been at the sacred grove all this time?”
“I was talking to Hector too.”
“My worthy children. Finish all the cake. Don’t give any to Maera. The dog is plump and you’re too thin.”
I hugged her and pressed my face into her shoulder.
She said I could return to the sacred grove tomorrow. “Go whenever you like. Suitors’ parents like a pious girl, but don’t neglect your weaving. They want a skillful girl too.” She laughed. “Suitors themselves don’t care much about skill or piety if the girl is as pretty as you are”—she chucked me under my chin—“and has your smile.”
I managed to smile back.
After I worked at my loom for an hour the next morning, I went to the pantry next to the kitchen and filled a basket with offerings and another meaty bone for Maera. At the gate, she seemed happier about the bone than sad that I was leaving her.
When I reached the sacred grove, I set a bowl of almonds on Apollo’s altar and again begged forgiveness for offending him. “Please let me turn the ship of fate.”
He didn’t appear.
I’ll do it without you, I thought.
As soon as I started for Eurus’s clearing, a wind sped me along.
He was sitting on his altar. “All for me?” He grinned at the basket.
I lowered it to the grass and stepped away.
He crouched over it, naming each item as he drew it out. “Barley griddle cake. Sheep cheese wrapped in leaves. Sweet onions mashed with lentils.”
I folded my arms. I had a question and could hardly wait to ask it.
“Pickled eel. I haven’t had any in six years and twelve days. Mm. Walnuts. What’s this?” He looked at me and lifted the last dish. “An entire baked chicken? For me?” He tore off a leg. With his mouth full, he added, “Help yourself.”
I nibbled a morsel of griddle cake. “Can your wind carry me to Mount Olympus?” If Zeus favored me, everything would stop before it began.
He tossed back his head, and his wind shook me. “Uninvited? Zeus would be so angry he’d create a new Eurus to replace me.”
Oh.
I let his wind carry my disappointment away. I’d think of other ideas, or we would. “I know who Paris is. But how is he still alive?”
Eurus held up a finger for me to wait. He finished the chicken drumstick, sampled the eel, and closed his eyes to savor it.
He finally wiped his hands on his tunic. “My wind goes everywhere. Like your parents, the chief herdsman couldn’t bring himself to kill the baby outright, so he left him on the mountain to die of cold or be eaten by an animal. Instead, a she-bear nursed him. When the herdsman found Paris still alive, he gave in and raised him.” Eurus grinned. “A prince of Troy brought up to be a shepherd!”
“What about the tongue the herdsman gave my parents?”
“A deer’s tongue.” Eurus shrugged. “A deer’s tongue is big. Maybe it was a fawn’s tongue.”
“Does Paris know he’s really a prince?”
“His wife told him.” Eurus explained that my brother had married Oenone, a mountain nymph who was also a seer.
Nymphs were deities but not immortal, though their lives could span hundreds of years. I’d never seen one. There were no statues of nymphs in our sacred grove. Oenone hadn’t been in my visions because she was both a goddess and a soothsayer.
Eurus added, “Paris makes a big show, but he isn’t much. A coward. Lazy. He let a wolf get a lamb when he was herding.”
I looked into the future an hour from now. Paris would be reclining on a couch in the cavern I’d seen when I’d received Apollo’s gift, but unlike in that vision, he seemed to be alone. Had he already judged the goddesses?
I peered another hour ahead and saw the boy in the cavern with him. One more hour brought forth the scene I’d watched outside the stable after Helenus and I had spoken. I believed that during that scene Paris would declare his judgment. “Eurus? Can your wind carry me to Mount Ida?”
“I can carry an ox that far!”
I laughed, imagining him bearing an enormous ox on the palm of one hand.
“An ox wouldn’t try to save Troy.” I shrugged. “Though I don’t know how to save the city any more than an ox would.” I didn’t understand what judging beauty had to do with Helen, the woman my twin said would cause the war.
“Come!” Eurus strode away from me, following the path to the far gate to the grove, which faced east.
I followed, pushed from behind. Beyond the gate, our grasslands began.
He stopped and crouched. His wind calmed. “Hold tight to my head.”
His curls were feather soft.
“Grip my back with your legs. Ready?” He jumped into the air without waiting.
A whirlwind whipped around us. He said, “Mustn’t drop her.”
The sacred grove descended, as if it was falling instead of us rising. My head bucked forward.
“Keep her in place, you clod!” Eurus yelled at himself.
Let me survive this wind-riding!
I clung to him as tight as I could, but the gale strengthened. My grip loosened. We were torn apart.
Beyond his wind, the air was calm. I hung for an instant. In that moment, I saw in my imagination Mother, Father, Hector, Helenus, Maera. I dropped.
8
Below flowed the muddy Scamander River. I tucked myself into a dive. My fingers were inches from the brown water when Eurus grabbed my ankles. We thudded onto the bank. I came down on my left hip and shoulder.
In the distance, sheep baaed.
He sat up and bellowed, “You let go! You wanted to fly by yourself?”
I mustn’t yell at a god. I yelled, “I didn’t let go! Your wind blew me away!”
His fury flattened the grass, but it had veered away from me. “I’m a fool! I think I can do anything. I don’t think! Her fate and a city shouldn’t depend on a dawkin like me. How am I going to tell her she should find somebody better to help her?”
I was amazed that a god blamed himself.
What should I do? I had to reach Mount Ida soon.
It hurt to stand, but I discovered that I could walk, and my limp eased after a few steps. Maybe the lions would be too busy today to bother with me.
“Where are you going?” Eurus called, sounding surprised.
“If a lion doesn’t eat me, I’ll reach Mount Ida before dark.” My voice had a harrumph in it. He’d let me down—in more ways than one. “Maybe I won’t be too late.”
He walked backward in front of me. “But you should go with me. Lions won’t bother me.” He saw my confusion. “You thought I’d leave you here?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ll go slower, not very high, side by side.”
He put his arm around my waist, and I clasped his waist too. I felt dizzy. Melo and Aminta and I sometimes danced this close, but they never made my head spin!
His wind lifted us gently and pushed us along. The tall grasses scraped my ankles. I raised my knees, and it was as if I was sitting in a chair. How wondrous!
The wind gained strength. He held me tight. My skin felt whisked as if with a brush. I grinned, and my teeth tingled.
We passed a spreading hazel tree. Sheep and bony cows grazed on the brown-green grass. We kept pace with a heron flying along the river not much higher than we were, until it landed. The horizon ahead grew lumps. One lump rose more than the rest—Mount Ida. Like Zeus’s Mount Olympus, its peak was cloud-wreathed.
Soon, we were close.
Would Paris hate me? Did he hate everyone in our family? Did he hate Troy?
The mountain appeared in stripes: green meadows below gray cliffs below white clouds.
We came down gently on a ledge above a ravine. Far below rushed a frothy river. A palace was embedded in the opposite rock wall with only the facade showing. A bridge, lined with coral-colored columns, spanned the gorge.
“That was better.” Eurus shook out his arms. “Wasn’t it?”
“Much better. It was a marvel.” I smiled at him. “Thank you.”
He blushed. “Good.”
Three crows weighed down a branch of a spindly mountain ash that grew out of a crevice next to us.
“Do you see them?”
“Gloomy birds.”
He saw them, though Aminta hadn’t. I supposed mortals couldn’t, except mortals touched by Apollo.
I chattered instead of crossing the bridge. “Isn’t the palace facade beautiful?” The entrance was topped by a white stone frieze carved with women diving off rocks. “I guess the women are nymphs.”
The goddesses could have arrived by now.
“Very grand,” Eurus said.
I nodded and gulped.
“If you ask me to,” Eurus added, “I’ll douse your brother in the river. I’ll spin him until he sees dozens of goddesses instead of three.”
How kind he was! I laughed. “I don’t know if it will help Troy for him to be wet and dizzy.”
A man emerged from the entrance and hurried toward us, smiling. “Sister!”
I smiled back, but I doubt I looked truly glad.
His wife must have told him I was coming and who I was. He seemed not to be angry. He opened his arms wide. “Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!”
Though he was making a show, he still might mean it.
“Oh, sister.” He had Father’s high forehead and chiseled cheekbones and Mother’s large gray eyes.
When he reached me, he stopped short, reached out, and touched my hair and then my shoulder. “Sister. Family. The family that had me. How I relish the words.”
The crows cawed their alarm:
“On Mount Ida a pitcher flower
cradles sticky syrup in its blossom cup.
A single sip will kill its prey!
Cassandra, do not taste your brother’s brew!”
He wanted his family, which made me think, despite what the crows said, that he and I might save Troy. I drank.
Paris seemed unaware of the birds. Nodding to Eurus, he said, “Welcome.”
Eurus nodded back, curtly.
“Thank you ever so much for coming with her.”
I introduced him as the east wind.
“Then thank you for blowing her here.” He paused. “Please tell me: Do my sister and I share a chin, in shape if not size? Are we sister and brother in chins?”
I resisted an urge to touch my chin.
“Your sister’s chin is more pleasing than yours.” Eurus allowed that our eyes were alike in shape, though not in color.
“Ah. At least there’s that.” Paris took my hand and tugged me along the bridge. “You’re my beautiful sister, who cared enough about me to enlist a god to help you journey here. I’m fortunate to be your brother.”
This was promising.
“Come and meet Oenone and Corythus, the family I made.”
I stepped onto the bridge, which swayed. “Er . . . brother, three great goddesses haven’t come yet, have they?”
“No. Oenone says they will, but now I don’t think so.”
Because of me.
“She’s vexed—I don’t know why—but she’s been eager all day for your arrival.”
The nymph could see my future, though I couldn’t see hers. Was she eager because her fate was terrible too? Did she believe we could alter it?
Eurus followed us to the palace entrance. “Cassandra . . .” His chin puckered, and he frowned—an unhappy face. “I can’t go into the earth. I’m sorry.”
I’d hoped we’d turn the ship of fate together, but I didn’t want him to be sad. “Thank you for the wind ride.”
He recovered. “I won’t drop you on the way back, either.”
“Come, sister!”
My stomach tightened. I clasped my hands together. Face the great goddesses!
Inside, the air smelled metallic. Paris took a flaming torch from a torchère and led me into a corridor whose rock walls sparkled with silver specks.
“Follow me, sister. How dear that word is. Sissster!” He sounded like a snake.
I shuddered. “If you were home, the word would soon stop being valuable. You have six sisters and eleven brothers and another brother on the way.” Why was I saying this? I didn’t want him to come home.
“Eighteen of us? Nineteen soon! An army!”
Ominous word—army.
He added, “It’s not a brother on the way, though Oenone says you can see the future.”
I sighed. Because I’d predicted a brother, he was sure the baby would be a girl.
We turned into a cavern on the left. Polished copper walls, gleaming in torchlight, rippled with the mountain’s contours. Fresh air suggested an opening to the outer world.
“Cassandra!” A woman, probably Oenone, rose from one of four couches, where she’d been sitting with a boy of five or six who had been reclining with his head in her lap. The boy lay back and stared at me.
Amid the couches was a long, low table for dining.
“Sister!” she added.
“This is Oenone,” Paris said unnecessarily.
Sister by marriage. The nymph dashed—shimmered—to me. Copper strands glinted in her dark hair, and her iron-colored peplos rustled as she drew close.
Her face was delicate, her small features as finely shaped as Apollo’s lyre.
“You’ve come.” Laughing, she reached up and brushed back my hair. “You should carry a comb when you ride a wind or people will think the Furies have acrazed your mind. Everyone will see you’re lovely anyway.”
The Furies were the three goddesses of vengeance, who sometimes punished wrongdoers by making them madful. Hastily, I raked my hair away from my face. I must have looked like a Gorgon—a monster with snakes for hair.
She changed the subject. “Paris can’t believe your prophecies. Don’t blame him.”
I didn’t, or I’d have to blame everyone.
“Paris, your sister was kanephoros and endured pain for her city.”
I blinked in surprise.
“I foresaw it. What did I tell you, love?”
He smiled down at her. “You said you’re proud to be part of my family because of her and my brother Hector.”
She slapped his arm playfully. “I’m not proud because of you! If anyone has the doggedness to change the terrible future, she does.”
Oh my! Another person who believed in my determination.
“I’ll be guided by you, sister,” Paris said.
I breathed so deeply my toes felt it. “Don’t judge the goddesses! The two you don’t pick will hate you.”
“That’s what I told him. Common sense, really.” She sat and lifted her son’s head back onto her lap. “Cassandra, you must be tired. Would you like to rest?”
“Thank you, but I’m not tired.” How formal I sounded.
The boy sat up. “Who’s she?”
Paris sat next to him. “Corythus, this is your aunt Cassandra.”
Oenone straightened her son’s tunic and kissed the top of his head. “Cassandra, if we succeed today, please teach me to weave. I will be terrible at it.”
I sat on the couch nearest theirs. “All of Troy will admire your work.”
If Paris didn’t judge the goddesses, he could probably safely come to Troy. How wonderful that future would be, the city unscathed and me with this sister-in-law for a friend.
