Isme did not look back again. She did not need to: those eyes were warm like fire on her back.
~
Isme was not the only one who noticed Kleto’s eyes.
On their first break for the day, Lycander rode up on his animal. Finding no place to sit since any stones on the side of the road had already been taken, Isme had crouched to place her body’s weight on her knees, instead of sitting in the mud. She was surprised when a bladder of water dangled in front of her nose. Glancing to her side, where the hooves of the animal were tangled with dirt, she let her eyes rest on the furry legs of the boy, following them up until she saw Lycander held the bladder before her by its strap.
“Do I look fine, even to a wild woman’s taste?” asked Lycander. Sweat on the bridge of his nose gleamed, reflecting in his eyes. They were an odd color, Isme noticed. Somewhere between green, blue, and brown. She had not known that the eyes of men could be anything but the brown of herself and her father and the blue possessed by beautiful women in stories.
Even thinking of eyes, however, had her glancing over to where Kleto had found a seat on a rock the size of a man’s torso, and she discovered that she was still being glared at. If anything, the glare produced by Kleto was the worst yet.
Lycander sighed, and Isme’s glance darted to him, where she saw that he had tracked her own line of vision and noticed Kleto as well. He shook his head, muttered something that included the words “women” and “unstable,” but then shook the strap of the water bladder, causing it to dance in the air in front of Isme.
“Do you want some, wild woman? I noticed you often drink.”
Isme seized the dancing water bladder. Her quickness must have startled the boy, for he released the strap. She had already taken a first gulp before she remembered there was such a thing as manners, and blabbered out, “Thank you, Sir.”
“You are welcome,” said Lycander, not sounding offended. He shifted on the animal’s back, and Isme observed the blanket he sat on. It was thick, off-white in color with no dye on the fibers, except for yellow stains where his sweat had been absorbed into the material over and over. This made Lycander look as though he had a yellow shadow lurking underneath him.
As before, he caught on to where she was looking. He said, in a tone that implied some kind of joke, “Your first time being so close to a ridden horse, wild woman?”
“Why do you call me that?” Isme asked, without thinking first. Soon as the words left her mouth, she felt worry creep up along her spine; it could not be a good thing to talk without planning ahead, she knew so little of mainland customs. Her father’s advice still rang in her ears: Better to listen than talk.
I simply must get control over myself, she thought. This is not the island where I can say anything I want and no living soul will hear me. If the men from the mainland ever heard me speak to myself, perhaps they will think I am mad.
But Lycander did not seem surprised by her question. He said, “Because although your father claims you as a goatherd, I see no goats around.”
Isme defended her father’s lie. “We left the goats behind.”
“Aye,” said Lycander, “In your wilderness so far away from any city that you do not even have a name for where it is.” He tilted his head as though to better gaze down at Isme. “Or so your father says. Seems to me that you were not herding goats there, but doing something else—something outdoors that stained you as dark as a slave girl in the fields of some barbarian.”
Isme glanced down at her arm and saw he was right—for she was far more sun-stained than any of the women in the caravan. She wondered if everyone on the mainland was this way, if her life of tending garden and hunting and lying on the beaches would always mark her more than any animal-skin clothing—an outsider, forever.
Except she was not completely an outsider. As she observed Lycander, she realized that his own flesh was near her color—and this made sense because men spent more time outside in action than women inside, spinning and cooking.
It is not that I am dark, she understood, a flash of insight. It is that I am a woman. He is suspicious of Father’s story—because I would be a woman goatherd… I must distract him from asking too many questions. He’s come here to learn details from me, I’m sure. Oh, if only I and Father had conspired better.
Placing her hand against his knee to observe the similarity in skin tone, she said, “You are right. I did not get this way by herding goats.” Lycander’s eyebrows rose like those of his uncle, Eutropios, the previous day. She told him, “I got this way through horse-riding and hunting boars and winning first prize in funeral games.”
She had listed all of the things she remembered men doing from stories, pastimes and other glorious deeds done out in the sun. Perhaps, she thought, I will convince him this subject is pointless, and whatever suspicions he has about my father’s story will fade in comparison to these ridiculous things.
And she was right, for Lycander snorted like the animal he was riding, and with a laugh kicked the creature’s side, knocking her hand away. As the animal ambled off, he called, “I shall like to hear of these prizes some later time, wild woman.”
Isme felt triumph rise—she had been successful.
