“What happened to you?” chortled the robber on the egg rock. “What—one woman?” He jabbed over at the other two captives—“Look, I got two for half the effort.”
Kleto’s glare deepened, and Isme felt the warmth of shame across her cheeks again, for she knew that now Kleto knew:
Isme had not fought.
~
They were forced to march through the trees and the swarms of pests that followed, so that Isme wondered whether the men from the caravan would be able to track them simply by following this horde of insects. She had thought the heat was oppressive in the mud of the road among the grinding wheels and groans of animals pulling wagons. But in the deep forest the heat was worse. The shadows were no help; it was as though the Earth itself had become warm like the stones under a hearth, and the branches of the trees above merely trapped the heat, multiplying it.
In the spare flashes of sunlight, Isme caught sight of her companions: Pelagia struggling to hold her head up, sweat on her brow like her flesh was melting, and often she nearly tripped. Kleto was much the same—her skin had so many droplets that glistened like pearls—but her eyes were level to the horizon and her face was set like the stone crags that Isme knew from home: jutting from the sand, holding fast while other rocks wore away.
Stepping closer to Pelagia, so the other could lean on her and keep upright, Isme caught Kleto’s eyes. Those fires were nowhere near to simmering out.
Without words Kleto seemed to say: I have walked this far and I will walk further and I will keep walking until every last one of you has been worn down to dust—if that is what it takes to prove I am better than all of you.
Having received this message, Isme was fairly certain that the last part of that sentence especially applied to herself.
~
The sky was fiery when they reached the robbers’ lair. Old buildings, not well kept, made of stone and patched over with daubing. Isme felt too tired to inspect this new mainlander construction, wishing for her father’s cave on the island, made by nothing but the winds and Mother Gaia. The three women were tossed into the corner that was farthest from the door.
Pelagia scrunched into as small a bundle as she could manage. Isme hunched her shoulders, though she told herself this was in preparation rather than fear. For when she looked up she could see at the robbers already present kept glancing at them, and then not glancing—staring—or not staring—more. There was something ugly hidden behind their faces, like their brains were beginning to boil. Even as they turned to discussion and moved chairs and tables about, they kept turning their attention to the three women, like foxes fanning out around a hare.
Make sport, the robber had said.
Isme’s first thought was that she should fight. Living on the island, hunting meant sometimes prey tried to turn the tables, to strike back. Even the little deer that reached her knees had bucks with sharp horns. The trick was to be even fiercer than an animal fighting for its own life. Then, at the very least, she could expect the deer to run. The same was true with seals in the water, which were much more threatening. More than once as a child she had been dragged under and fought for her life.
Epimetheus’s words returned: The goal of being a robber is to do less work for more gain—if you make yourself more work for less gain, they will leave you alone.
So perhaps, Isme could fight them off.
But there were more words from Epimetheus to remember. I cannot match them for strength, she thought. Isme had always assumed that her father’s greater strength was just one of his talents. When she saw the women in the caravan, she assumed they simply lived easy lives. Yet she could see that now there was a difference; these were hard men who lived hard lives, similar to her own, if not even worse—for they fought men, not seals or little stags—and their strength was many times her own.
They mean to sell us, she thought. So they will not kill us. But if I fight, even if I do not win, perhaps they will do worse—would they kill me? Beat me? Is it worse to be beaten? Many women in stories have been ravaged and lived afterwards.
These questions felt strange, all at once—as though she was contemplating a woman in a story, not her own fate. She had done this before—but always in the abstract, always someone in a story, and now that it was before her, Isme could not think outside of those old habits. This was something she had never considered for herself—that she might become like one of those women.
I see now, she thought, mind tracing back to times when she had found scorn at women who did not fight off their attackers—why did Deianeira not fight off Nessus herself, why did Hercules need to do it for her?—I see, she thought, that they had to make this calculation. And they made a choice between rocky and smooth roads, but all the while knowing that perhaps both paths led to the same place.
Glancing at her two companions, Isme saw that Pelagia was making a choice, perhaps had already made one when she had been caught in the woods, or when she had sat with Isme among those rock outcroppings, or during the march here, or perhaps even now, right now, had made the choice for the smooth road.
Who Isme found most distracting, however, was Kleto. Pelagia made every effort to avoid attention, but Kleto did not let her gaze drop from the men for even a moment. She seemed to be staring them down. Or perhaps, thought Isme wildly, daring them on?
Kleto was making herself abundantly clear.
Isme
