Infinite Sacrifice (11 page)

I slap his face hard. “You’re no
longer a boy! Today you’re a man, and you’ve had your last cry! Cry
again and you’ll be flogged for it!”

I grab his arm up and yank him
through the house. Theodon’s standing with Ophira outside the front
door.

I take him by the shoulders and
look into his wounded eyes. “You must listen to your commanders and
be strong. Show no weakness. Make me and your father
proud.”

Arcen delicately reaches up for the
bag, still sniveling, and drops it to his side as he walks off into
the city alone. He tries to look brave by walking fast but ends up
looking more pathetic with all the rocks he trips on. He looks back
once when he reaches the apex of the hill and I can tell he’s
crying again. My shoulders drop and I turn to see beautiful Theodon
standing there, watching his best friend go off to the place he so
wishes he could go too.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

I become Theodon’s best friend
while Ophira is busy doing housework. Theodon follows me all over
the farm watching me manage the helots. When all my work is done,
he’s standing there, holding our bows and arrows, ready to go boar
hunting. He catches his first boar at nine. Everything he tries, he
masters. Even though it’s not customary to school your helots, I
teach him all the reading and writing a Spartan citizen should
know. I never expect him to work like a helot, and I can tell the
others don’t accept him for it.

One night, home after a long sea
voyage, Nereus comes to visit for a dinner of black broth. I go out
to greet him as he’s pulling Zale with all his weight toward the
stables. I throw an apple in the stables and the horse drags Nereus
with him in pursuit. Theodon loves to hear his embellished stories
of the perils of sea travel. Nereus will get louder and louder
while the story climaxes, reaching the point where you can’t even
understand what he’s saying as he rolls his head back and forth,
his mouth wide open, laughing as he yells the best part.

However, you can see Theodon’s
green eyes glimmer. He yearns for one day when he might have such
journeys beyond this farm. He laughs the hardest, though, when one
of Nereus’s inverted burps erupts mid-sentence, and he simply
continues like nothing happened. Theodon will giggle until he can
barely breathe. All throughout his stories, Nereus keeps dipping
his bread in the blood broth but pushes his bowl with the back of
his hand in front of Theodon. “My teeth just can’t handle the pork
any longer.”

Theodon grabs the bowl eagerly as I
bring a tray of dessert figs and a new jug of wine. Theodon takes a
fistful of dried figs before Ophira decides it is time for him to
go to bed, and I get a pang of jealousy, since she gets to tuck him
in.

Nereus distracts me. “What I really
came here for was to tell you unpleasant news about
Arcen.”

My heart drops; somehow I suspect
what he’s going to say. I open the seal on the terracotta jug and
refill Nereus’s kylix.

After I pour, he turns the jug to
read the stamp, raises his eyebrows, and says, “Cretan wine?” Then
he swallows happily before continuing. “I was in the city last
night and spoke with one of the commanders of the agoge—a good
friend of mine. When I asked about how my grandnephew was faring he
turned to me and shook his head. He said he was the most picked on
and ridiculed boy in the group. He causes the other boys to receive
more punishment for his weaknesses, and they torture him for it.
They deprive him of food, hoping he’ll go and steal, but he’s
quickly wasting away. He’s not going to make it if he doesn’t get
stronger.”

A great shame comes over me. “What
can I do, Uncle?”

He shrugs. “Too bad he’s not like
Ophira’s boy. What a specimen! Shame he’s a helot, though. What a
waste,” he says as he wipes his hands with barley bread and feeds
it to the dogs.

Chapter 5

Leander’s army is sent to Thebes.
I’m relieved not having to give him the news of Arcen, although he
has probably heard through the army by now. I cringe to think what
he’ll do about it. The best parts of my day are spent with Theodon
and Ophira. One unusually beautiful day, when the intensely blue
sky is scattered with fat clouds by a warm caressing wind, we take
our dinner down to the cliffs. Theodon and I decide to run down to
the beach and go swimming. He shuffles his feet down the steep rock
steps that lead to the sand.

I begin to run down after him but
turn to a stalled Ophira. “Come on!”

She shakes her head. “I’m not
running down these stairs; I’m too old for this.”

“We’re the same age you ninny.” I
run down a few more to show her how easy it is, but she shakes her
head sternly.

She yells, “We don’t all still look
like you Alcina. If you had long hair, I swear nothing’s changed
since the day I met you.” She chooses to walk down the safer path.
“I’m going this way. I don’t know why, but I feel like something is
going to come and push me down those steps.”

I scoff at her paranoia and try to
catch up with Theodon, already halfway down.

We dive in after peeling our tunics
off, leaving them to fall wherever on the scant, pebbled shore
behind us. As we play in the crystal, waveless water, Theodon comes
up behind me and pushes down on my shoulders, shoving me under. I
have to throw him off to come up for air. We laugh and laugh with
our heads bobbing in the deep, rolling tide. Then we scale back up
the cliff, soaking wet, and Ophira starts dancing, pulling us up to
join her. The three of us dance around the countryside together,
delirious in our tiny world.

We straggle back into the house,
laughing, and decide the night wouldn’t be complete without a
late-night dessert before retiring. As Ophira fetches some figs and
cheeses, I bring out some wine. I lean over Theodon to fill his
cup.

Theodon starts tapping his thumb on
the table. “I wanted to talk to you, Mother.”

Ophira turns, even though I want
to, and she answers, “Yes, what is it?”

“I’m sixteen now, and Arcen’s in
agoge while I’ve nothing. I’m not working or living with the other
helots, yet I’m one of them. I’m either going to join the Citizens’
Army—”

I wince at the thought of the army
Sparta uses as their shield in return for promised
citizenship.

“—
or live with the
helots down in Laconia.”

“You’re not happy here with me and
Alcina?”

He looks at me quickly as I sit
down across the table from him. “I need to be around helots my own
age.”

This strikes fear in both Ophira’s
and my heart. He is our world. We don’t need anyone
else.

As soon as he leaves for bed,
Ophira looks at me with shoulders shrugged. “He’s growing up, and
with that comes his independence. He can’t stay with us forever on
this farm. We’re going to have to find some safe place for
him.”

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Sparta’s armies are away so long
that an elected magistrate of Sparta drives up to the house. Ophira
and Theodon come running at the sight of the stately chariot. My
thoughts jump first to Leander falling in battle, but then they
heighten into the more likely fear of Arcen killed in
agoge.

The ephor says at the sight of me,
“Be calm, Mother, we have news sent by the kings.” He holds his
hands out to me. “Your husband and son are fine. This has to do
with you and Sparta.”

As soon as he walks into the house,
he sniffs the air and with a thick grin asks, “Is that fresh bread
I smell?”

With only a nod, Ophira fetches the
ephor some bread, and we all sit down at my table in silence as he
quickly stuffs in the bread, still steaming.

He finally explains, “Sparta’s men
have been away at war for years, and normally, our men come back at
breaks to provide Sparta with children.” He picks at one of his
teeth and draws back to see what he found, obviously disinterested
from continuous retelling. “But now there’s no time for breaks.
We’re at war on every front, and the future of Sparta rests in our
mothers’ hands.”

We wait for him to
continue.

“Dire times are cause for dire
actions, and the kings have instructed our Spartan women to go
forth and procreate. Even half a Spartan is better than no Spartan
at all. Our mothers must choose wisely. Pick the strongest,
healthiest helot you can find.”

He then eyes Theodon’s powerful
physique with his steel-grey eyes. “Any mother who does not
procreate within the next six months will be fined heavily. By
order of the kings.” He bows his head to me, and on his way out,
says to Theodon, “You’re aware that the Citizens’ Army takes full
helots, aren’t you?”

Theodon nods.

“And you know it
is the only way you can win your freedom? No one else can grant you
that, since you
belong
to Sparta.” The ephor eyes me. “You fight in the army and you
win full freedom and citizenship.”

He turns and walks away, glancing
back at Theodon’s perfect form one more time.

Ophira and I look at each other and
laugh. Later on, during our walk from the barn, Ophira points down
to the helots working below and says, “How about that
one?”

Then she grabs my arm and points to
another one. “What about him? Ahhh,” she cries out, “that’s a nice
one there scratching his backside!”

She giggles away as the swarthy
helot digs his hand halfway into his pants, too far away to hear
our peals of laughter. We fall over each other in fits. Theodon
doesn’t think it’s so funny, and he walks back into the house
without waiting for us.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

I’m standing on my cliff, when the
ground tremors just like it had so many years ago. I run for cover
and watch as an old wind-beaten cypress splits in two. After the
shaking ceases, a young child with strawberry-blonde hair emerges
out of the torn trunk. She laughs like a nymph and claps her hand
as I pick her up and spin her in the sea air.

Waking up in the grey haze before
the sun shows, I miss the child of my dream and wonder if this was
the result of the ephor’s visit. I realize I do have to take the
order seriously, though, since they’ll fine us heavily and Leander
would want me to comply. I go out for an early walk alone to try to
see if any of my helots are in satisfactory condition as the sun
begins to retrieve the night’s dew. I fold my arms up under my chin
and lean against the fence overlooking the work fields, when
Theodon comes up next to me. The barley is blowing in the wind
coming off the sea, carrying with it smells of the newly fertilized
field. A piece of my hair blows across my eyes, and he reaches up,
sticks it behind my ear, and looks back down with a
smile.

He clears his throat. “The helots
who work for you are a worthless bunch, all of them drunkards. They
drink unmixed wine as soon as they get home and drink until they
stagger back here in the morning. Not a one fit for you, if that’s
what you’re up here thinking.”

I realize he’s right. There isn’t
one with good qualities.

He looks out onto the fields
instead of at me, with his hand nervously perched on the edge of
his lips. “I know I’m young”—putting his arm down, he directs his
beautiful, shining green eyes at me—“but I don’t look helot at
all.”

I turn away immediately, not at all
expecting him to say what he did.

“Look at me. Look at me, Alcina.”
He grabs both of my shoulders and forces me to look at him. “No one
knows you better than me.”

I look down, not knowing how I can
turn him away.

“I don’t want to be with anyone
else.”

“Theodon, this
can
never
happen.”

I put my hand up, wanting to avoid
this embarrassment, but he pulls it down; an unfamiliar fire
flashes in his eyes.

“I know that’s not possible, but at
least give me this. Instead of some useless stranger! I will stay
if you will grant this. I would stay here forever.”