Pherenike - Chapter 142

But Pherenike’s young daughter was truly remarkable. The child accepted the lion’s language as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Pherenike once told her that the lion’s language was very similar to the language of the goddess. Maybe, as Pherenike suggested, their roots were intertwined. Yet Atalanta herself had never exchanged such nuanced conversation with her own kind as she now did with Pherenike.

For lions, the passing down of memories meant sharing sensations and images with their offspring. The wisdom of their ancestors lived in instinct. Home was something you saw when you closed your eyes, not something you could ever describe in words.

So, in truth, the child wasn’t really speaking the lion’s tongue—she was speaking the language of the goddess to the lion, and understanding everything about her that way. Just as her mother had first understood the words of the goddess by instinct.

Pherenike, perceptive as she was, could distinguish clearly between the two languages. But young Leuce, still not fully fluent even in human speech, saw no difference between them—so she was free.

Like her mother before her, she did things no one had taught her, and understood far more than her mother ever had. She grasped the lion’s essence as if instinctively following something passed down from ancestors.

Perhaps, in the end, it was because that child was simply meant to be born that Pherenike…

[More, more! Tell me another amazing story!]

The lion thought of a pair of male lions lying submissively at the goddess’s feet. Then, turning to the goddess’s frail little favorite, she began to speak.

[Have you ever heard why all the lions that pull the goddess’s chariot are male?]

[What is it? Why?]

[They were the laziest males on earth. The goddess cherishes all lions, but she holds the lionesses who work tirelessly and the gentle fathers in even higher esteem.]

[Wow…]

[All lionesses, when they die, go to the goddess’s garden, where they rest in peace and spend joyful days with their cubs. But the males have a little extra penance before they find peace.]

The sun was setting. The sounds of battering rams striking the city gates began to echo, and, between them, the wheels of siege towers scraping the earth.

Atalanta had heard those sounds before, when the Paetusans attacked Ephesus—she knew how it would end just by the sounds.

Her nimble paws picked their way quickly along the edges of shadow, senses sharpened to sift through hundreds of noises in search of one woman’s voice. All the while, she kept telling stories to the child.

She spoke of how the people of Arabia drove out the winged snakes to harvest frankincense, how they brought cinnamon from the land where Dionysus was raised, of the sheep with long tails said to live only there, of the fragrant lands of Arabia… Tales handed down from Axiothea to Pherenike, then from Pherenike to Atalanta herself, she now passed on to the little girl.

The child’s quiet laughter was like a tickle on the lion’s cheek. Leuce drifted into sleep as she listened, just as children have always done—blinking drowsily, then finally succumbing, her eyes closing to the lion’s voice carrying her to the far southwestern edge of the world.

[Atalanta…]

[Yes?]

[Don’t be unhappy.]

The girl spoke in her sleep, as if she’d been repeating Atalanta’s words over and over in her mind. That line about animals being destined for unhappiness, no matter how beloved by the gods, sounded heartbreakingly sad from her lips.

[I won’t.]

And just like that, the voices faded. The child slept, and Atalanta’s voice no longer reached the sanctuary.

Atalanta suddenly glanced back at the path she had come, as if to gauge just how far their voices had carried across the distance.

Earlier, even when she looked up at Pherenike’s window, she couldn’t send her words to her master. Yet somehow, she had spoken with her daughter across so many layers of sound. Mesmerized, Atalanta looked up at the sanctuary roof, then hurried on.

Now she could almost—but not quite—catch a woman’s voice. She passed the edge of a forest that seemed familiar, though she was certain she’d never been there before.

Here grew wild brambles you’d never find in a royal garden, overgrown grass not tamed into paths, small wildflowers blooming wherever the sun allowed, trees shaped by the sun and not by human hands… and silver poplars. Atalanta finally remembered a forest from long ago.

“I have to find that stray dog…”

Before she could name the forest, a woman’s voice rode the breeze, suddenly clear. For reasons she could not explain, this forest was only a replica of that other place. There was the path along the stream, the low fruit trees, and the way the leaves of the poplar shimmered as the wind passed.

She skirted the human paths, following memories, and soon glimpsed two women and some soldiers heading for a small cottage.

“Seirios!”

Then, as if by instinct, her ears pricked at the sound. She followed the name.

“Seirios, where are you?”

But Atalanta’s own Seirios would be out there fighting for her master. The one they were searching for now was just the princess’s scrappy little dog.