Halo

by Zizou Corder

  They were staring at her too.

  ‘Get that net off her and take her to the bathroom,’ said the youngish woman, who seemed to be in charge. ‘Has she anything on? Get her an old chiton of Hypsipile’s.’

  The girl – Hypsipile, Halo guessed – was about to object, but then didn’t. She was too busy looking at Halo as if she didn’t like her.

  ‘How old are you?’ she demanded.

  Halo didn’t answer. She didn’t like the girl’s rude tone.

  Hypsipile was annoyed by that.

  ‘Can’t you talk?’ she said. ‘Fish got your tongue? Or are you a barbarian? You look like a barbarian. You’ve got tattoos on your face like a barbarian. Can you not even talk Greek?’

  Halo didn’t even bother to snort. Of course she spoke Greek. She’d been educated by Centaurs, hadn’t she? That’s the best education you could get. Good enough for Asclepius and Heracles and Achilles and Jason of the Golden Fleece. She spoke better Greek than this girl, that was certain.

  But – she didn’t know if she was Greek.

  If they were Centaurs, Halo thought, she’d say the woman was the mother, and Hypsipile the daughter, and the old woman the grandma. She didn’t know what to make of the other two women though. Friends? But the mother was bossing them, which didn’t seem right if they were friends visiting.

  Anyway, the bossed women were now – finally – taking the net off her. She spun round a little as they pulled it this way and that to unwind it, and Hypsipile laughed. Then Halo stood there, damp and sandy, stiff and sore. One of the quiet women handed her a cloth, and she turned away from their stares and slowly, painfully, tried to ease and stretch her arms and legs, which had been bound for so long.

  ‘What’s that round her neck?’ said Hypsipile suddenly. ‘Mother! Can I have it?’

  She was lunging at Halo’s golden owl. Halo swiftly reached out and grabbed the girl’s wrist, so tight that she squawked.

  ‘Certainly not, Hypsipile,’ the mother’s voice cut through sharply, and the girl backed down. Halo let go, but she didn’t take her eyes off her.

  The mother herself reached out gently towards the owl. ‘Gold!’ she said, surprisedly. ‘Well I never. Tempting people to steal!’ she said, as if it was Halo’s fault. Then she tired of the scene and wandered off.

  The women relaxed when she had gone. ‘Poor little thing’s half dead,’ said one, and, ‘You’d think they’d give her a bite to eat,’ said the other, but it wasn’t until evening that Halo got a bowl of barley porridge and a corner of floor to lie down on in the quiet women’s room.

  ‘I’ll sleep in the yard,’ she said, but they just laughed at her.

  She lay dry-eyed and angry in the dark room. She was glad to be warm again, glad to be fed. But she should be at her party, with her family! Not inside this stuffy little human building.

  She would rest now, and she would leave in the morning.

  In the early dawn light, Halo heard the women waking and rising. She rose with them, washed with them, and followed them into the kitchen. They smiled at her, and one said, ‘You look a bit better today. What’s your name? I’m Nimine. I’m from Sparta. Sparta’s better than here. You look like a Spartan – strong. Here the girls all stay indoors and try to be pale and pretty. You’d do well in Sparta.’

  Halo was taken aback. No human had so far spoken to her kindly.

  Nimine handed her a fig. ‘Have this while I make the porridge,’ she said. ‘So, who are you? Are you from round here? How come you were just in the sea with no clothes on? Maybe there was a wreck! Maybe you’re a princess! Can you talk? Or maybe you’re a slave?’

  ‘I am not a slave!’ said Halo, quickly and angrily, and forgetting in her crossness that she had not been going to talk to any human ever. Slave! No one was a slave in Centaurs’ eyes – even people who thought of themselves as slaves. Someone calling you a slave doesn’t make you one. She’d learned that when she was very young.

  ‘Oh! You can talk!’ said Nimine. ‘No need to be sniffy. I’m a slave, thank you very much, so there’s no need to be rude. Funny accent you’ve got though. Maybe you’re from Kerkyra. I met a Kerkyran once and he spoke very funnily…’

  Nimine handed her a mug of tea: mint with honey. It was delicious. And she was looking at her, waiting for an answer.

  ‘I’m not from Kerkyra,’ she said cautiously. It seemed an easier subject to approach than slavery. Though maybe not. The question ‘Who are you?’ had confused her. It had confused her yesterday too, when Aristides had asked it. She didn’t want to think about it.

  She drank her delicious tea, and ate her fig, and, when it came, her dish of porridge. Then she said politely, ‘Thank you. I’ll go now.’ And she headed for the door.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Nimine. ‘Madam said you weren’t to leave. Master said you’re to stay till your father comes for you!’

  ‘My –’ Halo was about to speak but found she couldn’t. What could she say? She had been about to say, ‘My father can’t come.’ But she couldn’t say that. They would want to know why, and then what would she say? Because he’s a Centaur, and you don’t believe in Centaurs? She couldn’t say that. One thing she knew – she mustn’t mention the Centaurs, or lead the humans to them in any way. It wasn’t safe for them.

  So should she make up a story? That was lying. She didn’t want to lie. So should she say something about her human father? Something like, ‘I don’t know who my father is’? Or ‘I haven’t seen my father since I was a baby’?

  What a choice.

  So she didn’t say anything about her father. She just said, ‘No, I’ll go on my own. He won’t mind.’

  And Nimine laughed as if that was really ridiculous, and replied, ‘What father would let a young girl go off on her own? Now just sit down like a good girl and he’ll be along soon, I’m sure.’

  At that point the mistress looked in. ‘Ah,’ she said vaguely. ‘Good. She can work with you till her father comes…’ and then she wandered off to have her breakfast with Hypsipile.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ said Halo – and the mistress turned round in surprise.

  ‘Of course you aren’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t be silly.’And Halo heard her call out, ‘Nikos! Make sure that girl doesn’t run away. We’re responsible for her.’A gruff male voice replied, ‘Yes, Madam,’ and Nimine rolled her eyes and smiled and said ‘Don’t think about running away, Spartan Girl. Nikos’ll catch you in minutes. Zeus only knows what they want with you, though…’

  Halo didn’t know either. Why wouldn’t they just let her leave?

  All that day and the next, Halo helped in the kitchen and eyed Nikos, a long-armed gangly man who seemed never to go out and never to sleep.

  Nimine said, ‘Your father should have come by now, if he cares about you. If your father doesn’t come, well…’

  Halo thought about what happened to human children whose parents didn’t care about them. She thought about the babies lying out on the hillside, abandoned.

  ‘Well what?’ she asked, but Nimine wouldn’t say.

  It became clear soon enough.

  Aristides strode into the kitchen one morning and said, in surprise, ‘Are you still here?’

  The next day she found herself leaving the house with Nikos clutching her arm so hard he left white marks on her tanned flesh. Hypsipile was laughing. Nikos dragged her down to the dock, where Aristides was saying to the Captain of a grubby-looking boat, ‘We can’t sell her here, in case some family or owner does turn up. Take her over to the mainland, and see if you can get anything for her.’

  She was being sold as a slave.

  ‘But I’m not a slave!’ Halo cried in outrage. ‘You can’t sell me. I’m not a slave. I don’t belong to you…’

  ‘Then what are you?’ said the Captain. ‘Who do you belong to? What we hear is, you don’t belong to anybody, so you’re finders keepers.’

  Finders keepers! That can’t be right!

  But she couldn’t tell them who s
he belonged to. She didn’t know who she belonged to. It was true, after all, that she wasn’t a Centaur herself. Though she wished that she was – and the more she saw of humans, the more she wished it.

  So the uncomfortable question had returned.

  Who was she?

  She had no idea.

  Xαπτερ 6

  The boat she was put on was heavy with sacks of currants and jars of wine and slabs of Zakynthos tar, for mainlanders to caulk their boats with. It smelt.

  Halo sat miserably in the Captain’s cabin, where she’d been put, wearing Hypsipile’s old chiton and an even older cloak, which smelt of sheep. One of the sailors looked in at her: she spat at him and cursed him in the name of Artemis. After that the Captain locked the door, and the sailors left her alone.

  ‘Artemis!’ she called. Perhaps if she shouted loud enough the Goddess would hear her and take pity. ‘Artemis! Protector of maidens! Help!! They’re trying to steal me!’ But Artemis didn’t reply. She called on Athena too, but she knew Athena was very important and usually very busy with adult business, so she wasn’t surprised when she didn’t reply. Then she thought of Demeter, whose own daughter, Persephone, had been kidnapped – she’d be bound to help.

  But she didn’t.

  Halo was a bit disappointed by their lack of interest.

  For a while she stared. Then she dozed. Then she stared some more. Nobody bothered to feed her, but Nimine had passed her a piece of bread and some salty cheese as she left. She had tied it into the corner of her cloak, saving it up.

  She stared some more. And she saw something: in the corner, by the Captain’s pallet – something long and wooden – a flute! She picked it up, and examined it, and longed to play it, but she stopped herself, because she didn’t want anyone coming in and telling her not to. After three days in a human kitchen, she was fed up with people telling her what to do.

  It wasn’t a very good flute, but it was a flute. She held it, fiddling with it, covering its holes and remembering tunes. And she started to think. After a while, she thought up a plan. And as she thought it through, she ate the bread and cheese, and she began to smile.

  After some time, she couldn’t tell how long, Halo shouted that she was being sick. The message got through to the Captain, and he let her out. She followed him up on to the deck, and looked to stern. Where Zakynthos had been, green and smudgy, there was now nothing but sea.

  ‘Too far to swim back now, eh?’ the Captain said meanly.

  Even as he said it she knew it was true. OK, she thought.

  ‘You might as well be sick over the edge,’ he was saying. ‘Do it downwind.’

  She said nothing; just went to the side and felt the clear breeze on her face. She hadn’t been allowed beyond the courtyard in all the time she had been in Aristides’s house. She hadn’t breathed fresh clean air, or seen the open sky, or the beautiful sea. She glanced back at where Zakynthos had disappeared into the blue distance. And she looked ahead, at the nearing mainland of Greece. That must be Elis, or Messenia, she thought. She wasn’t sure which.

  They were about half as far from the coast as Zakynthos was from Cephalonia.

  I can do that, she thought. She crossed the deck. She threw off her cloak. She dived almost silently overboard. The water closed over her head, cool and sleek.

  One of the sailors noticed the tiny splash. ‘Captain!’ he cried out.

  ‘Stupid girl!’ the Captain cried, and glared overboard.

  He could see nothing. Nothing at all. She had dived off the starboard side, which was facing west; the afternoon sun was shining in his eyes, and it dazzled him.

  Then he spotted something. ‘Get her!’ he shouted, and a sailor dived in and grabbed – her cloak, floating empty on the surface.

  ‘Where is she?’ shouted the Captain, and the sailors crowded round the rail to see; and some ran to the other side to see if she had swum under the ship, and some to the stern, and some to the prow: nothing.

  ‘She must be somewhere,’ the Captain said angrily.

  For half an hour they went in circles, looking for her.

  Nothing.

  At last, in fury, he had to give up, and he directed the crew to continue on course. He had lost money and he had lost face. He would have to recompense Aristides for the cost of her. He swore.

  Meanwhile, tucked under the stern, under the blue frothing water, Halo the sea-born girl streamed in the ship’s wake. One arm held tight to one of the metal fixings of the boat’s ladder. The other clutched the Captain’s stolen flute. Its holes were caulked up with Zakynthine tar, and one end poked up through the foaming surface. The other she gripped between her teeth in her tightly closed mouth. She was breathing through it.

  Only as the ship gave up on her, and picked up speed to make up for lost time, did she let go, drop behind, and set out with her steady strong front crawl for the mainland coast.

  Strong as she was, Halo was exhausted when she finally came to shore in a small sandy cove. The coastline was all cliffs and precipices, but finally she had spotted this cove and carefully made her way in, avoiding spiky rocks underwater and treacherous swirling currents. Her limbs were so heavy she could not even stand. For a while she lay in the surf, catching her breath and feeling the sand shifting beneath her body as the flat waves curled in and crept away again. But then she feared she might fall asleep there, still in the water, and be washed away again, so she dragged herself up the beach and lay limp as a scrap of seaweed in the afternoon sun.

  Gradually her breath settled, and slowly she smiled. ‘Chelonakimu,’ she whispered, hearing Kyllarus’s voice. My little turtle. Spat up by the sea again – only this time, she had done it herself. She gave thanks to Poseidon, and promised him a sacrifice as soon as she was in a position to offer one. She sat up, her muscles trembling. The sun was still warm, so she took off her wet chiton and spread it on a rock to dry. Shaking out her tiredness, she went down to the black rocks lining her cove. On the way she picked up a flat, sharp shard of stone.

  She was prodding around in the cracks and fissures just under the water, searching among the froth and waving weed, and soon enough she spotted what she was looking for: the spiky little black topknots of sea urchins stuck tight to the rock surfaces. Taking care not to be stung by their poisonous little prickles, she prised them off with her sharp flat stone, and scooped out the rich orange eggs from their underside. They were delicious – salty and fresh – and she could feel the strength seeping back through her blood. She ate a little seaweed as well, and spread some of the flat wet leaves to dry on the rocks to take with her as supplies when she moved on.

  She slept on the beach, still cold and damp, but the next morning the sun was up early, shining warm on her. She found a tiny stream and splashed herself all over to rinse off the salt, and let the sun dry her. Then, warm and full of urchin eggs, well watered from the stream, with dried seaweed tucked into the fold of her chiton, barefooted, suntanned and free, Halo clambered up behind the cove and set out to find her way home.

  She walked north with the sea to her left, over rocks and dunes, along the top of the cliffs, her hair matted with sand and salt, eating grapes from the wild vines and blackberries from the brambles. She knew there was a town up that way. Sometimes on clear nights they had caught sight, across the water, of the great fires they burned during their festivals. In a town she would find a boat and get a lift home, and everything would be all right.

  But the coast was very twisty, heading off in different directions, with deep little bays and long rocky promontories. She decided to cut across, heading due north, to pick up the coast again when she was past the promontory. But when she saw the sea again, it was at the bottom of a great cliff, so she carried on, heading north across country.

  If I keep left, I’ll come back to the coast, she thought. But things kept sending her right: first wide bays, then a rushing river mouth, and finally a set of deep, dark gorges, thick with pines and riven rock. Finally, she found herself
in an ever-thickening forest. She tried to go downhill – the sea, after all, is always downhill. But downhill seemed always to lead to a precipice, or a rockfall. So she walked where she could.

  She had been walking all day in the scrubby, rocky woodland when, towards evening, she came to the edge of it. Gladly she walked out into evening sunlight on an empty hillside.

  But the sun was behind her.

  The sun should be in front, or to the left – if she was going north, or north-west…

  It was behind her. She had been heading east – away from the setting sun, and away from the sea, and away from Zakynthos.

  The long shadows of the trees, stretching out, told her all she needed to know.

  She ran out on to the dusty open hillside sloping down before her, tall dry grasses scratching at her knees and feet, and she stared back up the way she had come.

  The sun was setting behind the slopes and shoulders of a massive mountain. There was a mountain between her and the sea. How had that happened? How had she got so lost?

  And anyway – what mountain was it? Elis and Messenia are flat.

  She had no idea where she was.

  Gold and pink streaked the sky. The evening star hung behind her and the smell of warm late-summer figs lay on the air. Halo sat down on the dry prickly ground, hugged her knees to her, and wept. By all the Gods, by Artemis who protects young girls, and Athena the wise, by Hermes the traveller – how had this happened? How had she let it happen? And more to the point, what was she going to do now?

  Dried seaweed and grapes and berries were all very well, but she was hungry for real food. Her feet, although tough from running around outside on Zakynthos, were battered and sore from walking all day over rough land. Her skin felt dry and burned for lack of oil. She could smell her own armpits and her limbs ached with fatigue. She needed a wash, a bed, a rest, a kind word, a hot meal…

  She wept miserably.

  A while passed, and her tears passed, as they do. She wiped her eyes and nose on her chiton, as she had nothing else.