Halo

by Zizou Corder

  ‘Leonidas,’ said Melesippus, as they turned in that night, ‘don’t let that slave of yours run away. Have him sleep by you.’ And he threw a length of chain and two leather cuffs at Leonidas’s feet.

  Leonidas paused a moment, then said, ‘Sir,’ and gave a little bow.

  As he laid out his cloak in the open by the wagon, she murmured, ‘Thank you.’

  In answer, Leonidas produced a length of rope and said, ‘Give me your feet.’

  She realized he was going to tie them together so she couldn’t run away.

  ‘Come and get them,’ she couldn’t help saying. Of course she was grateful not to be killed, but she had tasted a moment of freedom and she wanted more.

  He glanced at her, and smiled. He recognized the quote: it was what King Leonidas has said to the Persian messengers before Thermopylae, when they demanded that he gave up his weapons.

  ‘I see you’ve been picking up a bit of Spartan education,’ he said. ‘Which is just dandy, but no, I am not bending down to tie your feet.’

  ‘Well, I am not sitting down to offer my feet to you,’ she said, so he pushed her over, tied her feet together and said, ‘Don’t be such a day-old goat. I’ve done you enough favours. Stop moaning.’ He clasped one cuff around her right wrist, and the other round his own left biceps. She watched, and raised her eyebrows as he chained them together. He smiled at her. He didn’t even have to say, ‘Don’t even think about trying to run off.’

  ‘You go there,’ he said, throwing a cloak at her. She rolled herself up in it and lay down. He sat, leaning against the wagon.

  Chained like a naughty dog, she thought bitterly. How wonderful. And then: But not dead, killed as a runaway.

  The sky above them was liquid with beauty, and the ground beneath very hard. She could hear the horses’ soft breathing as she rolled over on to her back.

  ‘Is that all right by you, O master?’ she asked sarcastically, as the chain pulled on his wrist. ‘For me to roll over?’

  ‘Do shut up,’ he said.

  The stars were very twinkly and bright.

  ‘So, I’m your slave then,’ she said at last.

  ‘You know you are,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  That made her laugh. The big boy with the big horse, the Spartan warrior, apologizing.

  They lay silently. It was peculiar, lying there in the dark, looking up at the spring stars, lush and clear, way up high. Even though they were chained together, it reminded her of the many many nights she and Arko had lain under the night sky, whispering.

  ‘Who’s that boy?’ she asked, after a while.

  ‘“That boy” is Manticlas, the finest seer in Lacedaemonia,’ said Leonidas, in an amused voice.

  A seer! Well, that explained things. A bit. Kyllarus had told her about seers. They read omens and portents, look at the weather, and consider what animals pass by. They interpret dreams, and read the stars, and choose auspicious dates for great activities. They examine sacrifices, looking for good fortune or bad.

  ‘Isn’t he a bit young?’ she asked.

  ‘He has a great gift,’ Leonidas said. ‘His readings are true, and have been since he was a small child. It’s not like normal wisdom that you get more of as you get older.’

  ‘Can he read the future?’ Halo asked curiously.

  ‘Better than the rest of us, they say,’ said Leonidas.

  Halo wondered if she would be able to ask Manticlas about her parents. She felt probably not.

  Silence fell again between them.

  She grinned in the darkness.

  ‘Why do you keep saving me?’ she asked.

  ‘Because –’ he said.

  ‘Because you’re not a slave.’

  ‘No one’s a slave,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t start that again,’ he said. ‘Slaves exist, all right? They’re slaves, and that’s the way things are…’

  ‘So if you get caught in battle, you’d be a slave, is that it?’

  He laughed out loud at that, and had to shut himself up.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘If.’

  She had to laugh at that – at his cockiness and pride. Then they were both just trying to stifle their laughter in the still night.

  An owl hooted above them.

  ‘Athena’s telling us to shut up,’ he whispered.

  ‘Very wise,’ Halo replied.

  It was so nice not to be alone. Even though her companion was Leonidas.

  ‘Leonidas,’ she whispered after a bit, ‘if you agree I’m not a slave, why would you mind if I ran away?’

  The silence was long, and she was afraid he had fallen asleep, but finally he spoke. ‘Because I’m responsible for you,’ he said. ‘You heard Melesippus. I couldn’t cover for you again if you’re caught –’

  ‘If –’ she murmured.

  ‘But then, you weren’t captured in battle, and you’re not born to slavery, so in a way it isn’t right for you to be enslaved.’

  She didn’t want to get him in trouble, she thought. But then, if the alternative to getting him in trouble was her being a slave all her life, well, grateful as she was, there was no contest.

  ‘What you need to do,’ he said, ‘is find out who you are. Until you know who you are, you’re no one.’

  ‘I’m me!’ she said crossly, but even she knew now that in this world of humans that just wasn’t enough.

  She rolled over again. She’d pull on the chain throughout the night, she decided, just to annoy him.

  Travelling in company was so different from the long journey she had made alone. She knew that she was safe from wild animals at night. She knew that bandits would not come anywhere near a party of Spartans. She didn’t even have to walk. Her supper was there in the baskets in the wagon. Dion the slave made the fire. Birds were singing. Tiny leaves uncurled on the knotty vines; baby mules and donkeys tottered in the fields; little white clouds danced in the sky and Phoebus the Sun shone down like a friend after a long journey. It seemed to Halo as if Demeter was having a party and had invited everyone. The world was beautiful. All of Greece and everything in it was beautiful.

  Halo, sitting back in the wagon, her belly full of morning porridge, realized that things were much, much better than they might be. She would have felt almost peaceful as they trundled through the green valleys and rocky outcrops of Arcadia, up its lovely hills, alongside its rushing rivers, up into the high snowy mountains that sheltered them from the Gulf of Corinth. But she didn’t. Her mind was on fire.

  They were going to Delphi!

  The centre of the world!

  Apollo’s home on earth – where his sacred Oracle, the Pythia, sat in the great temple, and answered any question, and always told the truth, no matter what.

  Halo gazed up at the peaks as she passed beneath them. They looked like great piles of creamy yoghurt on which the Gods had poured golden honey. She looked down: striped buds on the beautiful asphodels, tiny blue wild hyacinths, crocuses and violets and scarlet windflowers. The sun warmed their backs. Leonidas, riding ahead, had thrown off his cloak in the sunshine and stuck a twig of almond blossom behind his ear.

  It occurred to her, looking at his broad brown shoulders, that she would not be able to pass as a boy forever. The Pythia would know she was a girl…

  They were plodding uphill. As they came to the highest point the air grew cold again. Everyone pulled their cloaks around them, and snow covered the road, sharp and gritty. Close up it looked nothing like cream and honey. She prayed they would make their way down the other side before nightfall.

  An hour later she saw a gull wheeling overhead. Its sharp cry tugged at her heart.

  She was trying to stand up on the wagon beside Dion, pulled down by her chain attached to the bench seat, gazing and staring, gazing and staring – and she was rewarded. An hour or so before sundown, the long hazy fingers of the evening sun lit up a gleaming streak way down before her: the Gulf of Corinth. The sea! She feasted her eyes as the water grew closer. More than
once she thought she caught the scent of sea lilies on the breeze – but she didn’t really. It was her imagination, because she wanted so much to smell them. But the sea is real, she thought. Out there, where the sun is setting, is my beautiful Zakynthos. She half thought that if she stared hard enough at the greeny gold sky perhaps she would even see Zakynthos on the horizon, floating like a memory of all that was happy.

  The Pythia could tell her how to get home…

  It was almost dark by the time they came into the little port from which the ferry crossed over to Delphi. She could see the two great mountains, Parnassus and Gion, on the other side, their snowy tops shining in the last rays of the evening sun. They seemed to be floating in the dusk, hardly any distance away. Her eyes rested too on the water, almost feeding on it. I could dive into that water now, and swim, and swim, and swim, and wash up once again on my Zakynthine beach, and Kyllarus would come and find me and bring me home…

  Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face. Dion turned to her and said, ‘It’s the nature of the sea to give us longings.’That was all. She looked at him. He had already turned away again, to spit.

  She stopped staring at the sea longingly. She didn’t want Melesippus or Manticlas or Leonidas to notice that there were things on her mind. Instead she stared into the bottom of the wagon, and thought privately, deep inside herself.

  The next day at dawn Halo leapt up bright and early and full of excitement and joy.

  She had unfortunately forgotten that she was shackled to a young Spartan who was not quite so full of joy as she was, and who now barked at her to shut up and lie down and stop pulling his blinking arm off. She sat down next to him and played with the chain and began to hum. He could be as cross as he liked. She didn’t care. She was excited.

  Before they crossed over the gulf, Melesippus – who was rather a superstitious man, Halo thought – wanted Manticlas to read the omens for the crossing, and for whether it was good to approach the Oracle now. He wanted a sacrifice.

  A sacrifice to see if it is a good time to offer a sacrifice, thought Halo. Interesting. This could go on and on…

  Leonidas – with Halo still attached – was sent along to the small market to find a lamb.

  The spring lambs were too pretty, with their clean curling fur, like Dion’s beard, their bright dark eyes, and their little noses. They clustered round her hand, licking her with rough little tongues. Halo couldn’t bear to choose one, knowing it would die.

  Leonidas said, ‘You do know they’re all going to die, in the end.’

  ‘Well so are you and I,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean we want to race towards it.’

  ‘I’m happy to die any time it’s required,’ he said, matter-of-factly.

  She looked up at him. She could see from his face that he meant it.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘That’s a dreadful thing to say – how can you want to die?’

  ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘if it helped save Sparta in battle, say. Or to save my brothers in arms. When it’s right for me to die, I’ll die. The Gods give you your spirit, and you give it back with a glad heart when the time comes.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she said. ‘How can you say that? Look, the sun is shining and the light is golden, and the market is full of cherries and we’re off on an adventure – how could you turn your back on this beautiful world, and go down to the underworld where it’s all dark and cold?’

  ‘My body is not mine to do what I want with,’ he said. ‘I belong to Sparta. My life’s purpose is to defend Sparta. So we fight until we win, or until we’re all dead. There’s no point living with dishonour.’

  ‘What’s so honourable about dying?’ she said – but by then the stallholder wanted them to buy a blinking lamb or get out of the way of decent people who would, so Leonidas grabbed the nearest one, and slung it, bleating, round Halo’s shoulders while she handed over the iron coin the seer had given her. Spartan money was so heavy. It’s not surprising, she thought, that no one is rich there. They wouldn’t be able to carry their own purses.

  She held the lamb’s feet to her chest as they walked back to the port slowly, thoughtfully.

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand this,’ he said, ‘because you are a girl and a foreigner. But look – do you know why a Spartan can give up his helmet, or his armour, but never his shield?’

  ‘Is this to do with that horrible song?’ she asked.

  ‘What song?’

  ‘About coming back with your shield or on it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s because your helmet and your armour protect only you, but your shield protects the line. You, and your brothers in arms. Each man protects his brother to the left.’

  She was quiet.

  ‘If you lose your shield, you leave a gap in the line, and you put all the men in danger.’

  She could understand that. She recalled how she and Arko had each tried to protect the other when they had been stuck in the Hole.

  It gave her a pang of pain. Without Arko, she had no line. No brothers in arms. Nobody to fight alongside; nobody to protect her; nobody to protect. Not that she wanted to fight. Lying under the stars, walking among green leaves and bird-song, chewing on hard cheese, remembering the blue light of her beautiful caves, she was in love with life not just for herself but for everybody. She thought it tragic that the Spartan boys were bred for blood and gore and death; that they whipped each other to harden them to pain; that they could laugh as they killed people… But she was a human, and almost as much as they like being alive, humans like to have some other humans to belong with.

  ‘Do you understand?’ he said.

  ‘I understand about the loyalty,’ she said. ‘But I don’t understand why humans are always attacking each other.’

  ‘Most of the time,’ he said, ‘we’re not. We’re defending each other.’

  ‘But what from?’ she demanded. ‘Somebody must be attacking in the first place.’

  ‘The enemy,’ he said mildly.

  ‘The enemy probably think they’re defending against you,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not my problem,’ he said. ‘I’m a soldier, not a politician.’

  Halo didn’t know about politicians. She just knew that the Centaurs didn’t fight. ‘If you have wisdom,’ she said, ‘you don’t need to shed blood.’ She remembered the look on Kyllarus’s face as he had said that. She was glad Kyllarus had never seen her trying to tear Crenas’s head off.

  ‘Listen,’ Leonidas said. ‘Listen. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have never been attacked. You have never seen an enemy. There’s an old saying: “My grandfather was a soldier, so my father could be a farmer, so I could be a poet.” Well, maybe you’re like the poet or the farmer. But I’m the soldier. My duty is to keep things safe. Things aren’t safe – that’s just a fact – so I have to be ready in case I’m needed. Wouldn’t you like us to be on your side when the bandits came down on your city? Though of course they wouldn’t come if they knew we were on your side. They’d be too scared.’

  She knew that was true. She knew too that she always wanted Leonidas, with his broad shoulders and his honesty, on her side. But – but –

  ‘I have no side,’ she said. ‘I have no city.’

  ‘You must have a city,’ he said. ‘Who are you? Who are your parents?’

  His eyes were clear and not unkind, and to her own surprise, she told him the truth.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I was lost at sea, and found again – but not by my own people. They probably think I’m dead.’

  She was so used to it by now that she just said it simply, as a fact. But when she looked up at him, to her amazement, there was kindness in his eyes.

  ‘I didn’t realize,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got used to it,’ she said mildly.

  ‘Well, get unused to it again,’ he said urgently. ‘You mustn’t be used to it. You should find them, and how are you going to find them if you’re not hungry f
or it?’

  Hungry for them? For her parents, her family, her blood, her people?

  Hungry.

  So that was the word. That word he used explained everything she had been feeling, everything that she hadn’t understood. She was hungry for them. Desperately hungry.

  ‘But who brought you up?’ he was asking.

  ‘Kind people, in the countryside,’ she said.

  ‘In times of peace,’ he said. ‘Poets and farmers.’

  ‘In times of peace,’ he said. ‘Poets and farmers.’

  ‘In times of peace,’ she agreed.

  ‘Lucky for you,’ he said. ‘But you’re not a little kid any more. And peace doesn’t last forever. You need to know who you are.’

  ‘I’ll ask the Oracle at Delphi,’ she said suddenly. She was joking when she said it, but as the words came out she thought, Why not?

  ‘Apollo won’t mind that I don’t have much to offer,’ she said. ‘I’ll give what I can.’ She wondered if she was right. I could give my owl, she thought. If Apollo could really tell her who she was through the Oracle, she would be happy to give him her owl. It would make sense. The owl her parents had put on her to look after her when she was a baby could now help her to find her parents.

  Is that what I’m doing? Trying to find my parents? she thought.

  Yes, she thought. I am.

  Halo had to help with the sacrifice. She didn’t like it. It wasn’t the same as killing an animal by hunting, to eat it. Then the animal had a chance to get away, and it was her skill that shot it down, and it was fair. She offered the animal to the Gods afterwards out of gratitude for having been given the food. But just buying an animal, and it sitting there with its nice eyes… she didn’t like the lamb looking at her.

  She helped Manticlas to wash and purify himself, and to put on his ritual sash. She listened as he murmured his prayers. And she stared at the ground, clenching her jaw, when he lifted the knife, invoked the Gods, and whipped the sharp blade across the lamb’s white throat.

  It was peculiar to see a young boy performing these actions. All the floppiness had gone from him, and he seemed inspired. His hands were firm and his movements strong. He seemed to enjoy it.