Chapter 2

“That damn cheat!” she raged realizing that she had been bewitched by the golden apple, and that it could only have belonged to her dastardly competitor.

She tossed the apple aside and took off sprinting as fast as her legs could take her. She was huffing now, her nostrils flaring like a galloping mare’s. Her eyes sharpened into a glare, fixed on the sight of that bastard who had tricked her into chasing after what was most certainly a witch-hexed apple.

He had touched the gate and had started back towards the finish line by the time she had finally caught up with him. When she did, she snarled at him, “I’ll teach you to mess with me, little man! Once I’ve crossed that finish line, I shall take great pleasure in giving a cheat like you his just deserts!”

“Cheat? How am I a cheat? You said nothing about apples in your rules!” Hippomenes replied, breathing hard. “Speaking of which…”

He reached into his tunic and, to Atalanta’s great chagrin, pulled out another apple and held it up for her eyes to feast on. “What do you think of this apple?”

Immediately she felt the bewitching effects the apple had on her. Her eyes could not tear away, and neither could her heart, which swelled with more of the same emotions that she could not understand, except in the sense that they were surely caused by a powerful hex.

“Oh no you don’t!” she growled, putting in a burst of speed to sprint past her devious rival. Hippomenes threw the apple across her sight with greater strength than last time. The apple disappeared into a wild rosemary bramble far from the path. Atalanta, despite her best effort to restrain herself, could not help but dive after it.

She cursed aloud while she searched for it and cried once she found it and bit into it to taste juices as sweet as any nectar of the gods. A spring flood of good feelings rushed into her every being. Good feelings she had never before felt in all her time as a wild, free woman. At the same time, her mind roiled in disgust for indulging in this luxury while her very freedom was at stake. “Why am I letting that ass win!” she sobbed, as she took another huge chomp into the golden apple.

She swallowed, and the bewitching haze again lifted. Angrily, she tossed the apple aside and jolted into a mad sprint. She put every effort and every ounce of energy into her legs. Her hair flew in the wind. Her thighs rippled with immense strength as she bounded like an antelope. Her lungs burned. Tears streaked across her face. She had to win. She had no choice. It was Apollo himself who had whispered in her ear that to be with a man would be to lose her way. She was running for her way of life. Her very identity.

Hippomenes was already at the final bend before the last straight into the vineyards. The villagers cheered raucously when they saw that it was he that had appeared first. But Atalanta was close behind and picking up speed with every bound while Hippomenes labored to put one foot in front of the other. The villagers quickly went quiet when they saw her coming up the road, seeing that every one of her leaping bounds was worth five of his padded steps. She flew faster than the wind. She flew like Hermes.

When Hippomenes saw her coming up on his tail, his eyes went wide with fear. The last fifty paces or so was up a steep hill and having already expended most of his energy to run, his feet were clumsy. He slipped on the loose dirt as he tried picking up speed. He yelped out of fear and scrambled madly to the finish line. He clawed and kicked at the dirt.

Atalanta beamed, knowing now with all certainty that she would catch her prey. Overwhelming relief filled her. Joy filled her now that she had certain victory within her reach. In fact, after that short streak of utter terror, so much joy had rushed into her to replace it, that no room was left in her mind for the possibility that if this cheat Hippomenes had two golden apples, he might have a third. She was hit with that ugly realization only when he reached into his tunic and pulled it out.

“No!” She cried as she immediately felt the irresistible pull of the apple. “Sweet goddess, nooo!”

Hippomenes heaved the apple down the steep hill. It tumbled and bounced. She dove atop it before it could get away from her and cradled it to her bosom as if it were the most cherished treasure she had ever held in her hands. A smile came to her face while tears streamed from her eyes. She watched with futility as Hippomenes clambered to his feet and limped the final few paces to collapse across the finish line. Atalanta’s heart clanged with grief, but once more, she could not help but bite into that lush, beautiful fruit. Little chunks of apple flew out of her mouth as she sobbed whilst the villagers threw a celebration for their new hero. They lifted him up into the air and splashed wine on him. Atalanta looked to the setting sun while she chewed that apple, and saw Apollo there shaking his head, and then to the rising moon and saw Artemis there giving her a shrug. So, that was it. The Fates had decided. All she had left to do now was to accept their ugly decision.

She walked glumly to the celebrating villagers, where Hippomenes was being tossed into the air, to watch his glee. When they finally let him down, he went to her and gave her a smile and, bowing, offered his hand.

Atalanta glowered at him and at the offered hand. “Well done,” she said. “You have played the game unfairly, but you bested me. I must be a woman of my words, so here I am now, as your bride.”

She put her anger-trembling hand into his, and he pulled her towards him and replied, “As I am a traveler, my home is not near, so take me to yours, my lovely wife, to drink sweet mead and so that we may consummate our lifelong bond beneath the honeymoon.”

A pale moroseness drew upon Atalanta’s face as she contemplated her new life with this small man who had bested her. To be his wife, to be obedient, to be shackled to marriage when her heart and soul burned for the rush of wind in her hair, the far horizon, and dangerous adventures. It was too much sadness to bear. She, Atalanta the indomitable, who had traveled the high seas with Jason and his famous Argonauts, hunted the dreaded Calydonian boar alongside Meleager, defeated King Peleus, father of Achilles in a wrestling match, and with her own bare hands slew the brutal centaurs Rhoecus and Hylaeus. But lest she spurn the moon goddess, she had no choice but to accept whatever the Fates decide, which was to be wed to this conniving nobody named Hippomenes.

Reluctantly, she consented, and took him beyond the sheep-grazed hills and beyond the stone pines and the tall cypress to her home in the granite mountains that overlooked the placid sea of Myrto.

The moon rose full and early and spilt its silver gleam upon the plumy clouds above her mountain home.

Despite the immense fortune she had garnered from her many adventures abroad, her home was nothing more than a humble hut made of stone she had taken from the hillside, and thatched straws she had collected from the fields. A simple peasant’s hut, which was more than enough for a wild woman who spent most of her dawns and dusks and the times between enjoying the divine splendors of the earth’s natural treasures. A hut that would be her’s no more, as it turned out, for as soon as they are fully wed, Hippomenes would take her to whatever gloomy Erebus he is from.

Without a word spoken between them, she led Hippomenes into her home and poured him a cup of mead, and none for herself.

“Will you not drink with me?” Hippomenes said, his voice, Atalanta noted curiously, steps higher in pitch than before. More effeminate it seemed, and carried in it, none of the rodomontade of a victor, but all of the nervousness of a sheep who had found himself a guest in a wolf’s lair. But it really did not matter to her how he intoned his voice — she was his captive regardless. She pushed the mead cup into his chest and wryly responded,

“I am obligated to wed you. I am not obligated to drink with you.”

“But I would like it very much if you were to drink with me…,” Hippomenes murmured before taking a timid sip.

Atalanta grimaced, but poured herself a cup, and for a while they drank sitting beside one another on the stone steps where a cool breeze from the sea touched them pleasantly.

Hippomenes asked for another when he was done with his first, and drank that quickly, and then another.

“You want to consummate our marriage, do you not? I cannot see you doing that well if I ply you with any more drinks.”

“I need it for the courage,” Hippomenes replied before taking another heavy swig.

“Courage? What courage do you need,” Atalanta replied. “You have me already. You’ve won your prize.”

“But I don’t want you to be my prize,” Hippomenes replied quickly.

A nervous shade drew across his face. “What I mean to say,” he stammered, “Is that… I don’t want to marry you, Atalanta. I just wanted to…”

He sighed and put his cup down and stood to face Atalanta. His face went rosy with embarrassment. He sighed and said, quietly, “I have to admit to you something. The apples were not a part of my plan when I agreed to run against you. In fact, I had no plan. I had no idea why I accepted the challenge except to say that I was drunk and, well, a fool. A fawning fool who saw a chance to talk to you. To be near you. It was not until after I spoke that I realized the ruin that I had cursed myself to. That night, I went to a shrine of Aphrodite to curse her name for allowing foolish love to condemn me to certain death. But when I arrived at her shrine, I could not find it in me to curse her, because I still had love in my heart, and how could you curse love when you have it in your heart? And so, I simply wept, and it was my tears that beckoned Aphrodite to me.

“I explained everything to her — my unrequitable love and its ruinous result, and I begged her to spare me from my doom. Well, she took pity on me and gave me her apples to use against you in the race. You see, it was not my clever idea. It was hers. I’m not clever. I’m a fool struck by hopeless love. But after all that, all I ever want to do, truthfully, is not to win your hand in marriage, but to have what had made me so foolish in the first place — to have just a chance to win your heart. But now, standing here in your presence, I can see that I don’t deserve you. You are beautiful, fierce, strong and I’m… well if I’m not just another hopeless romantic, then I am no one. I won’t take your hand in marriage, Atalanta. I cannot do that and keep my conscience.”

Growing more captivated with every passing word of Hippomenes’ confession, by the end, Atalanta’s heart poured over with compassion for this poor soul who wanted more than what life seemed willing to give him. Beside the joy of hearing that he would refuse to shackle her to him with marriage, she was taken aback by his soulful honesty.