Iamas trembled. “King Agamemnon said you might not come.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said mother. “How could there be a wedding if we didn’t come? Help my daughter down.”
Iamas offered his hand again. This time his grip remained steady as I descended. His gaze lingered on the smelly decorations in my hair that I had forgotten were there. I reached up to touch them, and felt their softness, their fragility.
A shudder ran through Iamas. He looked away from me, and clutched himself as if he were cold, even though the air was hot and stagnant. I knew that he was sad and uncomfortable and lying about something. I couldn’t care much. He was a stranger.
“You could still ride back to Mycenae,” he suggested, softly.
“Iamas!” Mother’s voice grew sharp. “What’s wrong with you?”
I remember now what I didn’t then: Iamas, the old slave, who had been with my mother since before I was born. I remember him holding me when I was so small that I understood the world in images. He was younger then, his nose crooked from a healed fracture, his smile gap-toothed and ever-wide. When his work was mobile, he came to sit near me while I played, watching me run around and chatter as toddlers will. When I exhausted myself, he made a place for me to lie beside him, and told me stories through the sleepy afternoon.
He was little more than a shadow to me. I walked past him, toward the harbor where a thousand ships sat motionless on a sea as flat as glass. Wilted sails drooped from their masts, pining for a wind that refused to come. The painted eyes on the ships’ prows stared blankly forward, as if trying to make out the shape of Troy in the distance. Ten thousand oars waited.
“Why are all the ships still moored?” I asked.
Iamas spoke from behind me. “They’re trapped. There’s no wind to send them to Troy.”
“They’re just sitting there?”
“They have no choice.”
I watched the ships bob up and down with the almost imperceptible motion of the water. Seabirds circled silently beneath the brazen sun. Even they seemed to be waiting.
I turned my back to the water and surveyed the camp. It was larger than I’d thought a camp could be, an immense array of men and equipment. Regiments formed restless circles around banked fires, their strength turned to games of chance played with stones and carved figures.
The soldiers who had grown bored with sitting rubbed wax into their armor with strokes as forceful as blows. Metal shone, bright as children’s eyes and new-minted coins. As I stared at the men and their armor, the sun blazed off of the metal until it became impossible to tell warriors from breastplates, skin from gold. Orestes laughed and stretched out his hand toward the shining ranks. They seemed an array of golden men, waiting to stretch their flaming limbs and dazzle into battle like animate rays of sunlight.
Left in the harbor with no one to fight, they were burning up fast. They couldn’t survive without wind to stoke them, to blow them onto dry firewood. They needed new things to burn. They needed fuel.
You came to the tent where Iamas settled us to wait for the wedding. All three of us looked up at your approach. Orestes stretched his arms in the direction of your voice. You called only for Clytemnestra.
Mother slipped out of the tent, leaving Orestes and me to peer out from the shadows. Orestes fussed; I held him close. Mother’s garment was bright against the dun ground, her sandaled feet pale and delicate. I heard cloth rustling as she embraced you.
“You’ve arrived.” Your voice splintered with ambivalence.
“Come inside,” mother said. “Iphigenia is wearing her wedding flowers. She’ll want to see you. She looks radiant.”
“I can’t. I have things to attend to.”
“Just come in for a moment. You have to see your Iphigenia one last time while she’s still a maiden.”
“I can’t!” Your shout was sudden, anguished. “I must go. I’ll return later.”
Dust swirled around your retreating footsteps. I inhaled it, ready to choke.
Do you remember what happened later on that night when you led me out to see the soldiers in the fog? It has only just come back to me, how you took me by the hand and led me, walking this time, back out of the copse of trees and into the palace, up to my chamber where the other girls lay, half-awake, waiting for us to return.
I stared after your retreating form. I felt as if I were waking from a dream into my mundane existence. I wanted to run after you and make the dream last.
So I did.
Do you feel it now? The sky is darkening. My power grows. I feel the ruffle of waves beneath what has become of my spirit. They churn into tiny crests, surmounted with foam. Boats tremble beneath me. Sails billow with my breath. I tousle the hair of men who have set aside their helmets, and they totter, no longer sure of their footing.
I am still weak, my father. Soon, I will do more than wail in your ear.
Mother sat at the edge of the tent after you departed, staring out (as I stared after you when you left me to mundanity after showing me marvels). Perhaps she had begun to suspect something from your refusal to see me, from Iamas’s shudder as he looked up at my wedding adornments.
Outside: a flash of gold.
Mother squeezed my hand. “That’s Achilles’s shield,” she said. “Stay here. I’ll ask your questions for you.”
It was not like my stern, proper mother to expose herself to strange men.
I swung Orestes into my lap. I could only see a narrow slice of the camp from where I sat. I saw the arm and chest of the man who must be Achilles, his body rippling with muscles as sharply delineated as those on a statue. His helmet and breastplate were wrought of fine, detailed gold. His oiled brown skin shone as brightly as his armor.
Mother extended her hand. “Greetings, Achilles! May you and my daughter have the happiest of marriages.”
Achilles eyed her fingers. Beneath his helmet, his eyes were dark and chary. (Fog, a branch, a dandelion mirroring the moon.) “Woman, why do you offer your hand to a stranger? You may be beautiful, but that is no excuse.”
“Forgive me. I thought you’d recognize me from my description. I’m Agamemnon’s wife.”
“Are you? I would have thought such a powerful man would have better control of his women.”
I could not see my mother’s face, but I knew the taut smile she would wear in response to such an affront, the catlike stretch of her lips that would not reach her eyes. (Like the taut smile Helen flashed me in the courtyard, late that night when I had nine summers: “Come walk with me, niece.”)
“We’ll be related in a few days,” said mother. “Just pretend we already are.”
“Are you insane?” Achilles’s dark eyes examined the length of my mother’s body. “No one told me Agamemnon married a madwoman.”
Mother’s voice became dangerously low. “Young man. I am not mad.”
“You must be. I’m the son of Thetis, goddess of the sea. I’ve slain a thousand men. I wear glory like other men wear scent. Why would I marry your daughter just because you tell me to?”