Atalanta by Jennifer Saint EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Jennifer Saint
- Language: English
- Genre: Sports Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
She came to me in the forest after the bears had gone. She would have been
an imposing sight to anyone, taller and stronger than any mortal woman
would be—although I didn’t know that then—with a gleaming bow in her
hand, a fierce glint in her eyes, and a pack of hounds at her heels. Even as a
small child, however, my curiosity was more powerful than my fear. When
she held out her hand to me, I took it.
I remember my first sight of the grove where she led me, stepping out
from the cluster of cypress trees behind her. I squinted, dazzled for a
moment by the golden light reflecting back from the shimmering surface of
the pool before us. I screwed up my eyes, opened them again, and blinked.
Across the water, set into the sloping mountainside, was a wide cave
with large rocks dotted about in front of the entrance. And perched on the
flat planes of the rocks were women—nymphs, as I would come to know
them. The air rang with their soft chatter and gentle laughter. I looked up at
the woman who had brought me here and she smiled.
They gave me berries, ripe and sweet. I remember the taste of the cold,
clear water they gave me to drink, how clumsy I was with the cup they held
to the mouth of the spring for me. That night, I did not sleep next to the
bears’ shaggy warmth, the heavy thrum of their hearts beating in my ears,
but on a bed of animal skins, and I woke to the sound of a woman singing.
It was Artemis who had come for me, I would discover, and it was to
her sacred grove that she had taken me. Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, to
whom the forest and all its inhabitants belonged. We all fell under her
silvery gaze, we all bowed to her might, from the worms slithering in the
earth to the howling wolves. The forest of Arcadia shimmered with her
power.
She gave me to the nymphs to raise. It was their task to teach me what
she found too tedious; for them to guide me to understand how they talked,
and to learn, haltingly at first, how to respond; for them to show me how to
weave the cloth from which they made the simple tunics they all wore, and
how to honor the other gods and goddesses whose names they taught me,
though none of them ever came to our forest. They taught me where to
gather berries, how to avoid the ones that would make me sick, warned me
against the innocuous-seeming fungi that would drain the life right out of
me. I saw that their lives were dedicated to Artemis; they kept the forest for
her, nurturing its springs, its rivers, its plants, and all the life within it. In
exchange, they lived there, loved and guarded by her.
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