Work Text:
"America?"
Artemis checked her horse as it attempted to shy at a passing breeze, and appraised the man who had approached her. Too short, too florid, too soft in the stomach. He was nothing like Orion had been -- but then, Orion would never have sat through the tedium of acquiring a classical education. And classical educations were wonderful things.
"They say the colonies offer boundless prospects to a man with his wits about him," the florid man said, edging his roan horse closer to hers. "Of course, it's no place for a woman on her own, Miss Hunter, but my brother has made quite a success for himself in the tobacco business, and I suspect your brother might be interested in a proposition."
He winked.
Artemis stifled a frown. Oh, for the times when she had the power and freedom to hunt whatever prey she chose, whenever she chose. Still. If idiots like this were sailing across the western ocean these days, perhaps it was time for her family to explore new ranges as well.
"Brother?" she called, raising her voice and lifting one hand from her reins to attract Apollo's attention. "Alex, dear, this fellow -- Mister... oh, how silly of me, I seem to have forgotten your name, sir -- Alex, this fellow has a proposition for you." She pressed her right heel into her horse's side, encouraging him to sidle a step away from the florid man.
Apollo excused himself from a squawking clutch of landed gentry and their various human accoutrements and strode across the meadow, grasses and wildflowers bending subtly aside to keep dust and pollen away from his clothes. "Cynthia, dearest, do recall that the hunt is yet to start -- there is no call to speak at the top of your lungs." He nodded to the florid boor. "Good day, Mister Burleigh. You wished to speak with me?"
"Ah, yes, indeed, Doctor Hunter," said the boor. "Miss Hunter, I am pleased to make your acquaintance, and look forward to the opportunity to admire your horsemanship, which I am told is superior."
Now the men would begin discussing matters of the world, so she, as a gently bred woman, was expected to excuse herself and join the handful of wives and daughters who had come to watch their menfolk hunt. Artemis sighed. "I am sure my riding is nothing special, but I thank you for the compliment."
She directed her horse to the far edge of the clearing, where grass abruptly gave way to oak and ash and elm, and wondered when their hosts would finally stop indulging this chatter and lollygagging and set the hounds to flush the fox. Apollo might be here to talk medicine and money, but she had used nearly the whole remaining store of her power to make the humans overlook the incongruity of a woman sitting her horse astride rather than sidesaddle and riding with the hounds as an equal to the men. She had no patience left for idle conversation.
Artemis hungered for the chase and the kill. This business with foxes was a pitiful imitation of her former glory, but hunting was all she had left besides Apollo, and she would not let the memory of her forests go without a fight.
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"America."
"Don't sound so dubious," said Apollo, frowning at the harpsichord as he ran through a set of scales. "This contraption has gone out of tune again. Hermes's blasted turtle shell held a pitch better than this."
"Naturally it did; one of us made it," said Artemis. She scratched behind the ears of Arcas, her latest greyhound, soothing him until he dropped his head back onto his paws beside her on the sofa. "Are you playing this evening or will you simply grumble until moonrise?"
"I am going to fix this beast. You may do what you wish," Apollo said as he propped up the lid of the harpsichord and glared down at the strings. He pressed three keys -- Arcas whined at the dissonant jangle -- and began tightening screws. "Meanwhile, I repeat: Mister Burleigh has suggested that I go to America and set up practice in Charlestown. The area is apparently ripe for growth and educated men are somewhat scarce on the ground compared to farmers and merchants."
"I repeat: America," said Artemis, abandoning the sofa to stalk back and forth across the parlor of the townhouse she and her brother had been renting these past five years. "If educated men are scarce on the ground, who will know our names? It is enough trouble to get by in Europe, where at least the memory of our reign is imprinted in the very bones of the earth."
Apollo laid his left hand flat on the harpsichord keys, playing a deliberately ear-mauling noise. "Leave the poetry to me. You have no ear for it. But think, Artemis: the memory of our past may sustain us, but it also imprisons us. In Europe, we are dead as dust. Everyone knows that nobody worships the gods of Greece and Rome these days. In America, though, who is to say what we might persuade people to try in the name of new beginnings?"
"For a god of learning, you can be unspeakably thick. They will never give up their Christ," Artemis snapped. "They will shove him down the throats of the Indians until their own gods are reduced to pitiful shadows, like us. We are stuck with a half life, brother. At least this one is comfortable. Why borrow trouble?"
Apollo played a chord, twisted a screw a quarter turn, played again, and nodded to himself. "For a goddess of wild places, you can be unspeakably domestic," he said. "Honestly, Artemis, when was the last time we did anything interesting? We used to play games with whole nations at stake. We used to matter. Even if we remain shadows of ourselves, we might matter on a human scale in a new world." He sat on his padded bench and ventured a series of two-handed chords and arpeggios. Nothing jarred more than was inevitable on an instrument with such range, and he smiled. "Ah. Harmony restored."
Artemis eyed him skeptically. "You want to find meaning and purpose for your life. Among humans."
"I don't see how it's any of your business if I do," said Apollo. "I think I shall accept Mister Burleigh's offer. You may remain here in Oxford with your dogs and horses and rot in your comfortable prison for all I care. I shall be recreating myself in a new world." He began to play a popular tune, humming under his breath in his vibrant, golden tenor.
Artemis took a moment to place the melody. Greensleeves. Oh. Suddenly, her brother's determination to leave civilization for the wilderness, and to play the virtuous human doctor, made vastly more sense.
"Which of Burleigh's relatives have you fallen for and what is her name?" she asked.
"Edith, his niece," said Apollo, still playing the silly melodramatic song. "She and her brother are visiting England now that James is defeated in Ireland and William secure on the throne. The brother will remain in Oxford to study law, but Edith will return to her father in Charlestown next spring."
"With a husband, one presumes." Artemis's fingers twitched, aching to curve around a javelin or bow. "Tell me, brother, why I should not find the girl and slay her on the spot as you do to my lovers. It would be kinder for her in the end."
"I killed one presumptuous human--" Apollo began.
"Orion was not presumptuous! Actaeon was presumptuous. I am perfectly capable of dealing with presumption myself. You killed Orion out of jealousy."
Apollo shrugged. "Perhaps. Whatever the case, that business is long over and done. Edith, on the other hand, is living here and now, and if you so much as speak crossly to her--"
"--you will moan and whine and be impossible to live with for a week, and then you will forget her and forgive me, as you always do," Artemis finished for him. "But I confess I have grown bored these past decades, so I will concede not to kill her out of hand. You will introduce us. If she is tolerable, I may even let you keep her until you find a new obsession."
"How marvelously charitable of you," Apollo murmured, rustling through a stack of sheet music. "Will you also graciously accompany us to Charlestown and live in our house until she dies and I inherit? Or will you vanish into the woods as you did when we were young?"
Artemis smiled. "I will leave you guessing, of course. What else is family for?" She sank gracefully back onto the sofa and settled one hand on her greyhound's ribs, waiting for her brother to entertain her.
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"America!"
Edith spun in a tight circle, throwing out her arms and letting her unpinned hair whip round like a heavy rope. "Do you see, Cynthia? There, that green low on the horizon -- that is America!"
"I'm sure it will be lovely once we are close enough to make out details," said Artemis, stepping forward to catch her sister-in-law before the girl tripped herself and crashed to the deck. "You should not be so careless in your condition."
"Oh, I am not nearly so far along as all that," said Edith, but she allowed Artemis to walk her over to the port rail and lean against it for support. She craned her neck, looking forward and aft, but Apollo was nowhere in sight. "Where is Alexander? I have not seen him since we ate this morning."
Artemis pulled her skirts away from a passing sailor's feet. "Most likely he has vanished into the captain's cabin again in his ongoing quest to learn navigation. Alex gets caught up in his obsessions and often neglects to tell people where he is going. You may have noticed this by now," Artemis said dryly.
Edith laughed. "True -- like my brother sneaking off to read filthy poems in Greek when he was meant to be working sums for our father. Well, I am used to that sort of thing," said Edith. "It is much safer to for a man to lose himself in a book than to lose himself in the forest."
"Also true," agreed Artemis. For one thing, gods of wisdom were generally pleased to find others in their domain, so long as the scholars did not boast too highly of their knowledge. Gods of the wilderness and the hunt, on the other hand... well, suffice it to say that there were reasons her archery had been feared in her heyday.
She wondered how long Edith would last before Apollo tired of her, and whether the girl would still have enough spirit to be worth hunting by then.
"Still, enough of Alexander," said Edith. "We've come safely through wind and wave all the way to the Carolinas. Tonight we will eat at my father's table. Soon I will have my own house, and perhaps you will find a man in town who is as good to you as Alexander is to me. I would dearly wish to see you happy, Cynthia."
Find a man who would be as good to her as Apollo was to his lovers? That would not be difficult. Find a man she would care to dally with? That would be much harder. Since Orion, there had been so few--
But enough of melancholy. Artemis turned to the horizon and the low, green smudge of land that held the next chapter of her life, unwritten and full of unknown potential. "Your uncle told me once that America is full of boundless prospects, for those who have the strength and wit to pursue them," she said to Edith. "I am an excellent huntress. I am sure I will find happiness here, one way or another."
"Spoken like the sister I know and worship," said Apollo, sweeping up from behind them to wrap one arm around Edith and another around Artemis. "This is a new beginning for us all. Let us make the most of it."
Edith tilted her head upward to meet Apollo's kiss, and they proceeded to make an indecent spectacle of themselves, according to English standards.
Artemis stepped away and closed her eyes, letting the forests and islands and temples of Europe slip away. That was past. That was gone, like her dogs and horses and spears. Yes, the humans' memory of those days sustained her, but she did not have to be that old self anymore. Whatever she and Apollo became in this new land would be their choice, and theirs alone.
Faintly, the sea wind carried the scent of trees to her nose.
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End of Story