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Iphigenia went to the altar dressed as a bride. Flowers were woven into her hair, and light fabric flowed over her arms and legs. Electra had looked at her in awe, and her hands had continually reached out toward her, eager to touch her older sister and caress her hair, her limbs. Orestes seemed even more amazed, declaring her the most beautiful girl in the world. Iphigenia had laughed at both of them, kissed their cheeks, said they would have to put up with her for a little while longer. Achilles was meant to go to war, after all. He would return to her once the war was won, and then she would truly be a wife.
None of them mentioned that the army had been unable to go to war and would not be able to until the winds rose. For now, the air remained still and the sea calm. The sun rode high in the cloudless sky, joined by a crescent moon, bent like a bow aimed toward the earth.
Iphigenia did not look to the sky as she walked. She was no augur, and had no skill in seeking meaning in the movement of birds or clouds. Even if she had been, there would have been nothing to see. Even seabirds were absent, as though something had frightened them away.
(The gods, some whispered. The presence of a great hunter, laughed Achilles and his friends. The whispers and the laughter both masked a desperate fear.)
When Iphigenia reached the temple, she found Achilles was not laughing any longer. His face was grim and grave, and though he met her eyes, she did not see any feeling there. There was none of the nervousness she might expect from a new bridegroom, none of the tenderness she might hope for from a new husband. She did not even see any lust burning away, which she had hoped for and feared in equal measure. There was simply nothing.
She turned then to her father, though she did not ask anything. She could not think of anything that she could ask. She only hoped that he would see the questions boiling away in her mind and find some way to soothe and cool them all.
Instead, she only saw sorrow and resolve braided together, and the knife in his hand.
Iphigenia’s breath caught in her throat. In that single moment, she understood everything. She knew she had been lied to, knew she was meant to be a sacrifice. Only one thing would release the winds to fill the sails of a thousand ships and allow them to go to war. Her blood would need to be spilled. Only then would the gods be satisfied.
She did not know why the gods demanded her blood. She did not know whether her father had given in readily or whether he had pleaded or wept silently before surrendering to their will. She did not know whether Achilles had gone along with the plan because he wanted to go to battle or because he thought he would have a wife waiting for him when he returned from war. (Because of course he thought he would return from war. No young man goes to battle thinking he will die by another’s blade.) She only knew what would come, and she felt it with the inevitability of history.
The thought crossed her mind that she could run. She could turn and flee and then… what? She would be pursued. Even if she were not, she could not hide herself forever. She would be found, and she would be killed. Her blood would stain the stones and soak into the soil of her home.
Then her father would be allowed to sail. Then all the men would be allowed to go to war.
So Iphigenia went to the altar. She bared her breast for the knife. She could not bear to look at her father as he killed her, nor at Achilles, the man who could have been her husband if fate had turned on a different path. Instead her gaze turned to the sky and fixed on the crescent moon, bent like a bow. She almost imagined it was pointed directly at her.
Her lips parted, but she did not speak any of the familiar prayers. She only whispered, “Come for me, O Artemis. Come save me.”
The knife did not reach her flesh. What all around her saw was a flash of light, silver-white and brilliant as the moon. What Iphigenia saw was an arrow, speeding toward her through the sky. She reached out a hand, grasped it, and knew no more.
There are stories told of the women of the Trojan War. The face that launched a thousand ships, the hands that wove and picked apart a single piece of cloth, the voice that no one believed. Tucked in among the rest of them is the blood that allowed the war to go on, the death that released the winds and allowed all the rest to follow.
Her story is always woven in with the others: with the soldiers’ and her vengeful mother’s. Even when she speaks for herself, so often she says that she is doing what must be done, that the war is right and necessary, that she will not stand in the way of their glory and the weight of destiny.
Perhaps, in those stories, she is right. Her first and greatest thought must be for the soldiers. She is but one woman, and cannot stand in the way of their destinies, of the great epics that sing of fury and a man’s long journey home.
This Iphigenia thought of them. But her greatest thought, the one that propelled her to the altar, was of the people of her island. She could imagine what would become of them if the soldiers were trapped there for too long. She thought of them searching the island for her if she tried to flee. She thought of what would become of all the people she had known all her life if any of them should try to hide her, or if any of them should be suspected of trying to hide her.
This Iphigenia didn’t care about a distant war. She cared about preventing bloodshed on her island.
And for this Iphigenia, death was not the end. It was not even truly death.
She woke in a glen, one she had never seen before. In her life, she had roamed all over her home, despite being a princess, and she would recognize a place like this if she had ever seen one. She lay on a grassy field, with little white flowers all around her. In a circle around them were trees, their dark green boughs nearly black against the night sky. Through the gap in the middle, she saw glimpses of constellations that she barely recognized.
Beside her, a spring bubbled and ran over smooth stones, flowing away in a stream that ran off between two of the trees and disappeared into the night. Iphigenia sat up to look at it better, and as she did, she felt a great thirst come over her. Her mouth and throat felt as dry as though she hadn’t drunk a thing in days, and the water of the spring sounded more musical than anything she could imagine.
Iphigenia started to reach for the spring, but then she paused and looked around her. This glen was nothing she had ever seen before, nothing she had ever known. It didn’t seem like anything any mortal woman could have known.
But could she truly be called mortal any longer? She had died. She remembered that. She remembered the knife piercing through her skin.
Mostly she remembered looking at the moon.
Iphigenia rose, uncertainly. She did not feel dead, but neither did she feel truly alive. She felt as though she were caught in a dream, drifting her way through it. A hand rose to her breast, but her dress was not torn. Her skin was whole and unbroken. She even thought she felt a faint heartbeat, but it did not strike the same rhythm it had before. It felt fainter, longer, subtler. It put her in mind of the ocean, and the pull of the tides.
She shivered. She was so terribly thirsty. She did not recognize the spring, but surely one sip of it would not harm her. It could not be any worse than what she had already faced.
It was only a few steps to the spring, and there Iphigenia fell to her knees. The movement felt odd, almost worshipful, and it made her pause before she reached out her hands to drink. She hesitated, then murmured, “Thank you, guardian of this place. I do not know how I was brought here, nor even how I was brought here safely. I hope you will allow me to drink of your water.”
There was no answer. Not even the wind stirred in the trees. Still, Iphigenia bent to drink. She felt she had done all she was able to do.
Before she could touch the water, a voice spoke from behind her.
“You are wise, child.”
Iphigenia turned so quickly she thought she might fall into the spring. A woman stood among the trees, watching her. She seemed young, perhaps Iphigenia’s age, but there was an eternity in her eyes that made Iphigenia feel as though she were no more than a child. The woman was clad all in white, wearing a tunic that left her arms and legs free to move, and those limbs were long and strong and swift. A bow was strung at her back, and a knife hung by her hip, long and sharp but not cruel. It was a hunter’s knife, and at once everything came together.
Artemis.
Or if not Artemis, some other deity, though Iphigenia could not think who else might appear as a huntress, her dark curls bound back from her face not for the sake of beauty but for utility. Artemis, the woman who had cursed her father and his ships. Artemis, whose bow made Iphigenia think of the crescent moon which had been curved and aimed at her heart the moment she died.
But she was not dead, or at least not the sort of dead that would lead her to the River Styx and to Charon’s boat. She was… she did not know what she was.
She did not have enough time to think of it. Iphigenia scrambled to bow before the goddess but was interrupted by laughter that rang out like a bell, shaking the leaves on the trees.
“Do you know why you are here?” Artemis asked.
Iphigenia shook her head, but she felt that she did know even so. She merely felt a quiet thrill of terror at the thought of admitting to it.
“You are here because you are mine.”
Artemis glided forward, stepping so lightly the grass did not even bend beneath her feet. She stopped just before Iphigenia and held out a hand to her. Iphigenia looked at it for several long moments before reaching out to take it.
Her hand was cool as moonlight, and though her skin looked smooth, her grip was strong. She easily raised Iphigenia to her feet. Iphigenia felt small and awkward before Artemis, but the goddess still gazed at her as though she belonged here, as though she were a thing of wonder rather than a lead-footed mortal shaped from clay and mud.
“You have saved me,” Iphigenia breathed.
“I have claimed you,” Artemis said. Her voice was firm and clear and would brook no argument. “Your father sacrificed you to me. You are, and ever will be, mine.”
She should have been afraid. She was, a little bit. Still, she did not try to break free of Artemis’s grasp, nor did she shrink away. She remained on her feet, trying to find something like calm to hold onto in this new world she had found herself in.
“What does that mean?” Iphigenia asked. Her voice felt small, even to her own ears, and she tried to find a little strength. She was standing on her own feet, after all, before the Huntress herself. That had to mean something, didn’t it? “What will become of me?”
“You will be one of my maidens,” Artemis said. She gestured, and when Iphigenia looked, she saw other women lurking among the trees, watching. They were young, like her, and clad in white, and though they did not have the same sense of strength and swiftness as the goddess did, Iphigenia knew that they would be stronger and swifter than any mortal woman. They had been claimed by the Huntress, and they were huntresses themselves.
So would she be, in time. The thought alarmed her, but it thrilled her as well.
“Will you love me?” Iphigenia murmured. She could not have said precisely where the thought came from, only that there was an ache deep within her. If she had not given voice to it now, it would have burst forth from her at some later time. She recognized that ache, though she had not had many chances to feel it before now.
It was a fear of loneliness.
Artemis looked down at her with more tenderness than Iphigenia had expected. It was not the sort of tenderness Iphigenia had ever felt before, but suddenly Artemis did not seem so distant. She was no longer the moon high in the sky; she was someone who could be reached for, someone who could be touched.
Iphigenia was touching her now.
And Artemis still had not answered her question.
“Will you love me?” Iphigenia asked again. Her voice was softer than before, but more certain. She had to know.
Artemis bent slowly and pressed her lips to Iphigenia’s. It was the first kiss she’d had that did not come from family, the first kiss she’d had that might have meant something. It felt like a kiss that belonged to a wedding, or belonged after a wedding. It was cool and distant, passionless but not loveless. It was not the sort of kiss that could be melted into, but it was the sort of kiss that could be relied upon.
“I may not love you in the way you wish,” Artemis said, “but you will be dear to me. I will care for you, and keep you in my grove, and will not abandon you unless you should betray my trust. You will run and ride at my side in every hunt. Does this content you?”
It would have to. It was the only thing she was likely to have.
Oddly enough, she found it did content her. She had never really dreamed of marriage the way her mother might have, the way Electra sometimes did. It had always felt like an inevitability, something that would come for her whether she wished for it or not. Hearing that she would be wed to Achilles had been almost a relief. Finally there had been no need for her to wait.
But she would not be betrayed by Artemis. Wasn’t that its own sort of love? Wasn’t that enough for her?
She found that it was.
Iphigenia took a breath and asked something that felt all the more daring. “May I love you?”
Artemis smiled. “No one has ever asked me that before. I think no one has ever thought they should. They felt I would either refuse them or they wished to claim it for themselves without caring to ask.”
Iphigenia’s heart fluttered in anxiety. “May I?” she asked again, almost breathless.
“You may,” Artemis replied.
Their lips met in another kiss, as cool and chaste as before. This time, though, Iphigenia leaned into it with all the adoration in her heart, and she knew that Artemis met it with her own.