When Meleager awoke in his room, he rubbed his sleep-salted eyes once, twice, trying to quickly gather his clarity. He was going to need it today. It was good that he’d been traveling the wilderness these past few years, the way he had; he’d gotten used to an early rising. The Sun hadn’t even started to poke above the distant horizon yet, but the blue-black hue of the coming dawn had already squeezed out the night. The stars were gone by now, at least.

  He washed himself in the elegant tub in the corner of his chambers, got rid of as much of the perfume as he could. The woman had taught him this well, that the most important part of the hunt was to mask his scent. The entire nature of the game was decided and changed by who was able to smell what.

  At the grand morning feast his father had declared to kick off the hunt, he could tell right away that none of the other heroes had been given similar advice— or if they had, they had all chosen to ignore it. The breakfast air was filled with overlapping scents of hibiscus, pear, pomegranate, a hundred other things emanating from the dozen-or-so people eating along the magnificent table in the royal hall.

  But for all those people, the dozen-or-so, there was one person missing.

  “Where is Starchild?” Meleager asked a passing servant, carrying a tray of the finest meats towards the table. “The maiden from yesterday with the shining hair and eyes… has she not joined the feast? Where is she? Where is the beautiful she-wolf that had been traveling with her?”

  The servant shook his head. “Neither one of them has been seen all day, oh my gracious Prince. Several of us were sent to her room to fetch her for breakfast and festivities, but there was no answer when we knocked upon her door, and without her permission, we dared not enter.”

  “That was wise, I imagine,” said Meleager. He did not anyone who would have had to go knocking on that door, with that wolf, and what was more, that woman, behind it. “Tell my mother and father I will join their banquet in just a few minutes,” he commanded the servant, and then he slipped again out of the royal hall, back up the stairs to the higher, finer chambers of the palace. He moved at not quite a run down the corridors towards the room where he knew the woman had been sent to bed yesterday— and when he arrived, sure enough there was the door, shut tight.

  He sighed a long sigh as he approached it. He had apologized already, last night, for failing to speak up on the woman’s behalf, but he knew inside of himself that one apology was simply not enough for a thing like that— and no number of apologies would have done the job anyways. It would have all just been words, that was the knot of it. What he needed to do instead was to take action, was to show directly that the woman’s trust and respect were valuable to him.

  He knocked upon the thick wood panel. “You should come down,” he told her. “Join the feast. It may be of surprising happiness to you.”

  Silence. Silence. The Prince waited a moment before speaking again.

  “Please come down,” he told her. “I am sorry, still for last night,” he told her, and he was, he was, and true enough he knew that it was pointless to say, it was just words, that was the knot of it, but it was what he needed to say. “If you come down and join the feast, I promise you that it will make you smile, what happens next.”

  Silence. Silence.

  The Prince dropped all the games of pretense and pretexts and little surprises. “I will demand to my parents that you be allowed to join the hunt,” he told her. He had wanted only to see her face when he did it, how happy it would have made her, but anything to get her to come down at this point. “I will tell them that you must be allowed to hunt alongside us, or else I myself will refuse to participate in the hunt.”

  Silence.

  “…and not only that, but I will tell them that if you are not allowed to participate as an equal among the heroes, I will leave their kingdom and go wandering the world once again, far away, and who can say when I will return?— who can say if I will ever return at all? That is what I will tell them.”

  Silence.

  The Prince stood for a long time outside of the woman’s room, waiting for any sort of a response, but nothing. Just silence and silence, that was all she had for him, it seemed. And could he blame her? He had never been spoken down at the way she had been spoken down at last night, and what single thing had he said in her defense?— even just one single thing? It was just as she had declared: he was a coward. And it was just as he had realized for himself this morning: there was nothing for it but to simply show her. “Come down if you wish, or do not,” he murmured through the door. “You have every right to hate me, and to stay holed up in here until sunset, and I will not think even the slightest bit less of you if you do. But even if you do remain alone here, away from everything, away from the feast and the hunt, know that I shall go back downstairs all the same and tell my parents exactly what I have just now told you that I would. And when you do finally come out, you can ask anyone in this palace, anyone in this kingdom, and they will declare to you that it is true, that I have gone and I have said these things, and that I have followed through on them as well. You have my name as my oath, Starchild. I am Meleager, High Prince of Caledonia, and I shall demand the respect that you deserve.”

  A deep growl from the other side of the door; Leto had lost her patience with all the yammering. Meleager stepped away, not another word, and he returned down the corridors, down the stairs to the royal hall where the morning feast had continued on in full swing. Everyone had gathered— there were the King and the Queen at the head of the table, and there were Meleager’s uncles, Kepheus and Ankaion, laughing beside them. There were Idas and Telamon, and there was Eurytion, and there was slender Peleus, nursing a smaller portion than the others had been afforded— but still plenty. And there were more heroes now, too, some who had been out in the city proper, yesterday, attending to other business, and some who had come during the night, last-minute additions to the hunting party. These new heroes were being brought up to speed on everything that had happened: the long-awaited return of the Prince, and the strange, fearsome companions he had brought with him.

  Of course, it was just a version of the story that was being told, as things always go. “She thought herself an even match for me!” hooted Ankaion. “Leveling an arrow at my head and loosing it!— imagine the audacity!”

  Orpheus and Caenus were sitting across from him, drinking it all in, and the wine as well. Both famous, both well-known to the Prince, even at just the sight of them— even though he had never seen either of them before. Orpheus could only have been himself with that exquisitely adorned harp by his side. Caenus, who perfect bronze skin was nigh-unpierceable by any weapon, nodded at everything Ankaion was saying, but wasn’t saying much himself. There was a quiet, tense distance to him. Orpheus, though, Orpheus was laughing and jabbering along with everyone else— his voice and manner were so musical that even just speaking with the other heroes, it seemed almost as though he was singing.

  “It makes a fine song indeed!” he declared.

  “How the maiden star-eyed and star-haired

  did feel need

  to assail so unfairly

  the fair-faced

  and gracefully

  muscled Ankaion—

  to think that she’d dared!”— and the whole place

  agreed, sure enough, but at this point they’d heard it already, more than once,

  and so just only barely, they cared.

  “He was never at any risk from her, though, not truly,” said Kepheus, clapping his brother on the back. “And he knew it, truly, he did— he didn’t so much as flinch when she aimed that bow of hers at him, and not at all when she loosed the arrow, either— stern as a stone, our Ankaion! And why shouldn’t he have been? He knew with all certainty that she’d miss!”

  Ankaion ran a finger along the gash on his cheek, still early in its scarring. The whole night had been spent balming and anointing it, but that wasn’t going anywhere. The man was marked now. He was making the most of it. “That she-wolf of hers, though… now that was a creature worth flinching at— teeth and claws like you could never imagine, my dear Orpheus! Left their mark on me, sure enough! But, I left a few marks on her as well, just as surely— and just as surely I’d be wearing her pelt right this second, right in front of you, a fine new robe or a cape perhaps, if only my dear brother-in-law the King hadn’t so wisely put a stop to everything.”

  “Not at all the proper place for a melee, this great royal hall,” Kepheus agreed, nodding. “But that was just the sort of petulant savage this maiden was, coming among us so primed for violence. One can hardly imagine what the Prince was thinking.”

  “The Prince was thinking that perhaps she might teach you some civility,” Meleager cut in.

  “And where, then, is this instructor of yours?” asked Kepheus. “Was it she who taught you how to be so late to feasts? The meal is nearly concluded, and you are only just now arriving!— and she herself has not arrived at all! You are learning from her example, sure enough, but clearly you still have some ways to go!”

  He and Ankaion laughed, back and forth, but just the same they shifted aside to give Meleager room to sit. He was their nephew and they were his uncles. “It was wrong of you to dismiss her as you did,” he told them. “I have travelled with her for some time, and I have seen that she is capable of great things— I have learned great things from her. She is a more skillful hunter than any of us at this table, and a brave heart to go with it.”

  “That may well be the case,” supposed Telamon, sitting a little ways down, “I will not say that it is impossible. But it is cruel of Fate if it is true, putting such talent within the body of a woman.”

  “Why should that be cruel?” asked Meleager, and he really did mean it. He was sure he knew how the men around him would answer, of course, he had heard all the answers before, and he had given such answers himself once, when he was younger and more of a fool.

  “Oh, you are too old to feign ignorance of such things, nephew,” scoffed Ankaion, and he would say no more of it.

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  Meleager turned instead to his father, on the other side of him. He was not going to change the minds of most of these men, that much was clear, but he had made the woman a promise and he was going to keep that at least. “I have thought about it since yesterday, oh my father, oh my King,” he said. “The truth is, I have done little else but think about it. I have been unable to sleep and dream freely, and laying awake I have been unable throughout the whole night to think about other things; it has only been this. That daughter of the dead stars above has been good to me, a companion for a great time across a long distance, and it is simply not right of me to partake in a hunt from which she is barred. In my place, she would do the same— she would refuse anything that I was not, too, offered. So if she is not allowed to partake in this great hunt today for the terrible boar, then not only shall I refuse to partake as well, I shall take up all my things that I came here with— my cloak and my spear and my armor and my gathered herbs and medicines and other sundry, and I shall leave this place with her to once again wander the world, and who knows if I shall ever return?”

  Ankaion, listening in, gave another haughty scoff. “You would so blithely discard your own inheritance?”

  But Kepheus was more encouraging. “By all means,” he said. “Go off again, then. If that is the price of not being forced to hunt alongside a woman, then that is the price. Our way of living has no cost too great. If all it took was the demands of one wayward Prince to unravel this Kingdom’s customs, can they truly be called customs at all?”— and he meant what he said, sure enough, but more than that he knew that he and Ankaion would stand to gain plenty by the Prince’s departure— and he himself, especially, even more than his brother. As the elder of the two, who else was there but him to take on the throne after the King if Meleager left? Meleager knew it, and a moment later, Ankaion realized it as well— and doubtless, so did the King, who sighed a long sigh.

  He dearly loved his son, the King did. It had filled him with such sorrow, all these years of Meleager wandering away from Caledonia, and more than once the King had felt deep regret, sending his son away to see the world and come back wiser, worthy of being called a hero, worthy of the throne— worthy of being called a King himself, someday.

  And had he indeed come back wiser? “Can the men of the Kingdom really be called men at all,” wondered Meleager, “if they are so afraid of hunting alongside a woman that they will call upon so flimsy and atmospheric a thing as ‘tradition’ and ‘custom’ to defend them against her? What is it that frightens you, uncle?— you, who would stand among heroes today in this hunt? What frightens all of you heroes? I can only begin to imagine it— and what I imagine is ridiculous, no matter what angle I come at it from. Perhaps you are frightened that you will be distracted by the maiden’s beauty as you hunt and in your distraction be slaughtered by the boar?”

  “Pah!” spat Kepheus. “The shine of the woman’s hair and eyes is a rare thing indeed, there is no doubting that, but it is not rare in the way that the true beauty of a woman is rare. I would sooner skin her like that wolf than lust after her.”

  “Pah!” spat Ankaion in agreement.

  “Ridiculous, just as I said,” nodded Meleager. “So then it must be something else. Perhaps you are frightened that she will be a hopeless hunter, that she will slow down the party as we travel, or make terrible missteps when facing off against the boar, that she will ruin our chances. Didn’t you say as much last night?— that this was a ploy by Artemis Herself to foil us from within our own ranks?”

  “He did say that,” said Telamon. “And I am still not altogether sure that he is wrong.”

  “He may very well not be wrong,” admitted Meleager. “And if he is not wrong, what a disaster it would be to have her among us! After all, it would be so easy for a hunter such as you, Ankaion, to be undone by just one woman, would it not? Artemis is clever, surely, if this is Her plan. You are not nearly skilled enough to compensate for such a handicap.”

  The two uncles were taken off balance by this, and for a moment, they did not know how to respond. They simply glanced at each other, and something moved silently between them, through their closed loop, from one to the other, and then back again, and then—

  “That is not the reason.”

  “No,” said Meleager, “I had supposed that it wasn’t. And I am running out of other reasons that it could be. All that’s left in my head— and surely, it is the most ridiculous reason of all, but it is all that is left… I almost choke myself with laughter at the thought of saying it… perhaps… perhaps you are frightened that she shall make fools of you?”

  Kepheus’s eyes widened. “What are you—“

  “What I am saying is that perhaps the fear which haunts your words and thoughts is that this tiny maiden of mine, who I have found out in the world and brought here to our Kingdom as my friend and companion, perhaps your fear is that she will prove to be a greater hunter than you, my dear uncle— a greater hunter than any of you, greater than you and Ankaion, greater than Telamon or Eurytion or Orpheus or Caenus or Idas or Peleus or any of the others who have gathered— greater than myself, as well. Perhaps that is what frightens you?”

  Telamon smirked— “Well, it is not a fear but a fact that she would be a greater hunter than our slender Peleus, this half-sprouted brother of mine, but as for the rest of us—“

  “Enough.”

  All the eyes of the table turned to the King, thoughtfully balancing the point of his nose atop steepled fingers. He gave another great sigh, and he rose. “Customs are customs, it is true… but were they always so?”

  He looked this way and that way, along all of the gathered heroes, and everywhere he looked, the men were looking back at him— and so, too, were the women— the wives of the heroes, or their daughters, or the serving-maids, or the other ladies of the Kingdom and beyond who had come to enjoy this feast.

  “We have shrines here in our grand Kingdom at which we have worshipped and made sacrifices to the Gods for generations, for longer than anyone has ever been alive. These places and what we do there are traditions, are customs of ours. But it was we, so long ago, who built these shrines in these places— who built these temples and declared which sorts of things should be done in them— and even if it was not we who declared it, but the Gods themselves, it was still a matter to be declared… and before it had been declared…”— he took a long breath— “A shrine is not a shrine until it is built. A custom is not a custom until it is invented and decided upon. Who can say? Perhaps after today’s hunt, it shall be a custom among our people for the women to ride into the forest alongside then men. Or perhaps it shall even become a custom for the women to lead the charge into the forest, with the men trailing behind. Or perhaps—”

  The great bronze doors at the mouth of the hall were thrown open with a sudden bang. A man came staggering in, quivering from head to toe with exhaustion, entirely out of breath. “Your majesty!” he cried, and he could barely get the words out in any sort of understandable way. His speech swerved wildly between apologizing for interrupting the grand banquet in such a rude manner, begging forgiveness, paying respects to the King and the Queen, to the Prince and all the mighty gathered heroes, and warning in half-gasps that something terrible had happened. “The boar… it…” he coughed. He had run a long distance to come here, without stopping even once for breath, it seemed. “The boar…”

  “What? What has happened?” demanded the King. “Someone, bring this man some water!”

  But no, the man shook his head, waved away the urn of fresh water that a servant had come running with— there was no time for that. He was one of the guards stationed along the outer wall of the city, he managed to say. A lookout. It was his job to keep watch for any danger that might be approaching, or anything else that might be passing through the area. And just a few minutes ago, he had seen…

  “It is coming. The boar is coming,” he said. “Straight towards the city, in a mad frenzy. It charges like the most terrible ocean wave. It comes crashing towards this place like a bolt of the Thunder Himself, unstoppable.”

  “How far?”

  “A dozen miles,” answered the man. “Farther than the eye could make it out alone, as just itself, yes. But the horrible chaos it stirs up in its charge, coming closer, closer… it is unmistakable. The Earth below quakes, at the city’s edge. The dust flies up into the air over the forest, it plumes upwards and outwards for what must be miles. And the forest itself… the trees shake and bend and crack and snap away— whole sections of the distant forest are swallowed up and crushed underfoot by the boar’s wild stampede, as though it gobbles them, grinds them between its gnashing teeth as it comes!”

  A deadly silence fell over the hall. A dozen miles away was not far at all. There was no time to conclude the feast, or to perform any of the other ceremony that had been planned for this morning. The hunt had to begin, and it had to begin now. There was no more time for barbs, back and forth, between the hunters, no more time for debate over whether the woman should be allowed to join. “The lot of you, move with all speed towards the city’s edge, towards where the boar is coming. Waste not a moment here gathering your armor or weapons— my servants will bring them to you as you go.”

  And so, immediately, all the hunters began to move, rushing out from the hall into the courtyard, and from the courtyard out of the palace, into the city. Telamon and Idas, Peleus and Eurytion, Caenus and Orpheus, Kepheus and Ankaion, and Meleager himself— all of them went rushing, rushing— but the Queen called out after her son.

  “Meleager, my beloved child, wait a moment here!”

  Meleager paused, as he’d been told; he’d been taught to always do as his mother told him.

  “You have come down to the banquet and been here barely a minute, and you have eaten nothing. Will you really go out on such a chase starving?”

  He shook his head— “Do not worry for me, mother. You know better than to fret over such things. This chase will go for me as all chases go for me, all quests and trials. You know better, love you as I do for your worry. Better than anyone.”

  He gazed tenderly at her, and she gazed back tenderly at him, and a silent understanding passed between the two of them. He was right, she knew. Of course he was right. She had nothing to fear, just like always, just like she never had anything to fear. Meleager was safe. There was no danger that could harm him.

  The Prince’s gaze turned towards his father, and a silent understanding passed between the two of them as well. “It is as you have said, my son,” he nodded. “And it is as I was declaring. It is only right that the woman, daughter of the dead stars above, be allowed to join in this hunt. I regret ever having decided otherwise. I shall send a servant right away up to her chambers to deliver the news to her— and to implore her to ride out after you and all the others. I cannot say if she will catch up in time. I cannot say that she won’t. What I can say is that you yourself must go, now, without wavering any longer. Your strength and bravery are the pride of my Kingdom, and if you do not face this boar, we may very well be destroyed by it.”

  Meleager bowed his head to his father, and then back, again to his mother, he bowed his head, and he swore his deepest love for the both of them, and then, without another word, he went racing onwards to join the other heroes.

  The King and the Queen watched him go for a moment. And then the Queen bid her husband farewell also, she rose from her spot at the table to return to her chambers. “I just want to see it,” she said. “I just want to remind myself that is it there. That it is safe. That he is safe.”

  The King bid her go. It would do his heart some good, too, for her to come back afterwards and tell him that indeed, all was good and right, that there was nothing to fear. She promised that she would, and then off she went.

  Out of the hall and up the stairs to the palace’s higher chambers, she went— along the corridors, she went— past the room given to the strange, wild, woman, where a servant now stood, just outside the shut door, calling through that the daughter of the stars had been given permission to join the hunt, that she must prepare herself and leave immediately to catch up to the others.

  The Queen didn’t hate that she was being allowed to join, a woman. There was a time in her life, so long ago, or perhaps not so long, when she herself might have loved the chance to join such a hunt. How long had it been? How old was it, now, that she had allowed herself to become? Old enough that both her younger brothers had grown, Kepheus and Ankaion— but not so old that she could not clear as a calm lake remember how young they had been. It must have been yesterday that they were young, those two— or if not yesterday, then two days ago, or three— it could not have been longer than that.

  And this woman… when she had raised her bow towards Ankaion’s face, arrow nocked… maybe it was better for this woman to stay in her room with her wolf.

  The Queen’s private chambers were at the farthest end of the corridor, next to the King’s own chambers, and the bedchamber they both shared. There were two guards posted outside the doors at all times— they gave the Queen a nod as she approached, and they held open the door for her, and they shut it behind her. This was not a door of wood, like all of the doors to all of the other chambers in the palace. This was a door of heavy bronze, like the doors of the great gates of the courtyard.

  There was no wood at all in this room, in fact. All the trimmings were bronze, or silver, or stone. There were no torches kept burning, here— and no torches were ever allowed within these walls. The only light of the room came through the windows at the far end, a half-dozen of them, tiny squares, high from the floor, much too small for anyone to climb through. During the day, the sunlight came in those windows to light these chambers, if only barely. During the night, another set of guards stood on the balcony just outside, holding torches aloft to cast that light in through the windows if ever the Queen needed to come in here. But never, not even once, would a single torch be allowed inside. There were no curtains or tapestries or carpets anywhere in the room, nothing that could burn. There were no furs or beautiful pieces of clothing. The Queen had a separate room for that. There was a lovely bronze mirror against the wall to the left, and nothing else in the room aside from two boxes against the wall to the right. Both boxes were made from stone, with hinges of metal— no wood or flax or cord, nothing that could burn, nothing, nothing. In the smaller box was the Queen’s jewelry. She did not bother to check inside that box, that everything was as it should be. She hardly cared about the jewelry, at the end of it all, what stayed or what went. Those were just things, in there. The other box, though…

  The box was latched tight and locked, a lock of thick iron. A nearly impossible thing to have made, for all the intricate bits inside it, but the King and the Queen had spared no expense, and so it had been made. There had been no choice. This box simply could not have one of those common locks made from wood. It would have defeated the purpose of everything.

  The Queen took the iron key dangling from a chain round her neck, she lifted it over her head and stooped down to gingerly, carefully unlock the box. She undid the latch. She raised the lid— and the Sun was only just about halfway through rising, there was not at all much rosy light coming in through those six square windows, but even what little light there was was plenty for the Queen’s eyes to see what she needed to see.

  It was still there, right there, right where it ought to have been. It was still safe.

  He was still safe.

  The Queen let out a long sigh of relief. She had known that it would be there, of course. She had never really doubted it, not in any rational way. But even so, it was good for her heart to see it, now. She smiled. She closed the latch, she closed the lid— and locked it tight. She returned the key on its chain to its honored place around her slender neck. She turned to leave the room.

  She waited in the corridor as the door was shut once again behind her, secure under close guard. All was well. All was guaranteed. The Queen smiled, and smiled. And then she sighed. And then she frowned.

  She wished she had another box somewhere, too, that she could keep her younger brothers in. Keep them safe.

  This was not a kind world.