"COME OPHELIA, WON'T you join us," Ascella calls, submerged to the chest in the spring. She ties her mess of black hair at the nape of her neck with a strip of dark leather. "Do you want me to braid your hair up so it stays dry?"

"Yes, please." Anything to prolong the seconds between the bite of air and my naked skin. My sister, however, is unashamed as she emerges from the pool. Ascella wears her womanhood like a cloak of woven gold. A thing of envy, something to be shown, seen and admired. It is all those things and more; she with her silky thighs and heavy-lidded eyes, the kind men see and shame. Whore eyes, the village boys used to say.
Even as she cried from their luckless taunts they'd laugh and chide, don't cry girl, you want it, your eyes speak what your lips will not. From a single look, they had sized her up, decerned her worth, and decided it was best beneath them, wrapped around their cocks.
Ascella, of course, never showed any interest in any of the village boys and wanted no part in the shame something like that would bring upon our family. But as in all things, there is no bargaining to be won with such unruly men, in a world that is no one's but their own, if you do you are a whore, if you do not — without another man's protection — you are a dead whore.

That seems to be the male affinity, to fear the retribution from offending another man's title more so than the retribution for a wrongdoing.

"Your hair has grown much since I last braided it." Ascella comments, working swiftly with nimble fingers as she knots it out of the water's reach.

It has been years. "I was only a girl then," I say and she finishes up. In her hands, I am a girl again; uncertain, afraid of the unknown, pleading for reassurance from a mother who never birthed me.
Ascella hums, "Yes, and you've changed in more ways than one since then, though even as a child you were stubborn as a stone. Do you need me to help you with your dress?"

I nod and she sets to work untressing my strings and such. They come undone easily until it falls in a bloody pool around my feet and I step free, naked in the full flush of day. The air is hotter than before, the sun beating down a merciless gaze through the swell of the Northern heat.

I go quickly to the sanctity of the spring, where no watchful eyes may follow and where the water permits some semblance of privacy. The water's warm, but not unbearably so, smoke swirling from the cliff on the thin breath of wind. From here, the Spartan palace stretches wide and far as the eye can see, nestled in the breast of the mountain, and windows stare like sightless eyes over the city below.

Something moves in one of them high up, a figure, large and dark and distinctly male. There he stands, filling the space, hands clasped over the frame, unabashed, unashamed of his unwelcomeness. He sees me just as I see him, and though there is not one feature to be found in that shadowy mass of a face, I know that our eyes meet. It's that same buzz — that same thrill, like lightning before the strike, or the thrum of a wave right before it falls. He does not move, only watches. I know it is him.

"Ascella," I say, calmly as I can. "Get back in the pool, now."

She does with a questioning look. "What's wrong?"

"There," My voice quakes with anger, that no small corner of this world is safe for us, "In the window. He's watching us."

"So?" She picks at her nails, "Let him look, we have done no wrong."

Andromeda stares silently up at the aperture, brows furrowing, "You are wrong, I see no man, that is only a shadow."

And sure enough, only a shadow remains, humanoid in form, but a shadow nonetheless, hardly a man, and far from the figure I had just seen. Perhaps I had only imagined him standing there, bronze hands clenched against the sill, statuesque in his stillness. It is the sun, I hope, too hot and too strong to see through, playing tricks on me.

"Shame," Says Ascella coyly, "I think I should like to be watched."

"Of course you would!" I smirk, splashing an armful of water at her.

That is all it takes to set off an all-out war. Ascella grins, mischief dark in her eyes before she flails herself, dousing both myself and Andromeda.

"My hair!" Cries my sister, "Ascella — Ophelia! You beastly things! Stop it!"

But we cannot hear her through the rich sounds of our own laughter, so long forgotten, so scarcely heard. I had almost forgotten what it was like to laugh. We are children again, playing in the salt and seafoam that surrounded our island, diving beneath the waves and basking in the evening light.
Even the ever-stubborn Andromeda joins in, though only once her hair is already far too sodden to be salvaged.

It is not past noon when we finally emerge; fingers wrinkled and bare feet smooth against the hot stones. The air feels lighter too, less pressing, no longer a fire-red poker trying to force its way down our throats. Perhaps the change is in us alone, what with the newness of our sisterhood instilled within us.
Andromeda even spares me a small smile as we redress, helps me retie the strings that bind me, and looses the knot that holds my hair.

"You look like your mother," She says quietly as I look up at her. My sisters' faces are bright, shining, beautiful as the stars they were named for. Like hot coals her eyes burn into mine, and her features striking and harsh where Ascella's are soft. We are different, we three, and yet also ao much the same.
I give her hand a delicate squeeze, the same thing Ascella always does for me, "Thank you,"

No maids come for us, and instead, we wander all those endless halls alone, content in our newfound freedom, trailing laughter in our wake.

"He said there is a library." Andromeda shoots me a wry look, veering left down a passage that takes us deeper into the belly of the mountain. The natural light dies, replaces instead by fire-lit sconces and the blaring heat begins to fade, cooler the deeper into the mountain we venture.

"He?" My brow quirks, my sisters have hardly been apart, except for this morning when they knelt before —

" — The King, he said there is one and that we may use it if only we can find it."

"I am surprised he thought us worthy of such a kindness." Even my words taste like sea salt, bitter and biting.

"Well, not exactly, he said that I may use it," She bites her lip, "Although I'm sure that invitation extends to you two too, should you wish."

I think back to the Spartan King sitting lounged across his throne, the testing, teasing look in his eye. The way he tore each word from the air as if it was a weapon to be won and wielded. The way I felt each look of his weighing into my skin, like pressing a bruise. The way he watched as we left, like a hound after meat. "Somehow, I am not sure it does..."

"Whyever not? Surely it is no great grievance to allow two more into a library that is almost certain to be empty anyway?"

"Andromeda..." I say carefully, trying my best not to slight her for her foolishness in that way I always do, "The North is incapable of kindness, if the King has given you this, then, I do not doubt that there is something more to it — an expectation — some sort of price to pay..."

"You think entirely too much, Ophelia." Ascella skips to catch up with us. You think entirely too little, I want to say but bite my tongue. Arguing will get us nowhere. "Besides," She says, "The King does not even think us two capable of reading, so what harm can be done? Reading is hardly forbidden, and certainly a learned woman is nothing to be feared."

Oh my dearest darling Ascella, a learned woman is the most dangerous of all. I have heard what they say about these Northern girls, plucked from their mother's breast from the moment of their first moon — a test of strength they say, a test which many do not survive.
It is a horrid practice, a child does not need to be strong, it needs to be nurtured, loved, raised in the image of a more forgiving generation. Some do not even make it to the breast, snatched from the womb and abandoned to die outside the city gates for no other reason other than that they were not born male.

There are a thousand reasons in this life that I may be thankful and one thousand thousands more why I may not, but for the rights of my birth, I am grateful.

"There!" Ascella practically runs to the place where the fires burn brightest, a great, arching entrance; high as two men and as wide as five more.

This. This is what lies in the deepest part of the palace, in the centre of the mountain, the heart of the North, furthest from light, hidden away from prying eyes. Not a dungeon or cell or something as equally horrific as the monsters that rule these lands. A library.

The ceilings stretch high and far, more shelves than I could count in a lifetime of solitude lining the walls like vines from top to bottom. And the scrolls — I had never seen anything like it, every shelf brimmed with papyrus scrolls, some bound flat into books, others rolled and stacks. Ten thousand men combined could not have written all these in their lifetimes.

"Oh, Andromeda..." I whispered, mouth agape and fingers tracing the edge of one of the scrolls. No dust. The whole library seems eerily clean, cold.

Her words were faint as mine, stolen by awe instead of suspicion, "Is it not the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?"

"I think it may well be..." Ascella agreed, head tilted sky-bound and spinning in a slow circle in greedy adoration, wanting to take it all in, to drink down every last drop of it.

Several desks lined the floor space, and one of those sat a man, his head bowed faithfully over his work, not yet aware of our presence.
My brows drew a harsh line as I tried to place his familiar face, "Is that —?"

"The craftsman," Andromeda said scratchily, then cleared her throat, "Daedalus."

***
QOTD - Have you read the Song of Achilles?