The Fairest of Them All by Carolyn Turgeon Read Free Book Online Page A

our stomachs, making sure the child inside me survived. We spent most of our days with dried herbs spread around us, making potions and poultices for every kind of ailment, ripping pieces of cloth to wraparound particularly potent mixtures.
    My hunger did not abate. I wanted to eat everything, to lock myself in the cellar and devour every herb, every vegetable, every dried piece of meat. No matter how much we carried up and roasted in the hearth, it never seemed to be enough to fill me. Mathena even began locking the cellar at night, so that I would not run down in my half sleep and gorge myself.

    The days passed slowly. To distract me, Mathena told me stories of the old goddesses—Artemis turning Daphne slowly into a tree, limb by limb, Aphrodite rising from foam and sea, Hera ruling over all of them at the side of her brother Zeus, who was also her husband—and of the days when the queen consultedher on everything from what to eat for breakfast to which of her husband’s advisors wouldbetray him. I loved her stories. Sometimes I would get so lost in them that I’d look down at the cloth and stalks and seeds in my hands and forget what they were, why I was holding them.
    At times, when I was restless and burning, I would take to the woods in the pure light of the afternoon with a fur wrap, often just with a bow and arrow, to hunt.
    Which was how I found myself outside one afternoon,stalking through the forest with Brune flying above me and my bow at my side, several arrows sticking out of the quiver on my back. I scanned the trees, the ground, but I was distracted, consumed as always by thoughts of what would happen, once I had brought his child into the world.
    What I would do then.
    And so I didn’t hear the swishing of branches, the light step of hooves, the way I mighthave normally, and did not sense the stag until it was right there in front of me.
    It stood in my path. I stopped, astonished. It stared back at me, and was unlike any deer I’d ever seen. It looked as bewildered as I did, and for a moment we both stood there in the snow, frozen. Antlers twisted from its skull like tree branches, a crown. Its eyes were big and black and round, soft. Beautiful.
    I was mesmerized.
    And then everything came into focus. I remembered why I was there, and could not believe my good fortune. Hunting was difficult in the winter, even when I was not with child, and at best I would return home with several squirrels or rabbits.
    I lifted my bow and aimed.
    “Stay,” I whispered.
    My heart pounded. I kept my fingers perfectly still.
    I released my hand and let thearrow loose. It flew through the air, and those moments seemed to stretch out and become hours, days, until the arrow landed, right in the animal’s throat. I could feel the arrow entering. I heard the wet, hard sound of it breaking the skin, entering blood and bone.
    The stag’s eyes never left mine.
    It staggered, blinking, and let out a terrible bleat.
    And then it turned and ran, and I tookoff after it, my fur-lined shoes pounding over earth and snow. I raced through the trees, Brune following in the sky, the scent of blood and death and dying all around me.
    I was surprised at how much life the animal still had in it, and I was forced to slow down, my body more lumbering than usual. But I was fleet and strong still, a daughter of Artemis, intent on my prey. Already I could tastethe meat roasted over the fire.
    I ran through leaves and over tree trunks, past the great oak that had been split in a storm, along the river, following the animal’s tracks and blood, the sounds of it stumbling through the wood.
    And then I heard it falling, and I raced forward, toward the sound. I pushed through a cluster of trees, and found myself stepping into a small clearing.
    The tree branchesswayed overhead. Brune landed in one of them, waiting for her reward.
    The wounded creature lay there, twisted in the snow, the arrow jutting from its neck straight into the air. I pulled