Honey
When we were much younger, we used to sit all afternoon in the great oaks that grew on Mount Ida. I remember how the light would filter down through the leaves and speckle our faces as green as my shift; his hair was as dark as his great liquid eyes, and mine was fair. He used to say it was the color of honey; then he would kiss me and say that I was sweet.
He was sweet, too. He was different then, before the goddesses came, before he went to Troy, before she came. We were as artless as the bees I kept, not very far from my little cottage; we never thought of the future. I couldn't have conceived of one without him, and when I think of those days now, there is no distinction between them: they seem to be all one golden, idyllic expanse.
The first time he returned, after having been gone so long, I knew I had lost him. He'd already changed in Troy; he strutted, and he came with an army of servants—as though I were going to kill him! (Strange that they should think so.) His eyes were as dark and liquid as ever, but something was missing, and he looked at me, in my tangled hair and torn dress, almost disapprovingly. Once, a long time ago, his whole face lit up if he even caught a glimpse, out of the corner of his eye, of a girl who looked like me.
My heart sank. Helen had ruined him.
We said hello Paris, hello Oenone. I poured him a cup of pale yellow wine and set out a plate of honeycomb; Troy had taken his appetite, too. I don't remember much of our conversation; being a woman, and curious, I asked him what Helen looked like.
He paused; fingering a lock of my hair where it had come loose from its plait, he said, "A bit like you," and for a moment, it seemed that nothing had changed at all. Then he pulled away from me and said, "I had better be getting back, the sun is high, and Helen will be expecting me. There's a big party tonight—foreign dignitaries, Thracians mostly. So boring; you're lucky to live here." Somewhere in my memory, I heard him say, After we're married, I'll take you to Troy.
I wanted to believe that we could part friends. Failing that, I wanted to believe that I was the better person. And yet I could never quite escape the idea that I was embarrassing to the person he had become: that strange, strutting lordling. I hated him, and I hated Helen for making him that person, and for being so beautiful and well-bred that no one could possibly compare to her. "A bit like you," indeed. What a backhanded compliment!
When I saw him next, he lay on a litter. His forehead was clammy where I touched it, and my fingertips came away damp with sweat; he convulsed with pain, breath harsh and forced. It was late afternoon, in the summertime: the light was golden, and I could scarcely see without a hand to my eyes. They must have walked the better part of the day in the heat.
Whatever I felt for Paris, I did feel some pity for the poor wretches who had carried him home; I sent them into the cool of my cottage, where there was honeycomb and cool river water to mix with the wine. Outside, in the heat, Paris showed me his wound: it was an arrow wound on the arm, such as any soldier might take. Someone had pulled out the arrowhead in time, but I guessed, from his symptoms and apparent hysteria, that the arrow had been poisoned.
He kept saying, "Help me, help, help, help me, Oenone, help, fix it, make it better, you're the only one who can, please help me, I swear—" If I were cruel, I would have made him promise to get rid of Helen and issue a public apology. I was not cruel, though, and so I merely folded my arms and told him that there was nothing I could do for him. It was probably true; the poison had been given too much time to work.
Paris bawled, then—I had not thought grown men capable of such sounds. "Helen was right about you!" I must have gaped. "Bitch!" He screwed up his face, crying without tears as tetchy children do when denied some treat. "Bitch!" The word echoed: Ida is a great place for sound.
"Helen is no judge of character," I snapped. "She ran off with you, after all." At least I had had the best of him, before she came. I loved him first, and I had loved him best.
By sunset, he was gone. The last stray light glinted off his bronze armor, turning it to the color of honey.