Sappho's Leap Read Free Page B

bathed together, slept together, sheltered from the thunder in each other’s arms.
    â€œYour mother will kill you—and me.”
    â€œShe’ll never know, Prax, we’ll be so secretive. We’ll shadow her to Mytilene. She’ll never even guess we’re there, I promise you.”
    Praxinoa looked doubtful. I insisted she go with me—flaunting all the rules by which I had been raised. Even in Lesbos, two girls, free and slave, seldom left the family compound without men and without an entourage.
    So we set out from Eresus together on the road to Mytilene. We traveled far enough behind my mother’s procession to be invisible to her. Sometimes we even lost sight of the last stragglers in her entourage. We walked and walked in the morning shade, in the noontime sun, in the slanting late sun of the afternoon. It was twilight of the second day before we came anywhere near the villa of Pittacus, and we were exhausted. My mother traveled in a golden litter carried by slaves, but Praxinoa and I had to lean on each other. And sleep on the hillside with the goats.
    We were bedraggled and dusty when we arrived. Nor had we bargained on the guards who barred the flower-strewn path to the tyrant’s villa.
    â€œWho goes there?” demanded the first guard, a tall Nubian with the face of an Adonis. Five other men, huge, with muscles and terrifying bronze-tipped spears, stood behind him. They glowered and looked down at us.
    â€œI am Sappho, daughter of Cleis and Scamandronymus. We come from Eresus,” I said bravely.
    â€œWe have no orders to admit you,” the first guard said, blocking our way. We were hustled to the side of the road and seized roughly by two of the other guards.
    â€œSappho—I think we should be going home,” Praxinoa whispered, shaking.
    â€œSir, if you’ll unhand us, you’ll be rid of us,” I said. With that, they let us go and we started to run away from the villa.
    â€œWho are you running from, little one?” It was a tall young man with a yellow beard and the scarred cheeks of a warrior. He was older than I—a mature man of at least twenty-five.
    â€œI wasn’t running.”
    â€œI know running when I see it,” the man said, his eyes twinkling as he teased me. Those eyes looked deep into mine. “I am Alcaeus, who scoffs at war and heroes. I dropped my shield and fled the last battle. For this Pittacus means to banish me. I am supposed to be ashamed. But I defy shame. There’s no shame in loving life above death. We are not stupid Spartans, after all. Otherwise, I would be dead. What use would that be to the gods, who will not die themselves?”
    â€œAlcaeus the singer?” I asked the handsome stranger. My heart pounded in excitement just to behold him. I wanted him never to leave my sight!
    â€œThe same.”
    â€œI know your verses by heart.”
    â€œWell, don’t just stand there trembling—sing one!”
Dog days—our throats are dry,
    Our women bleed for love,
    Our parched brains rattle like gourds,
    Our knees creak.
    Douse your voice with wine and water—sing!
    â€œYou think to make it better than it was!” he said in his arrogant way. But later, at Pittacus’ symposium, I found out that he had truly liked my version better than his own, because he sang it just as I had rephrased it. He’d be damned before he’d admit his admiration for me. Yet I loved him helplessly from the moment I met him. It was his confidence, his self-possession—even his hubris—that so appealed to me. Eros had pierced me through the heart with his sharpest arrow.
    Alcaeus looked like the sun god—an aureole of golden hair, a golden beard, and golden hair curling on his chest. He seemed to have power enough to pull a chariot across the sky. How could I know in an instant that our lives were linked? He walked with a swagger that made me long to open my legs to him—virgin