The song was faint, so quiet that at first Alia felt sure she was imagining it. She dismissed it, her mind still reeling from the sight of Eris wheeling in the sky above them, of Diana keeping Phobos and Deimos at bay, the lasso a bolt of lightning in her hands. Then there it was—a ringing in her ears, the wind in the trees—no, something more, a melody. One voice became two, ten, twenty. She didn’t understand the words, but she knew they were guiding her.
“What did the Oracle say, Diana?”
Diana glanced at her, confused, the lasso still whirling in her hands. “I told you—”
“No, what were her exact words?”
“ ‘Where Helen rests, the Warbringer may be purified.’ ”
Where Helen rests. “The spring isn’t here,” she said. “It’s one of the springs that feeds the river.” The Eurotas, the wide, slow river that had paralleled the road as they approached the Menelaion, that lay only a hundred yards below.
“This is her tomb,” said Jason. Every bit of his patience had vanished, replaced by an angry urgency. “Stop grasping at straws, Alia.”
Why couldn’t he hear them?
“No,” she said. She needed to make him understand. The girls were singing, and their song was one of mourning, a farewell to a friend. “Don’t you see? By the time Helen died, it was too late. She wasn’t Helen anymore, not really. She was Helen of Troy. She was Menelaus’s wife. Her tomb didn’t even keep her name.”
“The race,” said Diana, new hope kindling in her blue eyes. Alia had hated to see that light go out, even for a minute. “That was the last moment, when she was still allowed to compete side by side with her companions.”
The battle gods shrieked and howled, and Alia knew she was right.
“It was her last moment of peace,” she said. “Before she became a bride, before she stopped running. We have to get down to the river.”
“Well, we’d better move quick,” said Theo, pointing to the road.
Far in the distance, a parade of armored vehicles crawled along the winding road like gleaming beetles, dust rising in a cloud behind them.
“If we could just explain,” said Nim.
“They may not give us the chance,” said Diana. “To the river. Now.”
Down the hill they plunged, Eris circling above them, beyond the reach of Diana’s lasso, trying to disrupt the chorus with her screams and the banging of her shield, Deimos and Phobos alongside, their chariots making a furious clatter.
But the girls ran with them, too, Helen’s companions, hair streaming behind them, laughing and unafraid. And now that she’d heard the song, Alia could hold it, keep the thread of its melody in her mind. It was the song they sang when one of their own was chosen to be married. A chorus of celebration, but also one of mourning for the girl who had been lost, for the freedom that had vanished with a vow, for the future races she would never run.
Helen had won a race, before anyone knew what sorrow she would bring to the world, before she was Menelaus’s bride or Helen of anything but herself. She’d run side by side with the boys who would someday don armor and fight to their deaths in her name. She’d run barefoot with the wind at her back, and when the gods had granted her victory, she’d gone to the banks of the river Eurotas and laid a lotus wreath on the great tree that grew there; she’d poured a libation of oil upon its roots. Libation. An offering. These were old words, old ideas, but Alia knew them in her very bones. For years, girls had come to that site to worship Helen and to sing for their friends.
Alia tried to catch her breath as they reached the bottom of the footpath and sprinted across the paved road, then stumbled down a gentle slope, dense with brush and whispering plane trees. Their trunks were gray as stone, the thick, twisting arms of their branches bowed low over the water as if trying to drink, and the blaze of the late-afternoon sun made their leaves look curiously weightless, as if clouds of green butterflies had alighted in their boughs but might vanish at any moment, leaving the trees bare.
Somewhere far in the distance, she heard the rumble of engines. The voices of the girls grew louder, drawing her onward. They were fifty now, one hundred, the sound so lovely it brought tears to Alia’s eyes. When had she stopped being a child? The first time a guy had whistled at her out of a car window when she was walking to school? The moment she started wondering how she looked when she ran, what jiggled or bounced, instead of the pace she was setting? The first time she’d kept from raising her hand because she didn’t want to seem too smart or too eager? No one had sung. No one had told her how much she would lose until the time for grieving was long over.
But now they’d reached the sandy banks of the river and there was no more time or breath for sadness. She followed the girls, running beside them, caught up in their joy. They would always be young and unafraid. They would forever run this race.
“They’re coming!” Theo shouted, but he didn’t mean the runners. On the road above, armored vehicles screeched to a halt, men in gray camouflage emerging and crashing down the slope toward the water. A Humvee was charging down the riverbed, a wide, menacing military jeep with tires that seemed to eat up the ground.
“There!” Alia cried. A tree on the banks, its massive trunk giving way to heavy branches. The water at its base was flat and smooth like no other part of the river, reflecting the image of the tree so brightly it might have been a mirror. Alia blinked and saw girls dancing on the riverbank, the tree’s trunk laden with wreaths of lotus blossoms, its roots crowded with tiny offerings.
“The water by the tree!” said Diana, taking her hand, pulling her forward. “Alia, you just have to reach it.”
But the soldiers were in the river now, surrounding them, blocking their path to the spring, their boots splashing through the water and kicking up plumes of silt. A hard breeze shook the leaves of the plane tree as a helicopter descended, hovering over them. Alia could swear she heard Eris’s wings in the steady whir of its propeller blades.
“Please!” Diana shouted, throwing her arms out to shield Alia. “Listen to me! This girl is no danger to you. The river is sacred. It can purge the Warbringer line and end this madness forever!”
“I’m sorry,” said Jason from behind them. “I can’t allow that.”
He seized Alia’s arm and yanked her tight to his side, backing away up the banks.
“Jason,” said Diana. “We just need to make them understand.”
“They understand just fine.”
Alia tried to break free of his grip, stumbling in the soft sand. “What are you doing?” she said, the voices of the girls’ song lost, fading on the wind.
“It’s okay,” her brother said gently—his voice as steady, as familiar, as controlled as ever. “You are just as you were meant to be. This is all as it was meant to be, and no one will hurt you.” His eyes were bright. His dimple creased his cheek. She realized he looked happier than she’d ever seen him. “You must live, Alia. And war must come.”