The House of Atreus bears a curse. One steeped in blood and nourished by decades of violence.
Klytemnestra knew this when she married Agamemnon, but being a princess in Sparta doesn't leave you with much choice, though she longs for it. The Fates s...
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There's a rushing in my ears. When I blink, my eyes open to hazy twilight. My lids are heavy — as is my body — and I feel like closing them again. I'm so tired. As I try to drift back to sleep, something cold and wet touches my leg. I feel around with my hand and it lands in a puddle of shallow water. It laps at me as I shift. I'm lying by the bank of a river.
Weary, I get up and look around. I'm on a large and empty field. The river is behind me as I walk up a small hill. The grass is soft beneath my bare feet and when I look down, I can see it's not yellow or green in colour but a pale blue. I blink a few times, trying to clear my eyes. The lighting is... odd. My surroundings are fuzzy, the edges of my vision blurry. As if I'm seeing everything through a fine mist.
I continue slowly across the grassy field. Fog is hanging over it, yet I don't feel any moisture on my clothes or skin. It parts when I pass through, wafting around my calves. Everything is so quiet, so still. As if the only movement and sound are coming from me alone. As if I'm disturbing the peace of this mysterious place. But then I hear the rushing of the river again. It's on my left side now. Puzzled, I frown. It was behind me when I got up and I walked away from it. I stop to look around again but the dim light and the fog make it impossible to see further than a couple of steps at a time. So I amble forward again when I almost collide with someone standing in my way.
I step back and want to apologise but the person doesn't seem to even have noticed me. I turn my head to look at them from the side and there's someone else standing before them. I round them and discover that there's a line of people that disappears into the fog ahead of us, where the rushing of water is louder, more pronounced. The realisation hits me then. These people are waiting for the ferry so they can be carried over the river and into Hades. They're dead. And I'm one of them.
I frown again. This isn't quite how I pictured the entrance to the underworld. My hand comes up to my throat and my fingers trace my skin there, just above my collarbone. I feel like there should be something there but I can't feel anything except goosebumps erupting beneath my fingertips.
A soft breeze seems to stir the mist around us and the figures in front of me move. I look at them slowly disappearing into the fog and I'm compelled to follow them. Something holds me back. I look down at my hands. They look solid, made from flesh and bone while the people in front of me look washed out. They're swathed in greyish shadows and covered in white shrouds while I'm still in my saffron peplos. Its colour is duller here but still, it sticks out. I don't feel dead. I feel like I'm dreaming.
"That's because you aren't exactly dead."
I turn my head and a soft glow illuminates the fog before it parts in lazy swirls around the form of a tall woman. Her skin is golden and shimmering even in the dim light surrounding us. Her long red hair falls in soft waves around her angular face, held back by a tiara that is adorned with a crescent moon. She wears a fur and a short men's chiton that leaves her knees bare. Her calves are covered not in sandals, but in soft leather boots. She has a bow swung casually over her shoulder and I can see a quiver of arrows peeking out from behind it.
