Chapter 2

Chapter 2-1

Player: Hello...?

Atropos: Stay back! Who are you?

Atropos: Wait! That necklace...

Atropos: I don't know how you got that, but it means you are meant to be here.

Atropos: Our wagon was attacked near the bridge, then that lunatic used his magic to take my sisters. I gathered what little we had and ran here for help but-

Atropos: I've been to every house in this town and not one person will answer.

Atropos: Cowards - all of them. I can't say I blame them, though. They know who sent that creature.

Player: Who?

Atropos: Agamemnon.

Atropos: He came to us wanting his fate woven. It's funny. You would have liked him. Everyone did. So warm, polite, easy to talk to.

Atropos: Then we finished his scroll, and I saw something. Something... dark. Evil.

Atropos: I wanted to hide it, but... he insisted. So we let him. And I swear, in that moment, he changed right in front of us.

Atropos: I saw him. The real him. Then he stood, thanked us, and left with the scroll sitting on the table.

Atropos: He turned my sisters into these... dolls - and stole our tools. They're probably in his mansion right now.

Player: Let me see what I can do. I might be able to help.

Atropos: I couldn't ask that of you, but I would appreciate it. Meanwhile, I'm going to look for someone with a spine that can help.

Atropos: We were never able to see our own threads, you know. I couldn't tell you if they can be saved. Ironic, isn't it?

Atropos,

I know which of you it was.

I came in the spring to ask of my son's fate and you would not open the box. You said it was not for me. You gave the vague reason of not being able to see it, and said it was for mercy.

Such a joke.

He was eleven, and all it took was four days.

I know there was nothing in that scroll I could have used. I still would have been as helpless as the moment before viewing it, but you refused. The sickness was already inside him when he was born, whether or not I had ever visited your residence.

It would have cost you nothing. That is what I recited in my head when I started to dig his grave. When he was bedridden, it was the only thing weighing on my mind.

You refused me because you took one look at me and decided I could not bear it.

That was not yours to decide. You do not get to weigh a woman, find her small, and call that kindness. I would have carried it.

I only wanted to know how long I had, so that I would not have spent his last good morning scolding him for breaking a plate.

I ruined his last good day over a plate. I grounded him for it.

I hope you are measured one day by something that does not care what you are, and have your last day taken from you the way his was

To the Three, as I do not know how to divide such things.

I have started this letter many times, for this is the fourth. My wife says to simply say the thing and stop, and she is usually right, but I am going to ignore her once more.

You will not remember me. Six years ago I approached you with a crude gift of oil from a second pressing, which I knew was of poor quality, and I asked you then whether I should leave my wife.

At the time she was a wool-worker and I a carpenter. In the bad year, it was only her thread that kept us, as the military had begun demanding skilled tradesman to venture out and construct settlements for the war. The pressure had worn our relationship through. What I did not realize was that she did not fear my leaving her. She feared being left alone with the thought of a husband who went to the settlements and never returned. That was what haunted her, and neither of us had said it aloud until you sent me home to ask.

I can be a difficult man.

The guidance offered by you had shown a simple man what to prioritize, so I rebuilt my workshop for hull construction instead, which allowed me to stay home. We have been incredibly successful since.

Our daughter is four now. We named her Klotia.

We are expecting our second child. We have not decided a name yet. My wife wants her father's. Her father was also a difficult man, so I am not fond of it.

I have brought oil again. It is the first pressing this time. I want you to know I noticed. You gave me my own house back. It was something I thought I had lost years ago, and now I wake within it beside a woman who loves me dearly.

Thank you.

Nikias, son of Straton.

Agamemnon: I... can see you. Meddling in my past.

Agamemnon: Nestra, make yourself useful.

Agamemnon: Tear their heart from their chest...

Agamemnon: ...and have them watch until it stops beating.

At the meal, Agamemnon spoke about the quarry. It needs forty men this season and has been given twelve. He corrected himself before I could answer. "Eleven. One was unfit."

He said all of it to Orestes, as though the two of them kept the same ledger. Orestes did not answer him.

Then he asked me whether his "fawn" had eaten. He gives her everything she asks for. He never uses the name I chose for her.

She had not eaten. She spent the afternoon in the garden, on the stone bench near Athena's statue. His study window looks down on that bench. He stood at it most of the afternoon. I could barely stand to see her sitting there.

Before sunset I made the offering. Aloud, I asked Athena for the health and prosperity of the household, as I always do. Silently, I asked that whatever he wants from this house, it is not her.

Tomorrow I will tell her to sit somewhere else.

She has started keeping one of these journals since she caught me writing. I hope she never needs it the way I do.

At the new moon he measured her again. He has never once measured Orestes.

I always watch from the hall. It has never looked like affection to me. But I cannot keep a child from her father, least of all one as powerful as he is.

He called her his little fawn, the way he always does. Afterward I asked her if she had ever noticed that he never uses her name. She said she has been hearing it her whole life. She has.

Some evenings I sit in the garden and let myself imagine somewhere far from here, under trees, with only the birds and the sea. No footsteps to listen for. No voice calling my name, the voice that once said it so beautifully.

In that place I never think of my children. That is the worst of it.

For now, I remain here.

Two of the washerwomen have been sent back to their village. They were saying I can hardly bear to look at her, and she was behind the sheets and heard it. Orestes brought her inside white-faced. I did not tell Agamemnon what they said. He found out anyway.

They were not wrong. She looks at him the way I looked at him once. He has made sure she never has a reason to look closer. That is what I cannot bear to watch.

That night at supper she asked me if she had done something wrong. I put my hand on her cheek. Nothing I could have said was safe in front of him, so I told her to eat.

Afterward he went to her room with a wooden swallow. I never told him about the birds in the courtyard. From the hall I heard him ask whether anything had upset her that day. She told him no. He seemed pleased with that.

I sit outside her door at night now. He only keeps count of what he means to spend. The servants have noticed. Let them.

Orestes left this morning for his uncle's. He told me some days ago that he wanted to go. I could tell something was bothering him. I was glad he was leaving, but I did not let him see it.

Last night, in the storm, I went to Agamemnon's study and asked him to send her with Orestes. I had my reasons ready. I had rehearsed them for days, until there was nothing in them he could argue with.

He did not let me give them. "No." Then, "She belongs here, with me."

He used the voice he keeps only for me.

On my way down I heard bare feet on the stairs below me, and her door closing.

She would not look at me this morning.

My daughter is gone.

Of all the nights, it had to be the one I slept. I had been up before dawn seeing Orestes off.

He says she ran. He says she heard me in his study and ran because of me. For the first time in my life I raised my hand to him, but his eyes dared me to strike. I could not.

Her name is Iphigenia. He never once said it.

I have hated him for years and smiled at his table.

May Athena have mercy on him.

For I will not.

Mother says I'm not to sit on the bench in the garden anymore. She wouldn't say why. She didn't even look at me when it was said. She had kept looking around the house, as if she were worried someone was watching.

I sat there anyway, at least until I heard the front door, and I was in my room well before she reached the stairs. Mushrooms grow in the dark, you know. That's what I think I'll be. A mushroom. Quietly hidden away from her as I grow.

I don't know what I did for her to be this strict. Father lets me sit wherever I like.

At least there are swallows nesting under the eaves outside my window. I named them. The one who takes care of the eggs and is rather skittish is Mother. The handsome one who sits on the roof tile watching her is Father. He looks so grand up there. Such an intense stare.

Father has dropped his mud in front of my door twice.

I am not pleased.

Everyone in this house walks straighter when Father comes into a room. The washerwomen, Orestes, even Mother.

But not me.

He says I can have anything I like, except to go past the gate.

He measured me against my wall every new moon. I am a little taller each time. He does not seem to do this with my brother. I suppose I am more important.

Tonight Mother watched from the hall with her mouth pressed thin, the way it goes at supper whenever he talks. He calls me his little fawn, and it seems to irritate her. Afterward she asked if I had ever noticed that he never uses my name.

I never put much thought into it. I have been hearing it my whole life.

The washerwomen didn't see me behind the sheets today. They were talking about Mother. One said she can hardly bear to look at me. The other said she sits up half the night outside my door. To keep me from sneaking out again to the bench, I suppose.

I was about to tell them to mind their own business, but Orestes took my hand and steered me off like I was a sheep. He said they work hard to keep my room clean and I should leave them be. His face looked like he'd tasted something foul.

At supper I asked Mother if I'd done something wrong. She put her hand on my cheek, which she never does, then took it away and told me to eat.

Father came up after with a gift, a little wooden swallow. He asked if anything had upset me today. I said no, and he kissed my hair and called me his little fawn. I don't know how he knew to ask. He always seems to.

The eggs hatched last week, all three, ugly as anything. The mother bird sits over them every night. I don't know who she thinks is going to take them. Our courtyard is quite safe.

Orestes leaves tomorrow to learn to ride horses with Uncle. He says he can't sleep in this house anymore, but when I asked why, he couldn't tell me.

There's a storm tonight. I couldn't sleep either, so I went down for water, and I heard Mother in Father's study asking him to send me with Orestes. Father said no, very coldly. I've never heard that tone from him. He said I belong here with him. Mother didn't argue.

So she wants me gone. I don't know what I did.

At least Father wants me.

The nest came down in the night. I found it in pieces on the stones of the courtyard, and Mother on top of it with her wings still spread over the little ones. They were so stiff.

Father was up on his roof tile, same as always. He looked as fine as ever. I put Father's wooden swallow on the windowsill.

I feel like it is a way to remember them.

Mother came in after and sat at the end of my bed in the dark. She didn't say anything. She stayed until I pretended to be asleep, and maybe a long while after.

Chapter 2-2

Agamemnon: Athena...

Agamemnon: I began this path with no course, yet you saw potential in me.

Agamemnon: At first.

Agamemnon: One is led to believe that this very moment was destined by you.

Agamemnon: The suffering I've endured.

Agamemnon: The things you've asked of me, that not a single man would honor.

Agamemnon: But I did.

Agamemnon: Now I am shunned by the same power that brought me to where I stand.

Agamemnon: I no longer worry if I am on the wrong path.

Agamemnon: Though you should worry that I am on yours.

Nestra: So this is where you have been!

Nestra: And to think, for years, this was happening right beneath my home.

Nestra: They whisper about this house you know.

Nestra: They say black magic lives behind our walls, that we're cursed.

Nestra: I told them they were wrong.

Nestra: I defended you.

Nestra: The gods stopped answering me years ago.

Nestra: I thought I had done something to deserve it, but no.

Nestra: It was you.

Nestra: It was always you.

Nestra: Is she here? Is this where you took our daughter?

Nestra: Did you think I was too dull to find out?

Agamemnon: You are so beautiful with tears in your eyes.

Agamemnon: Lovelier still, now that you finally see it.

Agamemnon: This was always the man you came to love.

Agamemnon: You simply never knew him.

Nestra: Wha-... What are you doing?

Nestra: No... No... NOO... NOOOO!

Atropos: Hello? Are you still here?

Atropos: Athena?-

Atropos: There you are! Did you find my sisters?

Player: I tried to save them, but...

Player: ...I'm sorry.

Atropos: No...

Agamemnon: You cannot escape this place.

Player: Come on!

Agamemnon: When you showed me my fate,

Agamemnon: you knew I would try to change it.

Atropos: You cannot change fate!

Agamemnon: I cannot... but you can.

Agamemnon: And you will.

Atropos: No, you misunderstand.

Atropos: I am the one that cuts it.

Agamemnon: NO!