Damiana of Troy

By J.S. Ramirez

For some, the war is over. For others, it never stopped.

 

Damiana, youngest slave in the House of Menelaus, longs to know more of her homeland.

 

The only person who will tell her thing things she is desperate to know is Helen, the fatally beautiful cause of the lost Trojan War, and Helen can only tell it in whispers, away from the ears of the Spartan King.

 

But Damiana needs more truth, more than the reviled Helen has power to grant. And when a stranger comes to visit, even deadly peril cannot stop Damiana from seeking the lost music of Troy, and the words of the song that someone sings in her dreams.

 

What price is it worth to know the truth?

Damiana of Troy is a short story set in mythical Ancient Sparta.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.S. Ramirez
• Release date: Dec 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393661009

Book preview

For every Helen I have ever known.

—J

Wherefore, Hector, grieved at heart,

I bewail at the same time thee and myself;

for after your passing there is not any other in wide Troy kind and friendly to me;

but all abhor me.

––––––––

But, since the gods have ordained these evils,

would, at any rate, that I had been wife to a better man...

Still, brother, come in and rest upon this seat,

for it is you who bear the worst

that has been caused by my hateful self

and by the sin of Alexandrus—both doomed

to be a theme of song

among those born hereafter.

一The Iliad

Damiana of Troy

by J.S. Ramirez

It was my master’s wife who told me the most of Troy. She lived there longer than I did, though she was not a Trojan. In her anteroom of stone, amid the sweet, dry fragrance of the violets which she loved, she would tell me the lost secrets of the dead, in hidden moments when I washed her feet or combed her hair. No one knew I spoke with her so. The other handmaidens were glad to be exempt from these duties, for they hated her as they hate few who remain among the living.

I alone did not despise her. But I was not old enough to remember. I was only thirteen winters, or fourteen.

The sunlight spilled onto her from the wide window, but she still wrapped herself in the soft wool of her white robe. My mistress was forever cold.

I loved your city, she whispered to me, as I ran the comb through her thick, gleaming hair, still the envy of Athena and Hera. It flowed through the comb like dark wine. But your city hated me, and I cannot blame them. She always called it 'your city', as if she felt unworthy to speak the name, but could not bear to keep the memories inside.

I did not remember Troy myself, only in fleeting images and sounds, and I was unsure if these images were my own, or given me by those old enough to remember, or brought to me by my fallen mothers in dreams. My mothers are in Hades, if the Spartans speak truly, or the Elysian Fields, if my hopes are true. 

These images are nothing and everything. Nothing, in that Troy lies desolate, in ash and broken blade and the stilled voices of those slain there. Everything; for Troy's folly have I paid my full measure as a slave in the house of Menelaus, a handmaiden to his wife, Helen, whom all say was the cause of the war.

I accepted this long ago, and bow my head and look not my masters in the eyes. 

The final image is this: rank smoke above and dark clotting blood beneath. I hear nothing in this image. I am glad I hear nothing. The voices are stilled as I have said, and I need not raise them from their rest. But a wandering, toddling ghost of a memory tells me that the blood was sticky and warm under my feet.

There is, though, one thing I can still hear: a song. Only a line from it. Scarcely remembered. I once knew it all, once a woman sang it all to