The Maiden, by Morgan Champine

Helen of Sparta prays to Persephone. Late at night, when her head aches, when Melenaus has taken her to the core, she runs her fingers along the thirsty stem of a pale poppy and prays.

RNA and DNA are similar, but not familiar. A helix curls around the edge of a pinky finger. Everything that makes up everyone can come down to a few simple little letters, an intrinsic code that runs in between all of us, a carpet of mycelium. Helen’s RNA, her DNA, her biological code, all led to this moment. She is beautiful. She is beautiful. She is blonde, or brunette, with perfect curls, depending on the myth. She has a perfect pout. She has striking eyes. She has her mother’s breasts. She is beautiful. She is hideous. She is hatred.

She is not her own and never has been. She never will be.

Helen watches a worm wriggle against the palm of her hand. Inside our bones, cells multiply. They run into each other, sprint past each other in marathons and 5ks. Greece declares war. Demeter outlaws spring.

Persephone tumbles down a hole. She finds a man’s arms. Does he want her? Sure. Does she want him?

Helen follows Paris to Troy. Greece and Sparta are home. She wants a best friend, but can’t seem to fit among other women. The women of Troy resent her. Yellow spurts of grain and wheat sway a ballroom dance in the breeze. Persephone comes home, and flowers remember how to grow.

It’s basic biology, you see. It’s apoptosis. But that’s Ancient Greek, not just basic biology. Nothing is as basic as it seems, especially not something as programmed and set in stone as apoptosis. A cell dies. Helen runs. She is easy to catch.

Daphne runs. Her feet are burning. Her lungs ache. Each breath is heavy, filled with smoke. She’s been here before. Every morning, she wakes and she runs. Every morning, he chases. It always ends the same way. He is all light, but her vision is going dark.

Helen warms her hands over a fire. Her tent is made of a forest-green waterproof canvas, and Melenaus is fishing with his friends nearby. He whistles at her, the sound harsh and wet through his two front teeth. She rubs two sticks together. It would be easier to grab her husband’s lighter, but she wants to make a spark.

The worn pale pink flesh of the pointe shoe shudders as Persephone cracks it against the ground. She isn’t Grecian, but her mother is a farmer. She’ll marry a man she barely knows. That’s Grecian enough. She cracks the toe of the shoe again, relishing in the way its skeleton snaps.

Helen carves a handle from a mouse's rib. She dreams of the Basilica.

She asks her father if she can learn to speak Latin. But she cannot.

Latin is dead. It died impaled on the point of an iron spear before Helen was ever born. And, after all, women are not meant to speak. That is predestined.

Demeter turns a leaf in her hands. She’s not sure how to define beauty, but it sounds the same as daughter. The leaf changes, pale yellow to poisonous green to fierce red and back again and again until it wastes away in her hands. Somewhere, in the distance, a laurel tree weeps. This, too, sounds the same as daughter. Demeter will never know entropy, but she knows death. It would be impossible not to.

The sun sets on Sparta and rises on Troy. Theseus buries his teeth into Helen’s flesh. She doesn’t understand teeth or flesh, yet - she hasn’t learned long division. They take her to hell, and then they show her the Underworld. Persephone sits on a throne, pale and drawn, her dark, warm skin an echo of once-been. Her hair coils, baring itself like a pomegranate. It is not Hades who detains Theseus. Persephone is a goddess, too.

Helen’s dreams die. Helen’s Paris dies - she is not sure who to thank. Helen returns home with Melenaus - she is not sure who to blame. Helen has many children - the scholars change their minds often on how many. Helen’s hips ache. Her insides bruise.

She plants a garden outside Melenaus’ palace. Little needle petals sprout from the edge of the buds she plants, in every color under the sun. There are whispers of blue, whispers of pink, whispers of purple and cream and yellow. Little miniature stars, plucked out of the sky.

Every year, regardless of what Helen does, they grow. They die, and then they grow, and then they die again. She puts one in her hair, in the curls regaled through all of Greece and Troy and Olympia, and watches the petals rot.

Morgan Champine is currently pursuing a BA in English at the University of Utah. They are a playwright, prose writer, and the Opinion Editor for The Daily Utah Chronicle. Morgan enjoys spending all of their free time reveling in the beauty of strange fiction and frequently visiting their local planetarium.

(Image @ Getty Images)