The Breaking

If yesterday you were a child, with a child's grasp of emotions, today you're a youth who's just had her first taste of another's lips. And like seeds from a pomegranate, one kiss isn't nearly enough.

The days pass quickly while you hunt the conspirators who threaten your throne. Sometimes you send me to the library, to help Thukidides conduct research at your behest, but mostly I accompany you while you call on your strategoi, magistrates, and other retainers. I serve wine, kneel by your side—

Early summer. The afternoon sunshine pours into your bedchamber now that the iron shutters over the windows have been unlocked and pulled aside. I'm sprawled on your bed, reading a scroll, when the outer door to your chambers slams shut with such violence that the mattress jumps beneath

Life settles into a steady cadence: mornings in the library helping Thukidides, and afternoons alone in your chambers. I pass the time reading and thinking, and learn to keep an ear open for the sound of your footsteps in the anteroom so I can greet you with a cup of

The days march onwards to winter and the end of my second year as your slave, a year of inexplicable change in the way you treat me. I spend as much time in the palace library now as I do with you, helping Thukidides with his latest grand project, a

We're still in bed, long past your usual waking hour before dawn, and despite the light sneaking through the slats over the windows, my attempts to stir only make you squeeze me tighter.

One warm summer evening, your attendants arrive to take me to the bath earlier than usual. They bathe me, anoint me in rose-scented oil, apply kohl to my eyes and rouge to my lips. They cover the awkward length of my hair with a wrap of silk, then dress me

You keep me close to you now. When you work in your study, when you eat in your dining room, when you survey your city from your balcony, I kneel beside you. At night, I sleep on the floor, and I'm only locked in the cage when you

Winter comes to Athens, and with it, plague. I see funeral pyres burning across the city. I see the empty streets below your palace. I see your soldiers accompanied by slaves, distributing wagonloads of food to the people trapped in their homes. But the plague is not an army defeated

It took you five months to break me. I lasted far longer than anyone else. Judging by the triumphant way you dragged me from your torture chamber to your bedchamber, I might be the only one who's ever left that place with enough sanity intact to serve you.