Nobody's Princess Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ione told us,
This is the dress you’re going to wear today
? Was
that
being free?
    I sat up. I knew what I wanted. “I just want to say yes or no about my own life,” I said. “Always.”
    “You can
say
yes or no all you want right now, little sister. The trick is getting other people to pay attention.” Polydeuces gave one of my curls a playful tug. “You’re pretty…for a toad”—his smile said he was only joking—“but even Aphrodite herself has to obey Zeus’s commands. Now, if she could get her hands on a bundle of his thunderbolts—well, if she
could,
not even Zeus would dare tell her what to do. Of course, that won’t happen. Aphrodite’s happy with the way things are. She’d rather sip nectar all day than have thunderbolt target practice make her hands rougher than mine.”
    Polydeuces held out his palms so that I could see the calluses. “That’s from all the time I’ve spent learning to fight,” he told me proudly. “Castor’s hands aren’t half as tough as mine—our teacher Glaucus said so. That reminds me—” He stood up. “I’ve got to go help Castor rewrap the hilts on our practice swords with rawhide. If we don’t, Glaucus will knock them out of our hands tomorrow.”
    I grabbed his wrist as he started for the door. “If I help you rewrap your swords, will you let me hold one?” A new idea had taken fire in my mind, a fire kindled by my brother’s light words about Aphrodite:
If she could get her hands on a bundle of his thunderbolts, not even Zeus would dare tell her what to do.
“Will you teach me how to use it too?” I persisted. “Please?”
    Polydeuces stared at me as if I’d grown fins and scales. “Why would you want to do that? Swords are for warriors, not little girls.”
    “Why can’t I be both?” I countered. “I’m just as old as you were when you and Castor first started learning how to fight.”
    “How hard
did
Ione spank you? I think she rattled your brains.” Polydeuces shook his head and tried a second time to walk out of my room.
    I ran after him, seized his arm with both hands, and refused to let him go. “Why
can’t
I learn the same things you and Castor do?” I demanded. “Why can’t you let me
try
?”
    “I’ll tell you what, little sister,” Polydeuces replied, pulling his arm free. “You can learn from me just as soon as you can”—he took off like a rabbit, sprinting out of my room and down the hall, calling back over his shoulder—
“catch me!”
    I tried. I ran as fast as I could, even though I knew I’d be in a lot of fresh trouble if Ione came back to the room and found me gone. I didn’t care. Suddenly I knew what I had to do if I was going to have the life I wanted for myself, a life in which
I
was the one who said yes or no, the one who made her own choices.
    It was a useless race, one that I lost. Polydeuces had longer legs, and they weren’t all tangled up in a dress. He’d also had a lot more practice running; it was part of his warrior’s training, along with swordplay, spear-throwing, archery, horse-taming, and racing chariots over the worst terrain.
    By the time I gave up trying to catch him and went trailing back to my room, I knew three things:
    Even if I was pretty, it wasn’t going to be enough to bring me the life I wanted: one where I was free to make choices that mattered, one where people listened to what I had to say.
    Aphrodite had the beauty; Zeus had the thunderbolts. Everyone loved Aphrodite, but everyone
listened
to Zeus.
    I’d never get my hands on a thunderbolt, so if I wanted to be free, I’d better find a way to get my hands on the next best thing: a sword.
             
    Polydeuces said he’d teach me how to use a sword if I could run fast enough to catch him. I didn’t really believe he meant that, but he did make me realize that one of the first things a warrior must know is how to
run.
    Not run
away
—a Spartan would sooner die—just run. Even I knew that a fighter needed