Not Understanding Changes Nothing
After my dear brother turned me down, I decided to find my own way. If no one would teach me, I would simply teach myself. The problem was that I had no spear, so after casting about for options, I settled on the long wooden pole propped against one side of the courtyard.
The length was about right for my frame, and the thickness sat perfectly in my hand. Something like this, I could manage with a little practice. I muttered as much under my breath and sneaked a glance around the yard. Nobody in sight. Good.
I picked up the pole and called to mind the stance Telekles used at the training ground—shield in the left hand, spear in the right. Since I had no shield either, I settled for draping a basket lid over my left arm and got to work. Not bad, honestly. Fairly convincing.
The problem was what came next. How did the thrust go again? Racking my memory, I drew my right foot back on instinct. A slight twist of the hips pulled my right arm naturally rearward, and with the point facing forward, I let it fly.
— Thunk!! The tip of the pole cracked against a jar, and over it went, toppling toward the floor. If that jar breaks, I'm dead!
"Phew." My desperate lunge had done the trick—both the jar and my neck survived intact.
I set my stance again, a little more carefully this time—thrust. In. Pull back, and in again. A few repetitions in, it felt more doable than I'd expected. It wouldn't be exactly like bayonet drill or the training I used to do, but stabbing a person—how hard could that possibly—
"What are you doing?"
The voice behind me snapped my hunched spine bolt upright. I turned slowly to find Mother standing there, her gaze traveling from my face to the pole, then down to the basket lid hanging off my left arm.
I'd made sergeant first class in my past life, but none of it helped. An angry mother is terrifying. In the end my silence broke first, and I opened my mouth with great care.
"Cleaning... ma'am. A new method."
There was no chance in hell that would fly. Mother silently held out her hand. Talk back or clown around here, and she really might beat me to death. I surrendered the pole without a fuss, and she ran her eyes along its length before asking:
"Did Telekles teach you?"
"No. I just watched."
"You copied it just from watching?"
That much I could answer with my head held high, because that bastard hadn't taught me a thing. Mother took in my nod, studied my face, and sighed.
"Arista. Keep that up and you'll hurt yourself."
"It's only a stick, though."
Mother's eyes narrowed.
"...Yes, ma'am."
I should have stopped at "understood." That extra remark was a mistake.
Mother returned the pole to its place. "Since you clearly have energy to spare, you'll start running again tomorrow."
"Just like that?"
"You've rested for days, claiming your head hurt."
Indignation nearly drove me to protest, but when Mother looked me over, I dropped my gaze instead. I'd only said I wanted combat training—why was the punishment running?
It was only the next day that I came to understand why I'd needed those days of rest.
I was dying. Genuinely, honestly dying.
That was already the second one. A girl a head shorter than me breezed past my shoulder. "I'm going on ahead!" I didn't have the breath to answer—just nodded and fought to keep pace, but the gap kept widening. A little later another passed me, and then one more after that.
I clenched my teeth and ran. How many years had I served in my past life? Mountain runs, forced marches of dozens of kilometers, how many fitness tests—
"Arista, why are you so slow?"
Fuck. What was wrong with Spartan girls?
How far had we run? When it ended, I was the only one doubled over my knees, heaving for air. Around me the others chatted and traded jokes as if nothing had happened, and while I was still catching my breath, unable to even wedge myself in, one of the girls came up laughing.
"You've gotten weak since you hurt your head."
"Shut up."
Thankfully, the second event wasn't running. Wrestling, of all things. This one I could genuinely do. My opponent was smaller than me and didn't look like much. I'd never trained in combat sports professionally, but throwing a person to the ground was something the army taught you easily enough—
"Huh?"
Thud. I was staring at the sky. The girl who'd thrown me wandered over, flustered, tilting her head—a look that said this wasn't how things usually went with me.
Sorry, but I really am a different person.
"You okay?"
Shame shot me to my feet, and I shook my head. "Again."
The second round went differently. This time, the moment she pulled, I didn't pit strength against strength—I twisted my body and hooked her leg. The girl wobbled and hit the dirt first.
"Oh!" A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. My body hadn't followed my intentions at first, but after one attempt, everything changed. Where my feet needed to go, how low to sink my hips to keep my center of gravity, where to grip—my body moved before my mind could catch up.
So this is what Arista used to do. Only then did I find the feel of my own body. It had never been weak at all—I was simply the one failing to use it.
Last came the spear. A javelin, thinner and lighter than the one Telekles carried, but a spear was a spear. One by one we ran up and threw, the spears thudding into the dirt. And the moment my turn came, I took one and set my stance.
That feeling again. Familiar—the kind of moment where all I had to do was let my body take over. I backed off a few paces, charged hard, drew my arm back, and the instant my hips twisted, released.
— Whoosh!! The javelin sailed far past all the others and planted itself deep in the ground well beyond them. Silence fell around us, and I shut my mouth too.
"Arista. Have you always thrown that far?"
"...I don't know."
I truly didn't. Had Arista been hiding her strength all this time? Thinking that, I fetched the javelin back and this time fixed my eyes on a rock in the distance. I threw at that rock. Two steps to its side, then one. And on the final throw, the javelin flew even farther than the rock. At least now I could put it where I meant to.
I might actually be able to pull this off.
"No."
But barely half a day after discovering the possibility, I hit a wall.
"Why not?"
"I already told you no."
Mother was sorting grain by hand—the batch I'd brought her—and I trailed after her like a child, pestering without an ounce of shame. "Today I threw the spear farther than anyone."
"So?"
What was with that reaction? "I'm good at it! Best of all the girls!"
"At your age, I threw farther than you." Mother slid the basket aside as if it were nothing. Liar!
"Really?"
"Why would I lie about that?"
For a moment I had nothing. My gaze drifted, unbidden, to Mother's arms. Her clothes hid them well enough, but come to think of it, Mother worked every single day without rest too.
"Then why not? You did it too—the javelin. So the spear—"
"It's different." One clean cut. "Throwing far and learning to kill a man are two different things."
"Why? It's not as if you're saying I can't."
Mother's hands stopped. Seeing what looked like an opening, I pressed a little harder. "What if I end up better than Telekles?"
"Still no."
"Then why on earth not?"
"Because you're a girl."
The reason came far too easily. Because you're a girl. Mother said it as though it were nothing at all, in a tone as self-evident as water flowing downhill—and that very casualness stopped me cold.
"That's it? Then why do girls run, and wrestle, and throw javelins?"
"Because you must be healthy."
"All of that, but fighting is off-limits?"
"Do you want to go to war? Your brother has learned nothing else since the age of seven."
"Then let me learn it too—"
"And will you join the syssitia? Sleep among them, eat with them, march with them, live under their orders?"
The words caught in my throat.
"That is their lot."
Mother studied me for a moment as I moved to raise another objection, then went back to sorting the grain. "The world does not change just because you don't understand it."
I shut my mouth. That line was the one that pissed me off most.
In this house, Mother was anything but weak. She managed the estate when Father was away, set the Helots to their tasks, decided where the grain and oil went. And a woman like that said, without a flicker of hesitation, that women do not go to war.
Fine, then. I would draw my own simple conclusion. Then I just won't ask permission.
From that day on, I observed Telekles. No—to be precise, I waited for the moments he was alone. The opening finally came three days later, at evening: the window after Telekles returned home from training. He had handed something to Mother and was sorting his gear in the courtyard.
I picked up the wooden pole I'd prepared in advance and moved to the spot where Telekles couldn't possibly miss me. Then I took my stance—left foot back, point low—and, gripping close to the butt end of the pole, thrust.
"Hey. Arista."
Instant reaction. I feigned deafness and thrust again.
"What are you doing."
"Can't you tell? Practicing."
Telekles's face crumpled. "You can't hold it like that."
"Then how? You said you wouldn't teach me." I asked, staring down at the pole, but he kept his mouth shut. So I reset my stance and deliberately slid my grip even farther back.
"That's even worse. Your balance is all off."
"Where's the balance point, then?"
"It's just a little forward of the middle—"
He stopped mid-sentence. I gazed at him with wide, innocent eyes, but he was already glaring back like he'd seen through everything.
"You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"
"Doing what?"
I thrust again, playing dumb. This time I bent my wrist at an angle wrong enough that Telekles couldn't look away.
"Ah!"
Telekles hurried over at last. "Hey! You'll wreck your wrist like that."
"It's fine. It's my wrist."
"If you get hurt, what's Father going to say—and to whom?"
I laughed. As if the act no longer mattered, I raised the pole again.
"Hold on. What are you trying to do now."
"Practicing, like I said?"
I took the thrusting stance again—a hopeless mess of a pose, wrong in every obvious way.
"Are you actually insane?"
"I did crack my head, remember."
Telekles dragged a hand down his face. "Quit hiding behind that excuse."
"Why? It works."
He stared at me for a long moment, then finally held out his hand. "Give it here."
I met his eyes for a beat, then handed over the pole. Telekles took my hands and moved them where they belonged.
"That's farther forward than before?"
"That's how you find your balance."
He looked down at my feet too, nudging my toes with his own to correct my stance.
"Like this—"
Telekles froze mid-word. A thoroughly odd expression on his face. He seemed to realize only then what he was doing.
I just kept watching him quietly. Say anything here, and I figured he'd bolt.
"...Just the basics."
"Really?"
"And if Father catches us, I had nothing to do with it."
Telekles sighed. Then he picked up a real spear propped at the edge of the courtyard and held it out to me. "Take it."
I set down the pole and accepted the spear with both hands—and knew at once that it was nothing like a javelin. A grin slipped out of me before I could stop it, and Telekles spoke immediately.
"Don't grin."
"I wasn't grinning."
Telekles said nothing more, just rapped the hands gripping the spear. "Wrong again." I fixed my grip, and this time he tapped my legs; fix the legs, and he tapped my hips. Then the corrections circled back to the spear.
"Your point dropped."
"Ah, ssibal."
Telekles stopped dead at my words. "What in the world does ssibal mean?"
I hesitated. Was I supposed to tell him it was a curse? "It means 'focus.'"
Telekles stared hard at me. "You're lying, aren't you?"
"...Yeah."
He nudged my spear point upward with a finger. "Again."
Swallowing a laugh, I took my stance. This time, the secret training had truly begun.