Alcestis by Katharine Beutner

of fifty men; some came with only a few attendants. Each tried to anticipate what sort of behavior would best please Pelias: deference or defiance, boldness or restraint. I watched them from the bedchamber window, counting their horses and guards, hoping the kitchens were adequately prepared for this onslaught of stomachs. Pelias would kill thirty cows for sacrifice, and the meat kept for mortals would have to suffice.
    I looked for Admetus, looked for his slender brown body and ready smile, but he did not appear. The courtyard filled with men, all slapping at each other in that mock-friendly way, slinging arms around each other’s shoulders and shouting out their surprise when they saw old friends. I began to wonder if we should’ve hidden the wine rather than stockpiling it for this night. Already the courtyard and the palace were thick with the smells of horses and men, sweat and hot urine, oatcakes and burnt oil, road dust floating in the air.
    Phylomache and I had been told to stay inside until the slaughtering was done. I couldn’t see the bonfire from the bedchamber, but I knew when the sacrifice began—the men quieted as if stoppers had been put in their mouths and the chosen cows began to low as the slaves led them in from the pen beyond the gates. Pelias shouted out an invocation to the gods, dedicating the feast to Demeter for the safe delivery of his child. Distance blurred his words, but I could hear that it was a man’s prayer of thanks for birth, not a woman’s, and not only because he didn’t mention Eileithyia. He never spoke of Phylomache by name. Antinoe he named three times, though he did not mention her sex. I wondered what Demeter thought of being honored for the birth of female children.
    The animals’ dying gurgles came to us only faintly, but we could hear the thud when each cow fell to the dirt, knees buckling as its blood sprayed over Pelias’s hands. I didn’t need to see the slaughter to imagine it; I’d watched so many creatures die by the knife that it hardly bothered me anymore. The calves— sometimes they upset me, especially when they called for their mothers. I doubt I ever called for my dead mother as a child—I hadn’t known what a mother was until I was old enough to speak and understand my siblings—but the helpless desperation in their animal voices left me unsettled.
    “I hate listening to this,” Phylomache groaned, shifting on the bed. “I wish they’d do it somewhere else.”
    “They’d still be killing cows whether you heard it or not.” I turned my back on the window.
    “If I couldn’t hear it, I wouldn’t have to think about it,” Phylomache said, and put her hands over her ears carefully, so she wouldn’t muss her hair. When the sounds stopped, I touched her arm, and she smiled at me, grateful.
    “We should go to them,” she said, settling her shawl around her shoulders. “Are you ready?” She looked lovelier than she had when she married Pelias, pink with health and still plump from pregnancy, her unbound breasts full above her feast-day bodice. She wore a gold necklace with beads shaped like ivy leaves, a thin glitttering rope across her collarbone. I looked down at my own body, unbreached.
    “I’ll never be more ready,” I said.
    The men had become loud again by the time Phylomache and I reached the courtyard. They’d collected the portion for the gods and set it aflame, and the column of smoke drifted into the dusky sky above the palace, reaching up to Olympus. The courtyard smelled of blood and burnt flesh. I coughed into my sleeve then grabbed Phylomache’s hand. We walked along the long table until we found the empty places beside Pelias. A skinny man with black tattoos twining around one arm moved down the bench to give us even more room.
    Pelias did not announce us, but the men turned to watch us as we sat, a row of eyes following our movements. Phylomache smiled demurely, but I could not; I pressed close to her, our hips jammed