“I’ve missed my time!” the queen cried happily. The other three women screeched and swarmed her, while I sat some distance away, drawing shapes in the sand with Myrrha.

A month at least had passed, I had been told, given the cycle of the moon. I’d continued in both my service to the young princess and the queen, neither of whom would let the other have my full attention for long.

I spent most of my time with Myrrha, as the queen frequented the king’s chambers at night and sometimes during the day when there were no state affairs which needed attending, and I still felt and icy chill hanging on the air when I was alone with the queen’s maids.

In recent days, I’d taken to sleeping on the sofa in the antechamber most nights, both to greet the queen when she returned from her visit with the king and to hold her hair from her face while I dabbed her forehead with a moist cloth each morning as she emptied her stomach of the previous night’s meal. Sophia, Korinna, and Berenice chattered quietly amongst themselves pretending they couldn’t be heard regarding the queen’s health, and the queen pretended their prattle wasn’t concerning her behavior at all, so I chose to wonder in silence what this routine meant. I was gravely concerned, though it seemed I was perhaps the only one.

I hadn’t a clue what the queen could have missed that would render her so pleased. Cenchreis’s eyes danced in the sunlight as we sat on the beach and held the childlike wonder I often saw in her daughter’s eyes. She caught my gaze and looked at me curiously. “Can you not find it within you to share my joy, Aphrodite?” Her tone was casual though she chastised me. I realized I should have shared in the excitement that I didn’t understand.

“Forgive me, my queen,” I smiled and dipped my head formally since we were in the public eye. A few of the men of the king’s household had accompanied us mostly for safety’s sake, but there was also the rumor surrounding my arrival that had spread throughout the village and turned into somewhat of a myth regarding a mermaid who could grant wishes or some other nonsense. Korinna continued to gaze back at one of them, smiling coyly, and the young man would blush when he was caught staring. My mind wandered to thoughts of her sneaking into hidden alcoves around the palace to meet the young man, and those thoughts landed, as always, heartbreakingly on Hephaestus.

“Aphrodite?” the queen asked, and my mind snapped back to the present. She giggled, her eyes dancing. “Your mind was clearly elsewhere.”

“Forgive me,” I repeated. “But I’m afraid I do not understand the source of the excitement.” 

Korinna jerked her head back from another flirtatious stare upon hearing my statement. “What do you mean you don’t understand?”

I looked at her sheepishly, but I failed to come up with an excuse beyond simply stating the truth. “I’m sorry.”

Cenchreis beckoned her daughter to come over to her, and then commissioned the child to find a particular sized scalloped shell from upon the beach. As she splashed out of ear-shot, the queen leaned into me. “My time, Aphrodite,” she emphasized. “It hasn’t come.” When I still stared blankly at her, she asked me quietly. “Do you not know what this means?”

Berenice took it a step further. “How could she not know what this means, Cenchreis?” she raved in disbelief. Then her countenance fell. “Unless...”

Sophia’s took to whispering what they spoke of in my ear. As my jaw fell, and I paled at her words, the faces of Cenchreis and Korinna turned down to match Berenice’s.

Recognizing the expression, I asked them why they were so downtrodden suddenly. Korinna bit her lip, Sophia looked away, and Berenice only sighed. It was Cenchreis who offered explanation. “Women who are able to bare children experience this once every cycle of the moon. I take it you have not?”

When I shook my head, realization dawn upon me why the four of them were so downcast. They presumed this meant I could not have a child, though I still was completely uncertain as to why I needed to go through such a detestable trial so frequently in order to be deemed worthy of a child. I spoke this thought aloud.

Sophia suddenly giggled uncontrollably, and Korinna stifled a smile. “Wait,” Sophia asserted with an expression of complete disbelief. “Where do you think children come from?”

I realized I hadn’t really given it much though until now. I only knew the queen desperately wanted to give the king a son and an heir, something his other wives had failed to do and had paid dearly for that failure. It never occurred to me to question how she might achieve such a feat.

Given the reaction of the women, I was consumed with humiliation. There was so much that I discovered newly on a daily basis, but, somehow, not knowing details regarding something that was so central to my gender’s role set my constitution unraveling. I couldn’t find the courage to look at any of them, so I turned my attention to Myrrha, still splashing just on the edge of the surf in her mission to retrieve the perfect shell.

“Aphrodite.” Cenchreis’s soft voice charmed me into reluctantly turning my head to face her. “We all know what you’ve been through; I’m sorry some of us have appeared insensitive.” She shot an unpleasant look in Sophia’s direction.

“It’s fine,” I stammered still desperate to look away. 

“No, it’s not,” Sophia apologized with genuine regret in her voice. “You’ve just become so much a part of us that I forget that, well, you’re not exactly like us.” 

I would likely have been offended if that weren’t true; I wasn’t like them. I never would be.

The four women exchanged several looks of interest, until Cenchreis rolled her eyes and stood. She walked the few paces which separated us, sat next to me on the cloth we’d spread, and then she leaned over and whispered a brief but detailed explanation in my ears. I knew my face reddened, and my expression had become comical in response to what she told me; Berenice, Sophia, and Korinna had been sitting in baited silence to witness my reaction, and it was apparently everything they had expected it would be.

“So when you go to the king...?” I let my question trail, and the queen simply nodded laughing a bit at my reaction as well. Though my mind filled with even more questions, the comedy of the situation dawned upon me, and I began to laugh as well. “So you’re carrying a child?”

Our fit of laughter struck the curiosity of Myrrha, who returned triumphant with both hands full of shells to match the description of the treasure the queen’s quest had requested of her.

As the child returned, the queen put a finger to her lips, but then nodded. “I believe so, but I’ll need at least another moon’s cycle to be certain — before I tell the king.”

Myrrha plopped down in front of us all to display her treasures. “Why are you laughing?” she asked innocently. Cenchreis calmed long enough to reply that it was an adult conversation, and she would learn when she was older. She replied by twisting her face into an unmistakably disapproving look which only incited further laughter from all of us.

“Show us what you found, Myrrha,” I suggested as a distraction. She was only too happy to oblige, and the young girl made a spectacle of spreading out her findings on the sand for display. Once she was satisfied that we had oohed and ahhed enough, she handed each of us one of the scalloped shells she’d found. When she arrived at me, she bent down and whispered softly in my ear, “I saved the prettiest one for you.”

A short time later as the sun finally grew hot overhead, our small party returned to the palace, heading straight for the baths to wash the sand and salt from our skin. Myrrha joined us, and I took to helping the child cleanse her own body before I tackled the grime on my own skin. I felt certain Cenchreis and Berenice watched me closely with Myrrha, and at least once I caught a look of pity from Korinna. I couldn’t know what exactly what they were thinking, but I surmised from our conversations on the beach that they wondered what would become of me if I indeed was unable to have children. The thought had crossed my mind several times since our conversation already. Still, I couldn’t let the thought haunt me if there was nothing to be done.

Yet, it did haunt me, and, as the months passed watching the queen’s belly swell with the child that indeed grew in her womb, I felt an aching and an emptiness that I couldn’t explain. I followed closely as she made a trek, weekly at least, to the temple of Hera, praying and making offerings to the solemn and blank-faced goddess of stone. Even as the queen and her ladies — and even Myrrha — told me the stories of their deities, I found it difficult to dedicate any sort of devotion to a statue of stone which had yet given me any reason to believe in prayers, but I said nothing to Cenchreis or any of the girls given how they all praised the queen of the gods for her pregnancy. Each visit she would kneel, even when her belly swelled to the point that she required a great deal of assistance to do so, and rock to and fro with her eyes closed, whispering, “Please grant me a son. Please grant me a son.”

The queen’s cries seemed to echo throughout the whole of the palace. It was an abnormally hot afternoon when the baby decided it was time to greet the world.

Having never been present for the birth of a child, I was completely useless in the presence of all of the other women in the queen’s household. A woman who was called a midwife was brought in to bring forth the baby, and the queen’s ladies were flustered beyond any sort of utility.

I stopped Berenice on of her flurried travels from the birthing chamber through the room where I waited. “Please tell me how she is?” I asked her.

“How should I know?” she snapped. “I’ve never given birth.” 

“But surely you were present when Myrrha was born?” She shook her head to the contrary. 

“No, I wasn’t with the queen then.” Without another word she hurried out into the corridors on the orders of the midwife to complete some errand. 

“Aphrodite?” Small blue eyes surrounded by blond curls peered through the doorway. 

“Myrrha!” I held open my arms to receive her. Her teeth gleamed in the sunlight as she smiled and launched herself into my arms. Her leg pressed the small scalloped shell she’d given me into my hip; it was a precious reminder of the child, and I kept it tucked into my chiton always. 

“How is Momma?” She only address her mother informally when she was worried.

“I haven’t seen her,” I told her truthfully, “but I believe she is well. You will have a new baby brother or sister very soon.”

“Will Momma still love me if the baby is a boy?” 

“Oh, Myrrha,” I sighed, hugging her tightly. Even at such a young age, she knew the value of this child being born male. “Of course she will! She will love you both equally no matter what!” Cinyras had been doting on his pregnant wife since the night he’d assaulted me in the corridor, but never ceased reminding her of the importance of her growing a prince and an heir within her womb. I had watched more than once the pressure overcome my dear friend; she cried when she thought she was alone over something which she knew she no control. I accompanied her to the temple, only because, though I saw no value in her actions and couldn’t comprehend that a stone would hear her cries, it brought her comfort, so I never questioned the behavior. Myrrha, too, had witnessed her mother’s distress, and it brought worry to the child’s heart.

“I want Momma to have a boy,” she said with absolute resolve. 

“And why is that, my love?” I asked her smiling. 

“I think Father will love her if it is a boy this time.” 

I pursed my lips together at the pointedness of her words. “Your father loves your mother.” I doubted my own words, but I wouldn’t let the child believe anything to the contrary. She was far to young to bear the burden of my doubt.

She shook her head. “No, not yet,” she answered me. “I’ve heard him say so.” 

I was taken aback. “What have you heard, my child?” 

“I heard him when I was with him once talking to Lord Zeus,” she answered without hesitation. “He said he would love a son, or he would love another wife.”

Cenchreis cried out with labor pain once more, and Myrrha was clearly distressed by the sound. I was grateful for the interruption. She wrinkled her forehead. “I hope I am never a queen. Having a baby does not sound like fun.”

“Not only queens have babies you know. If you want to be a mother, you’ll have to have a child.”

She stuck out her tongue. “Not if I’m like you!” she exclaimed looking into my eyes. “You’re like my mother, and you don’t have any babies. I want to be like you!”

I laughed as Cenchreis screamed again, and Myrrha winced and trembled in my arms. “Perhaps you should go back amongst your sisters and wait. I promise I will come find you when the baby is born. Your mother will need you.”

She beamed. “You think so?” She wriggled from my arms to the floor. 

“I know so.” 

Convinced, Myrrha turned to skip down the hallway. “See you soon, Aphrodite!” 

I winced as the queen screamed again, for the first time thankful that there was a chance I lacked the ability to carry a child.

Commotion in the adjoining corridor diverted my attention, and the king rounded the corner quickly, the waves of fabric in his garment flaring elegantly behind him. “How is she?” he asked harshly as another cry pierced the air.

“Laboring,” I answered, shortly, absolutely hoping he picked up on my tone. The king’s sallow brow was taut and beaded with perspiration. The stress of the labor was evident in his demeanor so much so that he might have been in as much emotional pain as was his wife’s physical pain. I would have felt some sympathy for the man if I didn’t know his concern was for the child — and then only if the child were male — and not for the sufferings of his wife.

“There is still no baby?” he pressed. 

“None yet, sire,” I answered curtly. He noticed my tone but ignored it. “But her labor has been but a few hours. I’m told it could extend for much longer.”

He growled in response and turned to go as another cry perforated the tension in the air. 

This cry was young, innocent, the cry of new life. The king nearly shoved me into the closed door of the chamber. “Find out if I have a son!” he ordered of me, as the door flew open behind me, and I nearly toppled the woman on the other side. It was Berenice, her eyes misty and warm.

“Well?” the king urged. 

“You have a son, Your Majesty,” she said softly with pride. “A strong and healthy son.” 

The king’s entire countenance changed as he beheld the small, still squirming bundle that would one day inherit his entire kingdom. I expected him to reach out for the child, but he merely stared at the baby, almost in disbelief.

“Would you like to see the queen?” Berenice asked. “She’s been prepared to receive you.” 

He flinched. “No, let her rest.” His eyes never left the child. Berenice was clearly disturbed and disappointed by his response.

He turned to the manservant near him. “Prepare the offering. We go to Zeus’s temple immediately.” The man gestured some symbol of compliance before he marched off down the hall.

“Has she named him?” the king questioned. I found it surprising that she be given such a privilege.

“She wishes to call him Androcles, my lord.” 

“Androcles,” the king whispered, letting the name sit on his tongue as if he were tasting it. “Androcles, son of Cinyras, prince of Paphos,” he muttered under his breath. He looked up at Berenice, ripping his eyes from the child. “Tell his mother I’ve gone to the temple, but I intend to come to her when I return. I must waste no time thanking the Lord Zeus for this blessing.” With those words, the king turned and vanished down the corridor as quickly as he’d come.

I bit my tongue hard to prevent myself from vocalizing the thoughts occupying my mind regarding the king’s deplorable behavior, but one look in Berenice’s eyes reflected each of my thoughts back at me. She sighed heavily. “May I enter now?” I asked tentatively. 

“Of course!” Berenice stepped aside. “She asked of you several times.” The young woman laughed. “I think she was worried about you.”

I let my surprise show. “Me? Why?” 

“I think she feared you might be saddened with thoughts that you might not...” she sucked her lips into her mouth as if she’d thought better of her words.

I cast them aside. “Berenice, after what I just heard through these stone walls, I’m quite glad I might not,” I replied, ending my sentence where she’d left hers.

She laughed softly and filed into the room behind me. The antechamber swarmed with women, most of who appeared to be gathering a vast assortment of additions to the room that had appeared the moment the baby had decided he was ready for the world. The room was hazy and heady with burning incense. Several basins of water had been added to cleanse both the baby and the mother. Sheets of now stained fabric were, thankfully, tucked away into woven baskets to be carted off and destroyed.

In the queen’s chamber, Sophia and Korinna knelt beside the beautifully exhausted queen, who sat almost straight up, her head turned to the side as she rested. My movement into the room darkened the doorway, disturbing her so that she rotated her head forward and her eyes fluttered open.

Immediately I apologized for disturbing her as Berenice shimmied into the room from behind me and moved to the side of the queen’s bed where a small woven basinet had been assembled.

“Aphrodite,” she smiled. Then she looked to Berenice. “He isn’t coming is he?” 

Berenice struggled for words, so I offered them. “Cenchreis, he is overjoyed and overwhelmed. The king ordered his men to accompany him to Zeus’s temple for an offering immediately. But he assured us he would come to you and the baby after he returns.” 

She seemed satisfied by my explanation, but disappointed. “Did he hold him?” Berenice shook her head. “No, my lady.” Cenchreis closed her eyes in thought and sighed. When she opened them again, her focus was on me. She smiled brilliantly. “Have you?”

“Have I what?” I asked. “Have you held him?” I trembled noticeably. “No, Cenc – my lady,” I stuttered. 

She laughed, the same musical laughter I remembered from her the first day we met. “Hold my son, Aphrodite.”

Berenice moved toward me, but I tilted my head and shook it hesitantly.  Cenchreis would not take no for an answer. “You won’t hurt him, if that’s what you fear.” 

“It’s not that,” I sputtered. When I paused, I realized that I couldn’t offer a single reason to account for my wavering.

I mimicked the way Berenice’s arms were crossed, allowed the maiden to place the young prince in my arms. His lying in the folds of my embrace felt so natural and calming, I couldn’t imagine why I’d hesitated in the first place. He slept, so I couldn’t see his eyes, though Korinna mentioned that they were blue and would be, at least for a while. “I hope they stay that way,” came Sophia’s reply. In my heart, I hoped he retained his mother’s eyes as well. The top of his head was already lightly dusted with soft wisps of ebony hair, like the darker shade which peppered through his father’s own hair.

He was the first male child I’d held descended from this household. Regrettably, the next, born many years later, would not be born to the same good fortune.