Atalanta and the Golden Apples

Long ago, in a sunny land where olive groves trembled in the wind and the mountainsides glowed with wild thyme, there lived a girl named Atalanta. Her face, people said, was too boyish for a girl and too girlish for a boy, and she ran faster than anyone else in all of Arcadia. With her bow over her shoulder and her quiver at her side, she roamed the woods and knew every path and every spring. When her father once asked an old oracle about her future, the answer came quiet and clear: 'Atalanta, do not marry. Marriage will be your ruin.' She listened carefully. Then she turned her back on the village market and went back into the forest, where she belonged.

But a girl who could run faster than deer could not be hidden for long. Tales of her flew from town to town, and soon young men came from near and far to ask for her hand. They stood in her father's courtyard with flowers and promises, but she would not marry any of them. At last she thought of a condition meant to send every one of them away. 'Whoever wishes to take me to wife,' she said, 'must race against me. If he beats me, I am his. But if I beat him, he must pay with his life.' She hoped the hard words would frighten off every single suitor. Instead, more came. For she was as beautiful as a sunrise, and people are sometimes braver than they are wise.

On every race day the whole region gathered along the long sandy track. Atalanta let her cloak fall and stood ready in a short white tunic, light as the wind. When the starting signal rang out, she flew off like an arrow. The sun glittered in her hair, which lay across her shoulders like a golden cloud, and the hem of her dress fluttered behind her. Her feet barely touched the sand. And however fast the suitor ran, she slipped past him as if he stood still. That day, like so many days before, it went as she had promised: the young man ran his last race. The people sighed and turned for home, and Atalanta went back to the forest without looking behind her.