Run, Then (part 3)
"Men often gave up early, realizing too late that their pride had outpaced their bodies."
Hello! I have returned from the land of the dead (aka being sick) to bring you this next installment in my Atalanta retelling. This ‘chapter’ is a flashback to the race against Hippomenes, the one that launched this story into infamy. I hope you enjoy it!
Since it’s a flashback, you can start here if you wnat, but be sure to check out part 1 and part 2 at some point. I’ve been loving telling this story, and I hope you all like it, too!
If you like my mythology retellings, consider purchasing a copy of my debut short story and poetry collection, Turning & Turning at the link below:
3. The Race
Before the orchard, before the exile, before the gods laid their hands on her ribs and tried to hollow her into something obedient—there was only the race.
Not the first one. Not the second. Not the dozens she ran as a girl in the mountains, sprinting beside wolves and outrunning the wind until her lungs seared and her feet bled.
No. The race. The one men later sang about as though they had been there, as though they had felt the earth tremble beneath her stride.
She remembers the morning of it with unnatural clarity, the way survivors sometimes recall the moments before a shipwreck—the air tight with omen, the sky too bright, the body convinced of doom even as the mind insists on calm.
The track had been carved in a gentle arc around the palace courtyard. Spectators pressed against the rope boundaries, their chatter sharp and metallic in the air. Women watched with cautious excitement; men watched with hunger disguised as admiration.
Atalanta stood at the starting line, hands at her sides, breath even and quiet. She had not bothered with the ceremonial tunic. She wore a simple runner’s wrap, linen bound tight around her chest and hips. The morning light turned her skin the color of burnished clay.
Across from her, Hippomenes waited. He looked nothing like the poets would later describe. No heroic sheen, no god-touched beauty. He was lanky, a little hollow-cheeked, hair sticking to his forehead from nerves. His eyes were sharp with something like desperation, though he tried to mask it with a confident tilt of his chin.
He kept glancing toward the raised platform where Aphrodite’s statue loomed over the courtyard. No offerings yet lay at its feet. The marble hands were empty, the carved lips caught in an eternal half-smile that suggested she had already chosen the outcome.
Atalanta stretched her fingers. Her joints cracked quietly. The sound steadied her.
She didn’t fear losing. She feared winning—because the consequence was always the same. Another man dead. Another family grieving. Another round of whispers about the unnatural woman who ran like a curse.
But refusing to run was unthinkable. Running was the only thing that had ever felt like prayer.
The herald raised his arm.
“Are you ready?” he called.
Hippomenes nodded sharply. Atalanta did not nod. She simply breathed.
A hush swept the crowd.
“Begin!”
They exploded from the line. The world narrowed instantly: the pounding of her heartbeat, the steady pull of her breath, the exact angle of her lean into the wind. She surged forward, sand kicking up behind her. Hippomenes ran hard, harder than she expected, his stride long and heavy, his breath gasping in sharp bursts.
For a brief moment, she admired him for it. Men often gave up early, realizing too late that their pride had outpaced their bodies. But Hippomenes kept close, close enough that she could hear each exhale like a plea.
Halfway around the track, she felt the wrongness. Not fear. Not danger. Something more subtle, like the faint metallic taste of water drawn from a poisoned well. She didn’t glance back—she never glanced back—but she felt the shift in the air as surely as if a hand had brushed her spine.
A glint of gold rolled past her peripheral vision. She knew, instantly, what it was.
Aphrodite’s apple.
The crowd gasped. Not at the apple itself—most of them didn’t understand—but at her split-second hesitation.
Because she did hesitate. Not from greed, not from curiosity, but from fury. The apple was not meant for Hippomenes. It was meant for her. A distraction, a trap, a test designed by gods who believed women’s willpower was soft as fruit flesh.
Her stride faltered—barely, but enough. Hippomenes snatched the moment. He sprinted ahead, grabbing the apple as he passed, holding it aloft like a prize. A cheer rose from the stands.
Atalanta steadied her breath. She could make up the distance. She would make up the distance.
But as she surged forward, the second apple dropped. And for the briefest heartbeat, she felt seen. Not as a runner. Not as a woman. As a creature the gods wanted to break.
Anger flared hot in her throat. Her pace staggered, then recovered. She cursed herself for the stumble. She would never admit, aloud or otherwise, that indignation was a heavier shackle than fear.
Hippomenes was ahead now, two strides, then three.
She closed the gap.
He dropped the third apple—not behind him, but ahead of her, rolling it into her path, gambling on her pride, on her rage, on the very emotion the gods had stoked inside her.
For a moment, the sunlight struck the apple’s surface, and the gold flashed so brightly it seared her vision.
The wrongness surged. A prickling along her arms. A hum in her teeth. A whisper she could not quite hear. She jumped the apple, landed clean, kept running. Hippomenes’ breath hitched. He had not expected that.
But the damage was done. She was a half-stride behind, then a full stride. And the race ended not at a distant finish line but at the altar itself—where Aphrodite waited with invisible hands.
She crossed second.
The crowd erupted.
Hippomenes collapsed to his knees, clutching the apples, wheezing with relief. Men surrounded him, slapping his back, praising his cleverness.
Women watched Atalanta with a grief that felt like shared memory. She stood very still.
Hippomenes lifted his head. Their eyes met. He did not smile. He only looked…afraid. Afraid of the thing he had won. Afraid of the woman he would have to marry. Afraid that the gods had touched this race in ways he did not understand.
Atalanta inhaled once, deeply, letting the scent of the crowd, the dust, the sunlight settle into her lungs.
She felt the wrongness again—low, vibrating, inevitable.
It was not the race that had doomed her. It was the hesitation.
And gods remember hesitation the way mortals remember sin.