A to Z: Zenais!

 

    I am so excited for today's post!  Not because it represents the successful conclusion of the challenge, but because it's about Zenais!  😁

    She's a character I added to the new draft of The Martial Maenads, and I am super-proud of her.  (Even if she is rather blatantly, erm, inspired by someone else's character...)

    But first, a little background on the situation in which Atalanta and Ariadne meet her.  They've been sent to Thrace to deal with the threat of Bromalios, an imposter god claiming to be equal parts Dionysos and Ares.  (Hence the title of the novel, lol!)  After they're accepted into the cult's headquarters--which is more the ancient version of a cult than the modern version, I hasten to add--the girls find they're required to be given lessons in "dance" and song in order to be capable enough to be properly initiated into the cult itself.  And one of the "dance" instructors is Zenais, granddaughter of Heracles.  (Her name essentially means "daughter of Zeus," though in this context it's obviously not strictly literal.  (She is genuinely the great-granddaughter of Zeus, though!  Because these are novels in which the Greek gods are very real...))

    It's a long quote, but here's the first time Atalanta and Ariadne meet Zenais:

            The courtyard was filled with the other trainees milling about as they arrived.  They hadn’t even picked a place to stand before Atalanta heard a voice exclaim “Oh, you must be the new girls!”
            As Atalanta watched in stunned shock, an enormous woman ran over to her and Ariadne.  The woman was nearly as tall as Eurysakes, and every bit as muscular.  She was dressed just like the other initiates, except that the skin she wore over her tunic was that of a lion, its head dangling down onto her shoulder blades.  “Wow, you’re even prettier than they said!” the woman exclaimed, looking at them with a bright smile on her face.  She was older than the cousins by perhaps as much as a decade, but certainly not more than that.
            “Um…you…are…?” Ariadne started, looking at the huge woman with a befuddlement that made Atalanta want to laugh.
            “You can call me Zenais,” the woman said.  “Gosh, your eyes are amazing!  Like the clouds before a storm.  They really draw you in…”  She moved closer to Ariadne as she was speaking, as if her eyes really were pulling her closer, like a fisherman with his net.
            “Ah…um…thank you…?”
            “I want to know all about you!” Zenais said, grabbing Ariadne’s hand in hers.  Then she gasped, and let go again.  “No, wait, sorry—trainees are off-limits.  I remembered that, really!”  She laughed nervously before giving Ariadne a wide grin.  “But once you’re initiated, then we should go drinking and—”
            Someone on the far side of the courtyard coughed loudly.
            “Oh!  Sorry!”  Zenais ran over to the other end of the courtyard and waved her arms at the assembled trainees.  “Okay, you girls ready for your dance lessons?” she asked eagerly.
            Unlike their tepid response to Arete, most of the trainees cheered.
            “Right, so today we’re going to focus on this move!”  She held one half-fisted hand beside her hip, and the other in front of her belly, then thrust them both forward, raising them a little at the same time.  “So, do about…what, a couple hundred of those?”
            “A couple hundred?” Ariadne repeated, almost in a shout.
            “What?  It’s not that many!” Zenais claimed.
            Demostrate stepped up beside her, glaring at Zenais over crossed arms.  “Most of these girls are not the granddaughter of Heracles, Zenais.”
            Zenais just laughed.
            “Girls, you just do that move until we tell you to stop,” Demostrate said, looking at them.  “We don’t care how many times you perform the move, just that you do it right.”
            “Yeah, that!” Zenais agreed, nodding.  “I’ll be moving around and checking out your form as you practice,” she added.  “Now, get started!”
            All the other girls started immediately, but Atalanta was playing over the move in her head, trying to figure out why it felt so weird to her.  Ariadne was scowling at everything around them.
            “Is she really the granddaughter of Heracles?” Ariadne asked.
            “That’s what everyone says,” Eumelia said in between moves.
            “How else would she be so big?” Xanthippe added weakly.
            “Half-giant?” Ariadne suggested shrugging.  “Or maybe she’s Eurysakes’ half-sister.”
            Atalanta laughed.  “I could believe it!”
            “You should get to practicing before she sees you shirking,” Eumelia whispered.  “She likes you right now—getting on her bad side is like death.”
            Ariadne grimaced, then started half-heartedly practicing the move, her left arm and her right arm moving far different amounts.  The disjointedness of that suddenly let Atalanta understand what the move reminded her of:  it was like striking with a spear!
            Armed with that realization, Atalanta tried it, closing her eyes and imagining that she was holding her father’s spear in her hands, driving it forwards to take the life of some vile foe who was threatening her or Ariadne.  It felt right, natural even, and she repeated it over and over again.
            “Hey, great form!”  At the sound of Zenais’ voice in front of her, Atalanta opened her eyes again to see the enormous woman nodding at her.  “You’re a natural!”
            “Um…thank you?”  Unsure what else to do or say, Atalanta repeated the move.
            “Yup, great, great.  It’s like you’ve done this before!”
            “Ah…I kind of have…but not empty-handed?”
            Zenais’ eyes widened, then she laughed.  “Right, raised by Amazons, of course!”  She clapped Atalanta on the shoulder so hard that she almost stumbled forward.  Then Zenais glanced around them, and leaned in to whisper in Atalanta’s ear.  “Maybe don’t tell anyone else that, okay?  Not how the trainees are supposed to approach things.”
            “O-okay?”
            Zenais nodded, and moved over to watch Ariadne practicing.  That wiped the smile clean off her face.  “No, no, not like that,” she said, moving closer.  “Keep your hands together.”
            Ariadne shifted her hands closer together and tried again, but they still went off in different directions as she performed the move.
            “No, I mean move them together,” Zenais said.  “See, look how your sister is doing it!”
            Atalanta performed the move for Ariadne a couple of times, but when Ariadne tried again, she was still moving her hands in different directions, making Zenais let out an unhappy grunt.
            “No, move them the same—imagine you’re holding something in your hands as you do it,” Zenais said.  “Like a…a…um…oh!  Imagine you’re holding a thyrsos, and you’re moving it forward in time with the beat of a song!”
            Blushing uncomfortably, Ariadne tried again.  This time, her hands were almost moving the same amount and in the same direction.
            “Almost!”  Zenais stepped even closer, bringing her body entirely in between Atalanta and Ariadne.  “See, start with your  hand here, and this hand here, then you thrust forward—” for some reason she thrust her hips slightly towards Ariadne as she spoke, “—and then they end up here.  See?”  Zenais stepped away again, revealing that Ariadne’s face was now entirely bright red.  “Okay, try again.”
            This time, Ariadne performed the move almost perfectly, leading to an excessive amount of praise from Zenais…who then just stayed there, watching Ariadne perform the  move over and over again.  For long enough that it was starting to make Atalanta’s skin crawl.
            “Hey, is it true you’re the granddaughter of Heracles?” Atalanta asked, as a distraction.
            Zenais laughed.  “Yeah.  At least, that what my father always claimed!”  She shrugged.  “Apparently, my grandma was some pretty girl who comforted Heracles after the death of his boyfriend, and next thing ya know she was giving birth to a grandson of Zeus!”  She shook her head.  “Must’ve been true, ‘cause my pa had his father’s own bad luck with wives.  My ma was something like his fifth wife, but I was his first—and only—child.”
            “Should a granddaughter of Heracles really be supporting someone who says he wants to take over from Zeus?” Ariadne asked, looking at Zenais with narrowed eyes.
            Zenais laughed uncomfortably, looking away from her gaze.  “Oh!  Hey, you’re doing that wrong!”  Without another word, she ran off to correct the form of one of the other trainees.

    Then the next morning, when it's time for "dance" lessons, this happens:

            When they returned to the courtyard, Ariadne was a little disappointed to see a different woman would be running the lessons.  “It’s not always Zenais?” she asked, making Xanthippe giggle.
            “You didn’t really enjoy her flirting with you, did you?” Eumelia asked, a wounded look in her eyes.
            Ariadne’s face felt hot.  “What?  No!  Of course not!”
            “Wait, is that what she was doing?” Atalanta asked, her eyes widening in shock.
            Ariadne grimaced.  “This is why I can’t let you out of my sight in public,” she sighed.  “Yes, she was, and no, I didn’t want more of the same,” she said, shaking her head.  “But she seemed…”  There were too many ears about for her to say what she was really thinking:  the granddaughter of Heracles seemed both a prime source of accurate information and possibly someone they could convert into an ally if everything went well.  “…a lot easier to deal with than Arete,” Ariadne eventually said, after puzzling over her words for a bit too long.  “Besides, if Arete is always the one handling the ‘singing’ lessons, then wouldn’t the dance lessons always be the same person?”
            “Dancing is mixed up between—” Xanthippe stopped talking briefly to count on her fingers.  “Six instructors,” she said, after tapping the tips of the five fingers of one hand while silently mouthing words along with the gestures.  “Because it’s a lot harder to do, I guess?”
            “I think they all have their own moves they’re best at,” Eumelia said, shrugging.  “Zenais is the most popular of them, but she’s a terrible flirt.”  She scowled, crossing her arms.  “She’s never actually serious about anyone or anything, though.”
            “Well, that makes her like her grandfather, right?” Atalanta laughed.
            “Not every girl wants to be like their father or grandfathers,” Ariadne sighed.  “Most of us would rather die first.”

    I wish I could quote the whole story of how Zenais ended up in service to Bromalios, but it's long, and as I haven't quite released this book yet, I don't want to spoil it! 😉  But I do want to share this one section from the same long conversation between Zenais and Ariadne wherein that story got told.  It had involved a girl, and at the end of the story, Ariadne has one last question about that girl...

            “Did you love her?”
            “Nah, not really.”  Zenais chuckled grimly.  “I’d have said I did at the time, but…guess that’s something I get from my father and grandfather.  And his father, too, even!” she added, with a bit of a guffaw.  “I fall in love pretty easy, but it never lasts.”
            Maybe that was just how it went with descendents of Zeus.  Atalanta’s father had been the same way.  So long as Atalanta never took to such awful behavior, it didn’t matter…
            Suddenly, Zenais was clutching Ariadne’s hand in both of her own.  “But I’m sure that with you it would last!”
            “Somehow, that’s not very convincing.”
            Zenais flushed, and let go of her hand again.  “It’s just…it’d be more healthy.  For you, I mean!”
            “More healthy than what, exactly?”
            Zenais fixed her with such a level stare that it made Ariadne feel an urge to squirm.  “I’ve seen the way you look at your sister sometimes.  We’ve all seen it.  But that’s not good, you know?  She’s your sister.  Only the gods can get away with bedding their sisters.”
            Ariadne’s whole body felt like it was on fire.  “I do not look at her that way!  I don’t think of Atalanta like that at all!”
            Zenais lifted an eyebrow and shrugged.  “Well, I sure hope so.  But you do act like it.”
            “I don’t!  I just want to protect her, that’s all!”
            “Protect her from what?  She’s obviously trained in combat, and Lord Bromalios told me she’s almost as strong as he is.  No man short of a real god could force himself on her.”
            Unfortunately, with Atalanta’s heritage, there was the unsettling possibility of exactly that happening.  Especially if any of her delusions of private conferences with lusty gods were more than mere flights of terrified fancy.  “She might not know what they were up to until it was too late.”
            Zenais laughed.  “Don’t you worry yourself about that.  When you’re stronger than the man is, there’s no way it can get to too late without you letting it.  Trust me, I’ve been there.”
            “I hope you’re right.”  Ariadne chuckled.  “I have trouble imagining any man actually trying to force himself on you, though.”
            “What, you think I’m not pretty enough to attract a man’s eye?”
            “I think you’re quite lovely,” Ariadne admitted, “but you’re also larger than most men, and that makes them feel inadequate.”
            Zenais laughed loudly.  “They are inadequate compared to me!  That’s exactly what so many girls love about me,” she added, putting an arm around Ariadne’s shoulders.  “Once you’ve been initiated, I’ll be happy to show you why…”
            “I’m not making any such promises,” Ariadne said, chuckling, even as she gently pushed Zenais’ arm away.  “Besides, it sounds to me like I’d be better off not being initiated.”

    Despite what Ariadne claims/thinks, yeah, she totally does look at Atalanta that way.  (Admittedly, they're cousins, not sisters, but that doesn't improve the problem much.)  But that's why I've been adding as many potential future girlfriends for her as I can in the rewrites!  The first book had one specific one (two if you count the daughter of Chryseis, but I don't know if she should be counted, since she thought Ariadne was a boy), with an implication in book two that she might have had some interest in/from various unnamed Amazons, and then in this book there's Zenais and one of the trainees as well.

    Zenais is so far my absolute favorite of Ariadne's potential future love interests, though.  And I doubt I'll manage to introduce any others later on who'll eclipse her.  (Partially because there aren't a lot of good opportunities to introduce any others in the future books, but I'll hopefully find opportunities for few more somewhere.)

    One last quote, no context needed:

            The women who had just objected all nodded, though most of them looked uncomfortable about it.  “But…”
            “No buts!” Zenais snapped back.  “You’re women, not little boys!  Act like it!”

    See why I enjoy her so much? 😆

    Anyway, The Martial Maenads isn't quite ready for release, but I'll add a link to this post once it's out.  (Hopefully next month.  Depending on how long it takes me to get the glossary for the interactive version finished up... 😅 )