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Confidence: A Tale of Friendship Lilith tells Iolaus she is pregnant
Iolaus was happy to see that the sparring partners list had put him with Lilith. Although she was the only girl cadet at the Academy, she really was one of the guys. She used quickness and agility to fight the boys who relied on their strength, and often surprised a cocky cadet, leaving him wondering how he’d ended up flat on his back in the middle of the training room.
“What’s the routine today, Jason?” Iolaus sat down next to the Prince of Corinth at the breakfast table. Jason didn’t come around the Academy too often now that his duties at the palace had become more pressing. “I hope it’s wrestling. I can always beat Lilith at wrestling.”
“Always, Iolaus?” Hercules raised an eyebrow as he reached for the pitcher of milk. “I remember that time when she had you tied up in so many knots you looked like pretzel!’
“That was a fluke, Herc,” replied Iolaus. “She tricked me that time. I thought she’d zig when she zagged.” He grinned as he bit into a ripe peach and wiped the juice off his chin.
“So you don’t always win.” Hercules was a stickler for the truth.
“Well, okay, maybe not always,” Iolaus admitted. “But she is a good wrestling partner. Now that I know to watch out for her zigging and zagging!”
“Where is Lilith, anyway?” asked Jason, looking around the dining room. “She’s usually first in line for breakfast. Well, first behind Iolaus, anyway,” he added with a laugh.
“There she is,” said Hercules, pointing to the door. “She looks ready for you, Iolaus! Watch out!”
“I’m ready for her, too, Herc,” said Iolaus confidently. He demonstrated by bobbing left and right. “Oops, sorry, Jason,” he apologized when he realized that he’d nearly bumped the prince’s cup of milk from his hand. “Too much zigging!”
“Watch out for that zigging, Iolaus. Don’t let Lilith catch you off guard!” Jason’s eyes followed the girl as she moved down the buffet line. “She can be pretty surprising sometimes.” He quickly picked up his tray and stood up. “See you guys in the training room,” he said as he headed toward the door.
“Lilith is full of surprises, eh, Herc,” said Iolaus, finishing the last bite of a muffin. “Remember that time she borrowed your mom’s dress at the harvest festival?”
“Yeah! And who knew she could make fish and feta popovers!” agreed Hercules. “I never put her down for the domestic type!”
“All women are like that, Herc, very surprising,” said Iolaus, nodding his head sagely.
“Oh, like you know much about women!” cried Hercules.
“Well, at least I’m willing to learn, which is more than some guys are!” Iolaus headed for the door. “Last one to the training room is a bacchae!” he called over his shoulder as he broke into a run.
***
Iolaus watched Hercules spar with three other cadets and still Lilith didn’t appear in the training room. He finally found her in the courtyard, shadowboxing. As he approached, she threw a high kick toward the wall, but as she spun out of the move, she missed her step and stumbled into him.
“I’m sorry, Iolaus!” she cried. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, Lilith. But I could ask you the same question. We’re supposed to be wrestling, remember? Where’ve you been?”
“I’ve been here,” Lilith replied, dipping water from the bucket on the edge of the well. “I just needed to work off a little energy before our match.” She drank deeply from the dipper, then offered it to Iolaus. “I didn’t want to overpower you, you know!”
“Ha! I can take you any time!” said Iolaus with mock fierceness. He dropped into a crouch and began bobbing and weaving. “Now that I know a zig from a zag!”
“You’ll have to pick a new partner to practice zigging with,” said Lilith.
“What do you mean?” said Iolaus, coming to a sudden standstill. “Nobody zigs like you, Lilith.” He followed her as she headed toward the stable gate.
“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be at the Academy,” she said when he caught up with her.
Iolaus came to another standstill. “What? Are you going home?” he asked.
“No. I’m just waiting for Cyane to send word where to meet her and the Telequare. I’m going to live with them for a while.”
“But, the last time you tried living with the Amazons, you didn’t stay very long,” Iolaus said as they walked out to the corral where the Academy horses were trained.
“No, I knew I needed to learn more from Cheiron. But Cyane told me I was welcome to come back to them when I was ready.”
“And what makes you ready now? It’s the middle of the term, you know. You should wait until summer.”
“No, I have to go now. It may be as soon as tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” Iolaus was stopped in his tracks a third time, but Lilith kept walking toward the orchard. “Wait a minute, Lilith! You can’t go tomorrow! I mean, how can you leave so suddenly? Does Cheiron know you’re going?”
“I’ve told him I want to go,” said Lilith slowly.
“And it’s okay with him that you go in the middle of the term?”
“It’s not really his decision, Iolaus,” said Lilith sharply.
“You can’t just go gallivanting off every time you get the whim to be an Amazon! Cheiron might kick you out of school altogether if you leave without permission!” At least Lilith didn’t have to worry about getting sent to jail if she left school as he did. He was stuck at the Academy until graduation, whether he liked it or not.
“I’m not gallivanting, Iolaus!” Lilith stopped suddenly under the spreading branches of a large apple tree. She turned and faced her friend defiantly. “I’m pregnant.”
For once in his life, Iolaus was speechless. Then before he could think he blurted out, “It’s not mine!”
“Of course it’s not yours, Iolaus!” said Lilith, rolling her eyes to heaven in a plea for patience with ignorant men. Even Iolaus had to know that being very good friends was not enough to make a baby.
“Well, whose is it, then?” said Iolaus, finally coming to his senses. “I’ll knock his block off!”
“You will not! It wasn’t like that!”
“Who is it, Lilith? Is it another cadet?” Iolaus persisted. “Is it someone from Corinth?”
“It’s none of your business, Iolaus!” cried Lilith, turning toward him with her hands on her hips.
“Well, excuse me for caring,” said Iolaus. “I thought we were friends.” Lilith turned and strode away toward the orchard without a word.
“It is someone I know, isn’t it?” Iolaus said running to catch up to her.
Lilith stopped so suddenly, Iolaus almost ran into her. “It’s Jason!” she said, turning to look him square in the eye. “It’s Jason, all right?”
“Jason.” Iolaus let his breath out with a whoosh. He remembered the fish and feta popovers at the harvest festival, and the time Lilith had pretended to be Jason’s wife to fend off an unwelcome offer of a royal bride. The two had been acting like the friends they’d always been, but now he read a little more into the way Jason had been looking at Lilith recently.
“Jason! How long has this been going on? When are you getting married?” he babbled, still trying to comprehend the girl’s news.
“We’re not getting married. He doesn’t know, and you’re not going to tell him!” Lilith stood defiantly with her hands on her hips.
“He doesn’t know! Lilith, you’ve got to tell him! He’s the father, for Zeus’s sake!”
“For Zeus’s sake! That’s a laugh! He’s just the model for a good father!”
“But, …”
“Jason can’t marry me, Iolaus. He has to marry a princess, make a marriage of state. I know that. And I can’t stay in Corinth as his mistress, either. When he does marry, our child would be … in the way, and so would I.”
Iolaus could see the awkward position Lilith would be in as the mother of the king’s illegitimate child. His frown turned to a smile as he had a sudden inspiration. “Well, you could marry me!” he blurted out.
Lilith shook her head with a fond smile at her friend. “You don’t want to marry me, Iolaus. And I don’t want to marry you, either. You’re going to go and do great things with Hercules. You don’t want to be tied down with a family.” She put a hand gently on his arm as she added, “Thank you for offering, though.”
Iolaus put his hand over hers. She was right, really. He didn’t want to be married, not now anyway. He and Herc were ready to go out and slay dragons and fight warlords and save damsels in distress.
The two friends walked on through the orchard arm in arm. “Does your sister know?” Iolaus finally asked.
“No!” cried Lilith. “And don’t you tell her either! Don’t tell Nina, don’t tell Jason, don’t tell anyone, Iolaus!” She grasped Iolaus’s hands tightly in her own. “Promise me!”
“I promise,” Iolaus nodded, returning Lilith’s grasp with a tight squeeze. He grabbed a low hanging branch nearby and swung himself up, then helped Lilith up to sit beside him. He pulled two apples from the tree and handed one to the girl.
“So, does Cyane know you’re expecting a baby Amazon?” he asked around his first bite of the crunchy fruit.
“No,” Lilith admitted. “But she’ll find out soon enough, I guess. The Telequare should be happy to have a little girl in their tribe.”
“Hey, but what if it’s a boy?” cried Iolaus.
“If it’s a boy, he can stay with me until he’s four or five. Then I’ll find someone to adopt him,” said Lilith, nibbling on her apple. She looked at her friend with a sudden twinkle in her eye. “Maybe you’ll be married by then, Iolaus, and you can adopt him.”
Iolaus gulped down a bite of apple. “Maybe I will,” he said, but he doubted it. He and Herc would still be out adventuring in five years.
“Don’t worry, I’m confident it’s going to be a girl,” said Lilith. “So you won’t be finding a basket on your doorstep some dark night.”
“With ‘Please take care of my poor child’ pinned to the blanket, you mean?” said Iolaus with a snort. “If you did bring me your baby, I’d expect to see you in person, fussing around to make sure everything was perfect.”
“Me? Fussing? Humpf,” Lilith grunted. “I just like to do things properly, that’s all.”
Iolaus gazed at Lilith for a minute, watching her nibble halfheartedly on her apple, her legs swinging below the tree branch. “And are you sure you’re doing the proper thing now?” he finally asked.
She looked up at him and nodded. “I’m sure, Iolaus. I know I’ll find a good home for me and my baby with the Telequare. They’ll help me bring her up right. And maybe when she’s old enough, she can come back to the Academy and learn the finer points of training that we have.”
“Yeah, and maybe by then she won’t be the only girl here!” agreed Iolaus. “If any other girls can live up to your example,” he said with a grin. “You set a high standard, Lilith, at least for zigging and zagging!”
***
It was a couple of days before two Amazon warriors arrived at the Academy asking for Lilith. Iolaus soon saw the girl disappear into Cheiron’s office, and he didn’t see her again until it was almost supper time. He hoped to be able to sit with the Amazons during the meal, but they avoided the male cadets and sat in a corner with Lilith.
As bowls of fruit were passed for dessert, Cheiron stamped his hoof to get everyone’s attention. He waited for quiet then asked Lilith to join him at the headmaster’s table.
“Cadets, it is with regret that I announce that Lilith will be leaving us in the morning,” he began. “She has been a pioneer here at the Academy, and I hope that many more women will follow her lead and join our corps of cadets in the future.”
“Here, here!” cried Iolaus, grimacing as Hercules kicked him under the table and Cheiron turned a bent eye upon him.
“Lilith has decided to rejoin the Telequare Amazons, who welcome her into their family with open arms,” Cheiron continued. “They have sent a message from their leader Cyane, who tells me she is eager to have such a well-trained warrior in her tribe. Although we will miss her, please join me in wishing Lilith well in her new ventures.”
After a moment of stunned silence, the cadets broke into loud cheering. Lilith had made herself a solid place among the corps of cadets, and the young men all crowded around with hugs, pats on the back, and hearty handshakes.
The next morning, Iolaus met Lilith on the Academy porch as the two Amazons who were her escort were saying their farewells to Cheiron. “I have something for you,” he said quietly.
“Iolaus, you don’t have to give me a present,” said Lilith.
“I want to give you this for, you know, the little Amazon.” He quickly handed her his gift. Lilith looked at the little necklace with its pendant of coral. “It’s supposed to keep the evil eye off,” said Iolaus, hugging his friend. “I don’t know if it ever did me much good, but I’m sure that it will work on your daughter.”
“Thank you, Iolaus,” said Lilith, putting the coral quickly into her pocket as the Amazons came toward them. She smiled as the warrior women completely ignored a great display of the old Iolaus charm. “I’ll miss you, Iolaus,” she said with a laugh. “You never lose your confidence!”
“I do the best I can!” said Iolaus.
“I know you do, Iolaus,” said Lilith with a final wave. “That’s what I like about you!”
Iolaus watched as Lilith disappeared through the Academy gate. She had a lot of confidence too, and he was glad she had shared a little bit of it with him.
THE END
February 2006
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