“Not unless it says so there,” Hilfa said, gesturing to the paper. Pytheas was reading it intently and didn’t look up.
“Do you know what you are?” Thetis asked. I thought about Thetis and Marsilia opening the box Athene had told them not to open unless she was lost, and finding Hilfa inside. I understood why they had opened it. All the same, I wouldn’t have done it. You learn patience, fishing. Marsilia was starting to learn some now, working on the boat, but she hadn’t had a scrap of it when she’d first come to me.
“I don’t know. I think I am perhaps a hero.”
“A hero, the child of a god?” Marsilia was frowning. “One of the Saeli gods?”
“That is my guess,” Hilfa said, looking at Hermes, and then away. “But I can’t say. I don’t know where I come from, where I belong. I don’t want to go there. I like it here. I like the fish and the sea.”
“The wind and the waves,” I said. It was what he had said that afternoon.
He turned to me for a moment with the expression I thought was a real smile, then back to Marsilia. “I like Jason and Dion,” he said. “I like the boat. I like you and Thetis. I want to stay in the City. I want to take oath. I didn’t ask until now, because it wasn’t just until you knew.”
“Nobody’s going to make you leave—” Thetis began, setting down her empty winecup at her feet beside Pytheas’s full one.
“Don’t make any promises,” Marsilia said, cutting across her. “We will need to debate this. I think many of us will support Hilfa’s desire. I certainly will, but this is important.”
“What good is it you being consul, Marsilia, if—” Thetis began.
Pytheas looked up from the paper and stared at Hilfa. Simply by raising his head, he riveted all our attention, and Thee fell silent. His face was inscrutable, his lips slightly parted as if caught in the middle of a gasp or a smile.
“Are you going to share that with the rest of us?” Hermes asked.
Pytheas looked serenely at his brother. “She has gone beyond what lies outside time, into the Chaos of before and after, to discover how the universe begins and ends. She has done this with the help of a Saeli god of knowledge, Jathery. In case she had difficulty returning, she has left me the explanation of how to do this. Her explanation is divided into parts, each of which she has left with a different person, in a different place and time.” His voice was level, calm, and absolutely furious.
“Father will kill her,” Hermes said. He sounded awestruck and impressed. “He’ll hang her upside-down over the abyss for eternity with anvils on her fingers.”
“You know he never does anything to Athene,” Pytheas said, absently. “No, I think it’s worse than that. She’s broken Father’s edicts, obviously, but I think this time she might have gone too far and be up against Fate and Necessity.”
“What does that mean?” Thetis asked.
“It means she could be lost forever. And we might be too if we go after her,” Hermes said. He smiled at Thetis.
“Is this something Ikaros dreamed up?” Marsilia asked. “It sounds a bit like one of his ideas.”
“She worked on the idiotic plans with him, but she hasn’t taken him with her,” Pytheas said.
Hermes drained his cup and set it down decisively on the table. “We should locate the pieces of her explanation.”
“Maybe we should go to Father,” Pytheas said.
“But I’m safe from Necessity,” Hermes said. “And we should at least collect the pieces of her explanation first. When we have that, we’ll have a better idea of whether we could help her.”
“But we don’t need to. Father will already know how to do it,” Pytheas said. “And don’t you think this might be why he sent you to get me now?”
“It would be better if we can sort this out without him,” Hermes said. “At least, better to try.”
“Whatever he won’t do to Athene, he wouldn’t hesitate to do to us.”
“Why does Zeus never punish Athene?” Thetis asked unexpectedly.
“We don’t know, but we think it’s because he ate her mother,” Pytheas said. “Our previous goddess of wisdom. Metis.”
“Ate her?” I asked, horrified enough to speak out.
“Another thing Plato left out?” Hermes asked.
“Before you ask, we don’t know the answers,” Pytheas said. “We don’t know if or how he transformed Metis into Athene, or what it really means that she’s his daughter, born from his head. We think it might have something to do with how he treats her, but we might be wrong.”
“I don’t understand,” Thetis said. I didn’t either.
Pytheas smiled at her, not unkindly. “None of us do. I’m not sure even Father understands. He didn’t create the universe, and some of the ways things work are Mysteries even to him.”
“You are speaking of your Father?” Hilfa asked, quietly.
“Yes,” Pytheas said. He looked down at Hilfa.
“Your Father Who is also Parent of the Saeli gods?”
“He’s the father of all the gods in the universe, as far as I know,” Hermes said, smiling at Hilfa with a strange smile. Hilfa didn’t turn towards him.
“And yet you speak so lightly of.…” Hilfa hesitated, and looked at Marsilia.
“We simply say his,” she said. “If you prefer to say gla we will understand.”
“Of gla wrath,” Hilfa finished.
“Yes we do, because we’ve experienced it,” Pytheas said. “And however he may appear in the Saeli pantheons, and whatever he may have done to your people, he is not, to us, a god of wrath. Well, except when we’ve done something to deserve it. Like Metis.”
“Tell us about Jathery,” Marsilia said to Hilfa. “A god of wisdom, but also a trickster, yes?”
“Yes.” Hilfa swung around to face her, his back to Hermes, and counted the aspects off on his long fingers. “The five things that go together: wisdom, trickery, riddles, name-changing, and freedom.”
“Might he have tricked Athene into this?” Marsilia asked.
“She as much as admits that she suspects him of it,” Pytheas said, tapping the letter. “It seems they’ve been friends for some time. Jathery may even have had a hand in persuading her to set up the Republic experiment.”
“Aren’t you forbidden to mingle with gods of other pantheons?” Marsilia asked.
Pytheas and Hermes looked at her with the same puzzled expression. “No,” Hermes answered. “Why would we be?”
“Then why don’t you?” she asked.
“Aesthetic reasons,” Pytheas said. “We live in our own context, our own fabric, culture, framework. They each have their own. We don’t have any reason to meet, to interact. We stay in our own circles because that feels right. But if Athene felt ecumenical, nothing stopped her being friends with Jathery. More’s the pity.”
“And nothing would stop you doing the same?”
“Nothing except context, culture, having nothing in common, and no need.” Pytheas frowned.
“Or how about Yayzu?” Marsilia asked.
“Maybe I could have a productive conversation with him. And he speaks Greek. But it might be difficult to find somewhere comfortable for us both. Or, no. It wouldn’t.” Pytheas smiled. “If Yayzu and I wanted to compare notes on incarnation and how we best ought to help people, I know a place. Maybe. I’ll think about that. It might even be a good idea.”
“But Jathery is a Saeli god,” Marsilia said. “Shouldn’t he feel an … aesthetic need to be attending to their affairs?”
Hilfa shook his head without looking up.
“I think it would certainly be preferable if he did, instead of heading off into primal Chaos with Athene,” Pytheas said.
“So do you really think we should go to Father?” Hermes asked.
“Well, maybe. Except that she does plead for me not to tell him,” Pytheas said, looking down at the paper again. “Since you also seem against it, let’s try getting the explanation first.”
“Pleads? Athene? Can I see that?” Hermes asked, putting out his hand for it.
“No, I think not,” Pytheas said, folding it up and putting it inside his kiton.