The beach was empty—it was too early in the year for anyone to be swimming, the very edge of spring. There was a pelican down by the water’s edge, and a worker on the harbor doing something to the Excellence. We sat together on the rocks at the top of the beach. Gulls were flying overhead and calling out occasionally. “The sea speaks Greek, but the gulls speak Latin,” Pytheas said. “Listen. The sea against the shore says its name in Greek, THA-lass-ssa, THA-la-ssa, over and over. And the gulls cry out in Latin, Mare, Mare.”
I wasn’t to be distracted. “Why did you become Pytheas, really?”
He handed me a pear from inside his kiton, warm from his body’s heat. I bit into it. The juice ran down my chin.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I think I have it figured out now, but maybe you can help me understand it better. There was a nymph. Her father was a river. Her name was Daphne.” He stared out to sea. There was a little breeze just beginning to ruffle the surface “I wanted her. She didn’t want me, but I thought she was playing.”
The pear tasted sour in my mouth. I drew away from him. “You raped her?”
“No! But I would have. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand at all. It was a game, chasing and running away. I called to her to run slower and I’d chase more slowly. But she didn’t want to play and I didn’t understand.” He sounded guiltier than I had ever heard him. “She prayed to Artemis, and Artemis turned her into a tree. I was embracing her. I had one hand on her stomach, and then I was touching bark. She became a tree, a Daphne tree, a laurel.”
“You live in Laurel, here,” I said.
“Athene’s idea of a joke,” he said. His face twisted. “I’ve wondered if I could do something with the tree, to show her I understand her choices now and value her. I’ve thought I could make garlands.”
“It would make good garlands,” I said, considering it. “It would weave well and look recognizable and attractive. They’re pretty leaves. And it is giving her something. I think that’s a good idea.”
“I could wear one, and they could be for poets and artists,” he said. “I think I’ll adopt that when I get back.”
“But how did she turn into a tree?” I asked.
“Artemis transformed her. It’s not that difficult. She had prayed to her for help. The question was why. I just couldn’t understand why she wanted to do that, why she was so strongly oppposed to mating with me that she’d rather turn into a tree.”
“But you understand now?” I buried the pear in the stones. I wasn’t going to be able to eat any more of it.
He nodded. “I didn’t ask. And she didn’t want me. And I thought she was playing. But she wasn’t.”
“She must have been terrified,” I said, imagining running to try to escape rape, pursued by a laughing tireless god.
He bit his lip, then turned to me. “Do you think so? I thought she just hated the idea.”
“I was really nervous the first time, and I had agreed. It’s a scary kind of thing, especially if you’ve seen rape and violence.”
“Had you seen it?” He was staring at the sea again, his eyes following the pelican swimming away.
“When the pirates came, and on the ship. It was brutal.” I could remember only too clearly. And the taste in my mouth, and choking, and the sense of violation, and the contempt of the men.
Pytheas put his hand on mine. I looked down at our hands together. The pebbles were grey and black, my hand was brown and his was golden. It would have made an interesting composition, maybe in oils. “I wouldn’t have been like that, like them.”
“Well, there was only one of you, but I don’t see how otherwise it would have been different.”
“I feel sick,” he said.
“You ought to. It’s sickening. It’s unjust. But you didn’t do it, because fortunately she turned into a tree. And you know better now.”
“I do. I talked to Artemis and to Athene, and I finally got it through my head that her choices should have counted, not just mine. What I was talking about yesterday, volition. Equal significance. She should have had it and I wasn’t giving it to her.”
“That’s horrible,” I said. I almost moved my hand away, but I looked at his face and what I saw there reminded me how much I loved him. He was trying to pursue excellence, even in trying to understand this crime he had so nearly committed, trying so hard to make even his own nature better.
“I know now. But I didn’t understand then. I became incarnate to try to understand. And you know I’ve been trying!”
“I’m really horrified that you wanted to rape her.” I was still trying to cope with the idea.
“I didn’t! Rape isn’t something I want at all. I wanted to mate with her. I just didn’t understand that she didn’t want me. The others had wanted me. They ran away, but they wanted to be caught. The chase, catching, it’s erotic play. But Daphne—I do understand all this much better since that time with Klymene.” He shuddered.
“Thousands of years as a god and you weren’t considering her choices at all?”
“I have learned more about considering other people’s choices in the eighteen years I have been a mortal than in the whole of my life before. Gods don’t have to think about those things very much. Not for mortals. Only each other.”
It was true that he had really been trying to understand these things. I’d seen him. I’d helped him with it, even when I didn’t know why he needed that help. “Have other gods done this?”
“What, become incarnate? Yes, lots of them.”
“Learned about the things you’re learning about,” I said.
“I don’t see how they could become incarnate without discovering these things, whether that was their intention or not,” he said. “The learning process seems to be an inevitable part of the procedure.”
“But the gods who stayed on Olympos, or wherever, they don’t know it?”
“There’s not much chance for them to come across it,” he said.
“You have to tell them!” I said. “You have to explain it to them, to all of them. And to humans, too.”
“I could try to explain it to the gods,” he said, though I could see him quail at the idea. “Explaining it to humans wouldn’t be possible. I could try to inspire people to make art about it. Poems. Sculptures. But it’s one of those things that doesn’t go easily into the shapes of stories.”
“It’s not just rape. It’s understanding that everyone’s choices ought to count.”
“I know. I really do understand.” He patted my hand. I looked at him and saw tears on his cheeks. Then I hugged him and he was sobbing and I held him as if he were a child and I were his mother, rocking him and making nonsense noises.
“Do you forgive me?” he asked, with his face buried in my shoulder.
“It’s not for me to forgive you,” I said. “I’m not the person you wronged.”
He rolled over and lay with his head in my lap, face up, looking up at me. “But you still love me?”
“There’s no question of that, is there? You could murder half the city at midday in the Agora and I’d be furious with you and want to kill you, but I’d still love you. I love you like stones fall downwards, like the sun rises. I loved you even when I was almost too tired to breathe.”
“You cried when you saw me, yesterday.”
“That was because I loved you and I was so exhausted.” I looked down at his perfect face, tear-stained but no less beautiful. I smoothed a curl off his forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize you were Apollo. I mean, who else could you possibly be?”
“A boy who didn’t know how to swim, and who you risked your own life to teach,” he said. He sat up. “Let’s pursue excellence together. Let’s make art. Let’s build the future. Let’s be our best selves.”