“We’re fortunate that all of Pytheas’s children seem to have inherited his singing abilities,” Maia said. Neleus frowned at that, because he could never seem to sing in tune. I didn’t think singing was a particularly heroic ability. Erinna’s singing voice was clear and true.

Naxos at first seemed no different from Amorgos and Ios. When the shore party signaled that they had found people we were astonished, as if we had believed we were alone in the time of the dinosaurs. I didn’t meet the Naxians or see their settlement, so at first their presence felt like a disappointment, because they prevented me from going ashore. Those of us left aboard waited impatiently for the shore party to return, running through all the facts about Naxos we knew. “Isn’t it where Theseus abandoned Ariadne?” Erinna asked. “Could that have happened already?”

Ficino nodded. “It should have happened in the last generation. Theseus’s sons by Phaedra fought at Troy. Ariadne might still be alive.”

“We don’t know exactly when we are,” Maia reminded him. “We might have a better idea when they come back. Ariadne might be there, or she might not have come yet, or she might be dead. How long did she live after being abandoned?”

“Dionysios is supposed to have come for her and taken her away,” Ficino said. “So she might be gone.”

Father was staring fixedly at a little island just offshore as if he were remembering something. I wanted to ask him about it, but there were too many people about. It was hard to get privacy aboard, and even harder when everyone was lining the rail impatiently waiting for the shore party.

“We don’t know when we are at all,” he said. “I have a feeling it might be much earlier than you’re assuming. ‘Before the Trojan War’ doesn’t necessarily mean immediately before.”

Even though I’d been thinking about dinosaurs, I was surprised and disappointed. “No Anchises?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Here they come!” Erinna said.

The official report was that they had made contact and the locals didn’t have any useful information. “Miserable primitive place,” Maecenas said, pushing through the crowd of questioning people. “Council meeting. Now.”

The ship had a council of six that was supposed to make decisions, and Maecenas called them together in his cabin. The rest of us had to wait. As we weren’t going ashore and therefore couldn’t cook, dinner was cold, smoked fish and olives washed down with water lightly flavored with wine. After the feasts and singing of the previous nights it felt like a letdown. A group of us sat down to eat in the bows, where we could watch the sun setting over the sea. Erinna and I sat together on a coil of rope. “If we leave soon we could reach Paros in a few hours,” I said. “I can see it from the top of the mast.”

“Do we know if it’s inhabited?” Phaedrus asked.

“Not in the Catalog of Ships, but they quarried marble there, so it seems it might be,” Maia said. “I expect we’ll stay here until morning.”

Kallikles came up to join us. He had been in the shore party, so we greeted him with enthusiasm. “Tell us what it was like?” I urged, as Erinna moved toward the rail so that he could sit down beside me.

“It’s not a proper city, it’s very small, maybe a village is the proper term. They live inland, out of sight of the shore, though they have boats. They keep chickens and goats and pigs, and let them run in and out of their houses. The houses are really primitive, not much more than huts. There’s a wooden palisade around the village, and an entry blocked with thorn bushes. We didn’t go inside, but it isn’t very big and we could see everything. There’s just one plaza, with houses around it in a circle—no roads at all, no paving stones, just dirt. There are strange statues set up in the plaza, half-carved marble, sort of flat, with huge heads and weird noses, painted, dressed and decorated with beads. They’re not like anything I’ve ever seen. Very bright colors. I can’t even decide whether or not they were beautiful.”

Ficino looked away from the sunset and stared at Kallikles. “I want to see them!”

“I don’t know whether you’ll be able to. Maecenas wasn’t talking about going back. The people weren’t friendly at all. They ran into the village and barricaded themselves in when they saw us coming. The men were armed with bronze spears with weird flat blades. They wouldn’t speak to us, they kept waving their spears. Then an old woman came forward to talk. She had a huge sore on her face with pus coming out of it. She spoke Greek of a kind, but it was hard to make ourselves understood. She kept telling us to go away, that she wouldn’t give us anything, and she couldn’t seem to understand we didn’t want anything except information, which she didn’t want to give either. Maecenas offered her a silver cup, which she snatched, but even after that she didn’t want to be friendly. They didn’t let us in or offer hospitality at all. They held on to their weapons and we held on to ours.”

I was trying to picture it. “What were the houses made of?”

“Stone and wood. It wasn’t the materials that were primitive, it was the style.”

“You’ve never seen anything that wasn’t classical,” Ficino said, smiling.

“I’ve been to Psyche,” Kallikles said.

Maia laughed. “Psyche is also classical. All our cities are.”

“It wasn’t built by Workers,” Kallikles protested. “But you’re right, this was a different style entirely. No pillars. Primitive. Odd. I was really uncomfortable looking at the place. Chickens pecking around their feet, a toothless old woman bent over grinding wheat by hand in a quern, and everyone frightened, the men with their weapons, half cringing and half defiant. I’ve never seen poverty like that.”

“It sounds like a village in India or Africa in my time,” Maia said, thoughtfully. “I’d never imagined Greece like that, full of savages. But I suppose it must have been once.”

“Don’t build too much on one primitive fishing village,” Ficino said. “There were places not too far from Florentia in my own day that the boy would have described the same way—toothless peasants with sores, and animals running in and out.”

“I can’t even imagine it,” Erinna said. I couldn’t either. When I’d thought about the difficulties of Mycenaean Greece it was in terms of women not being equal, and lack of books, not sores and poverty. Homer talks about cities, and I had imagined cities like our cities.

“Did they give any useful information about the date?” Ficino asked.

“They’d heard of King Minos, but not of Kebes, nor Mycenae nor Troy, at least as far as we were able to make ourselves understood.”

“Minos,” Ficino said thoughtfully, turning back to the west. The sun was on the horizon now, gilding the rippling sea and lighting the clouds purple and gold. “Crete. Maybe we should go there.”

“Pytheas wants to go north,” Maia said. “He’s sure Kebes went that way, though whether from something Kebes said years ago or just out of his obsession I don’t know.”

“Father isn’t a fool,” I protested.

“You have to admit he hasn’t been entirely rational since Simmea died,” Maia said.

“This crushing grief is strange in a man with so much excellence, a man who we’ve all been accustomed to look to as one of the very best among the golds,” Ficino said.

I nodded. Erinna, who was behind me, put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed in a comforting way. It did comfort me, but it also sent an unsettling jolt of energy through me. My breath caught in my throat. I liked it too much. Everything I’d ever read about bodily love came back to me, and I moved away as she dropped her hand. I could feel my face was burning hot and there was heat too between my legs. I stared out over the sea. The first star appeared in the east, silver against violet. “Let me not be unworthy,” I prayed to it. Kallikles was still talking, and I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.