Sokrates nodded at the circles. “And what does your Father want, alone in the middle?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “None. I never have had. I wish I knew.”

“Whereas what you want is to increase your excellence,” Simmea said.

“And look after your friends,” Sokrates said, rocking back on his heels.

“And increase the excellence of the world,” I added. “In any number of different ways.”

“And what does Athene want?” Simmea looked up from the leaves to meet my eyes.

“To know everything there is to know,” I said. They were silent for a moment, considering that. “I expect she wants to increase the world’s excellence too. But it’s knowing everything that she prioritizes.”

“Do the gods have souls?” Sokrates asked, unexpectedly.

“Certainly,” I said, surprised. “How else would I be here like this?”

“You went down into the underworld and were reborn as a baby, in the hills above Delphi as you told me?”

“Yes…” I didn’t see where he was going at all.

“Then maybe you chose this life so that you could talk to us about the Mysteries.”

I laughed, delighted at the thought. “I only wet my lips in Lethe.”

“But wouldn’t that be enough to forget the future of the life you chose?” Simmea asked.

“Yes—that’s why I did it. And in any case, we make choices and change everything. There’s Fate and Necessity, but no destiny, no Providence. Fate is a line drawn around the possibilities of a life. You can’t overstep that line, but as long as you stay within the lines you can do anything. You can concentrate on some parts of what’s possible and ignore others. Excellence consists of trying to fill out as much of what’s allotted as you can, but always without being able to see the lines Fate has drawn. Souls choose lives based on what they hope to learn. Say a man has been dismissive to women. He may choose to live as a woman next time, to learn that hard lesson. Or a slave owner might choose the life of a slave, when their eyes are opened. It’s not punishment. It’s a desire to learn and become better. They choose lives based on the hope of learning things. But it’s a hope. Nothing is inevitable. Choices are real all the way along. You could have hit me or walked away, and it’s nothing you or I chose before birth that affects that, it’s what you chose in that moment.”

“Hit you?” Sokrates asked.

“A fight we had once,” Simmea said, her cheeks glowing. “Or for that matter, earlier today.” She jumped up in one fluid motion, her old self again, no longer needing hauling up from the ground as she had. “I’m still starving, and it’s nearly dinner time. Come with me to Florentia, both of you, we can look at beautiful beautiful Botticellis and eat.”

Sokrates and I got to our feet. “I can tell you about the workers,” he said.

“Before we go out—you really won’t tell Kebes, will you?” I asked.

Simmea looked down her nose at me. “He’d keep your secret. But I won’t tell anyone. I said I wouldn’t. You know you can trust me.”

“And later we can consider your Mysteries,” Sokrates said.

32

SIMMEA

We walked to Florentia and talked, and ate dinner and talked, and walked back to Thessaly and talked, and then Pytheas walked back to Hyssop with me in the dark, still talking. In addition to the questions of Pytheas and of the workers, it seemed that all ten thousand and eighty children and roughly three hundred masters in the city wanted to come up to wish me joy and tell me how pleased they were that I was better. That’s hyperbole, but only a little—it was good to know that I had so many friends and that I’d been missed.

“You were like a line-drawing,” Ficino said at dinner. “A thin rubbed cartoon of yourself.”

“Asklepius restored me,” I said. That’s what I told everyone, and it was the truth. Axiothea thought the iron lozenges probably helped. Everyone was delighted. If I’d still been sick I’d have wept at all the emotion they poured onto me. As it was I ate voraciously, three helpings of pasta and two of shrimp. Kebes came in when I was on my second plate and came to sit with us, filling in details about the workers as Sokrates talked. “I’m so glad to be able to talk to you, Simmea,” he said. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” I said, and it was true. “I was just too tired to care.”

When I’d finished eating, I filled the fold of my kiton with apples and cheese for later. As I did it, I realised something else that had changed. “My breasts! They aren’t full of milk!” I pulled down the front of my kiton to examine them. They were back to their normal small size and they didn’t hurt. There were pale marks on the sides of them, similar to the ones on my stomach where the skin had stretched, but otherwise they were as they had been before the pregnancy.

“Your melancholy must have been connected with the milk,” Ficino said. “How unusual. Well, there will be enough other mothers to feed all the babies, don’t worry.”

I hadn’t been worried until then.

As I pulled my kiton back up, I noticed Kebes looking away uncomfortably. I felt awkward. I hadn’t thought about it. Everyone had seen me naked in the palaestra, and this seemed no different.

Late that night, after all the conversation, alone in bed in Hyssop, I tried to settle to sleep, and couldn’t. It was as if I’d slept all the sleep in my exhaustion and there was none left. Whenever I started to doze I’d suddenly remember that Pytheas was Apollo and start fully awake. Apollo! How could I not have noticed? Now I knew there were so many indications.

Eventually I did manage to sleep. The next morning, immediately after eating two big bowls of lovely grain porridge with milk and honey, I went to the nurseries and explained to Andromeda that I had been cured of my lethargy and had no more milk to offer. She was incredulous even after she examined my breasts. She was pregnant herself now, and I sat with her for a little while, listening to her symptoms and being sympathetic. Then I went towards the palaestra. There was writing inscribed on the path, in Greek but in Latin letters.

“Want to make build. Want to make art. Want to talk. Want to decide.” There was a manifesto, I thought. Sokrates had explained the night before that the workers were being provisionally considered people, but not yet citizens. Would they all be iron and bronze, I wondered, or might some of them become silver and even gold? If Sokrates befriended them, surely they would. I smiled at the thought.

In the palaestra I exercised with weights, rejoicing in feeling back in form. Women who had given birth were not allowed to wrestle for six months, so I didn’t try, though I felt fit for it. I ran around and around and wasn’t winded. There was a chill wind blowing, but exercise soon warmed me. At last Pytheas came. He looked so delighted to see me that I ran over and hugged him, at which he looked even more delighted. “You’ve been exercising. Let me scrape you off,” he said.

We went over by the fountain with oil and a scraper. Pytheas and I had oiled each other hundreds, thousands of times, but this time I was acutely aware of the sensations. It was as if my sense of touch, from being deadened, was now twice as alive. “I’m so glad you’re better,” he said.

“Athene said it wasn’t a curse,” I said, as he scraped the oil off my legs. “But how could sickness affect my mind so that I lost all my animation?”

“Your mind is in your body, and there are a lot of things happening in bodies with pregnancy,” Pytheas said. “It’s one reason many men have claimed women cannot be philosophical.”

“It’s true that I couldn’t be philosophical when I was like that.” I hated the thought. “I couldn’t be anything. I could barely manage to hold out my shape in the world.”

“No. You couldn’t be. And you are sad one day every month, I have observed it.” Pytheas shook his head. “But the rest of the time you’re absolutely the most philosophical person I know, excepting only Sokrates.”