The Philosopher Kings (14 page)

I looked at the island. “I really want to go ashore,” I said. “It's so beautiful. I want to explore it. I feel connected to it, even from up here, as if it's calling to me.”

“You're my daughter. The island knows you.” He sighed. “It knows me too. But I probably shouldn't go ashore, just in case. People don't usually recognize me, incarnate. They're not expecting to see me. But Sokrates did. And priests of mine, on Delos—they probably are expecting me at any moment. And if the island knew me—no. It's a little unkind to the priests, being so close and not letting them see me, but better not to risk it.”

“Why do you keep your real nature secret in the City?” I asked.

He kept on gazing out over the island as he answered. “Because I want to live an incarnate life that's as normal as possible. It makes people uncomfortable if they know who I am, normal people. Your mother—Simmea was different. And I didn't tell her. She worked it out for herself.” He wiped away tears, unselfconsciously as ever. “If I tell people, they'll treat me differently. As it is, they think I'm a credit to Plato, and to them. They treat me as one of them. If they knew, they would expect me to be able to do things, and to know things. I don't have my powers, so there's not much I can do. And I do know some things, but I'm here hoping to learn, not to teach. And there are a lot of things I don't know, and they'd find it hard to believe that I don't. Some of the things I do know it's better for people not to know, to guess and work out for themselves.”

“But you tell me?”

“That's different. I couldn't have kept it from you Young Ones. You have a right to know. I'm your father. And being a parent, up close and every day, is one of the things that has taught me the most.”

“But you're also a god.”

“You were asking about becoming a god.” The sun was up now, blazing a gold path on the azure sea. He gestured to it. “That's
mine.
And Delos is mine. And inspiration and healing and poetry and all those things. Those are responsibilities. But they're not what's important. Being a god means being myself forever, and that means knowing myself as well as I can. Seeing the sun rise over Delos makes me feel all kinds of things, and they are different now because of what I have experienced since the last time I saw it. So I feel at home, and yet not at home, and the contradiction there is fascinating, and I can explore that feeling and make it into something.”

“But not all the gods do that. And humans can,” I said. “Humans can make art.”

His eyes were precisely as blue as the sky, and his expression wasn't human at all. “They can. But they have such a brief span to do it. And a lot of their life is misery, and while that's a productive subject for art, it's a limited one. And then they die and lay down their memories in Lethe and go on to become a new person. They come to the end of themselves and change and start again. Gods may or may not make art, but they can't come to the end of themselves. Not ever. And we
are
art. Our lives are subjects for art. Everything we are, everything we do, it all comes to art, our own or other people's. Mortals can forget and be forgotten. We can't. Everything we do has to be seen in that light. There's no anonymity. If you're a god, your deeds will be sung. Even the ones you would prefer to forget about.”

“And I can choose, whether to be a mortal or a god?” I felt as if the whole world was holding its breath before he answered.

“Going ashore on Delos might help you. But time is the best gift.” He stared out over Delos again. “I don't understand why she wanted to die. How she could have been ready. She told me not to be an idiot, but I don't understand how I was wrong.”

We'd had this conversation a hundred times already, but this time I thought of something new. “Why are you assuming she was right?”

“What?”

“You're assuming she was right. Mightn't she have been wrong? Mistaken?”

He looked stricken. “But that would make everything worse! If she'd been wrong then I should have done it, and now it's too late.”

“Somebody's coming up,” I said, as I felt it through the mast.

It was Klymene. “Good to see something that looks halfway like civilization,” she said, after she had greeted us. “I'm leading the shore party today. I thought I'd come up and see if I could spot any signs of life.”

“There's smoke rising from the altar over there,” Father said, gesturing. It was a thin thread of gray smoke, almost invisible. I hadn't seen it until he pointed it out. “I expect you'll find a priest or two.”

“Somebody who isn't too terrified of us to talk would be good,” Klymene said. “And Kebes can hardly have avoided coming here if he came this way at all.”

Father went down shortly after that, and Klymene followed him before long. I saw and announced the sails of fishing boats away to the northeast, where another island loomed in the blue distance. My eyes kept being drawn back to Delos. I longed to walk on it. I watched enviously as the shore party left. It was Erinna's turn to go. Phaedrus and Kallikles had both contrived to join them, although it was not their turns. No doubt they felt the same affinity with the island I did.

At last my watch was over and I joined Ficino and Maia on the deck to watch the boat return. Erinna was rowing. “There are two priests,” she called up to us, “and they say we can come ashore and cook and take on water and worship Apollo, but we should be back on the ship before dark.”

Maecenas set a watch, for which Father volunteered. Those of us young and fit enough to swim hastily gave our kitons and sandals to friends old and frail enough to want to go in the boat. When my bare sole met the soil of Delos I felt a shock of joy that brought tears to my eyes. I felt I knew the place already. I knew where the cave was where they said Apollo had been born, and the plane tree on the mountain where he really had. I knew the altars and the temples, those already there and those not yet built. I found the words of the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo in my mouth as I came out of the water.

Delos did not seem to move unsteadily beneath my feet. It felt like the most solid earth I had ever trodden, as if Ios and Amorgos and even Kallisti were hollow shells and Delos alone was firm.

The sun was hot, and as I walked I saw lizards darting away from me. Kallisti was home, Amorgos and Ios felt like adventure, Naxos and Paros felt like somewhere I wanted to rescue. Delos felt like somewhere my soul had known before birth. “Mine,” Father had said, possessively. I felt that it was mine too; not just that it belonged to me, but it was mutual. I also belonged to it.

I didn't wait for my kiton but walked on, naked as in the palaestra, leaving the others behind. If we had to be back on the ship by nightfall, I didn't have long. There was a spring I needed to find, and I knew where it was. I kept walking around shadow-buildings that didn't exist yet, like the opposite of ruins, potentials. The spring was in a grove of trees, exactly where I had known it would be. I heard it before I saw it and pushed through the trees to come to it. When I came out into the clearing around the spring my two hero brothers were there, grave-faced, waiting in silence. Everything felt right, even that I was naked and they were clothed. We did not speak. Kallikles brought out a cup from the fold of his kiton, which he held out to me. I took it in both hands and dipped it into the pool, raised it high so that sunlight reflected into the water, then poured out a few drops on the ground and drank. I passed it to Phaedrus, who drank and passed it on to Kallikles. We kept on passing it around between the three of us until the cup was empty.

All this time, since my foot had first touched the shore, I hadn't thought, only acted, and everything I had done had been inevitable, necessary, and right. Once the cup was empty that changed, and I was only myself again, not a vessel of divinity, but I didn't want to speak and break the silence. Phaedrus put his hand on my shoulder, and without discussing it we all began to walk back toward the ship. By the time the sea was in sight I felt more nearly normal, though I noticed that we all kept avoiding the future-ghosts of temples.

Ficino handed me my kiton, and I put it on. Unusually for him, he didn't ask any questions, though his gaze was sharp. I sat down next to him. There was food ready, nut porridge and baked fish, and I ate it hungrily. The priests of Apollo, a man and a woman, came and blessed us, sprinkling water on us from branches with green leaves. I accepted their blessing with the others, avoiding my brothers' eyes.

Klymene came over and sat down by Kallikles, who made room for her. “Joy to you, son,” she said.

“Joy,” he muttered.

Klymene rolled her eyes and turned to Ficino. “They know Minos, and Troy, and Mycenae, but no names of kings we could offer,” Klymene said to Ficino. I was listening, but like my brothers I didn't want to talk yet. I just sat there eating in silence.

“Have they seen Kebes?” Ficino asked.

“Not by name, but they know the
Goodness.
They say the captain is called Massias. Some people from the
Goodness
have been here for the festival, and behaved appropriately. They said they thought our ship was the
Goodness
at first. They don't know the location of their city, but they come here from the northeast, so that gives us a direction.”

“Northeast. Interesting,” Ficino said. “What's northeast of Delos?”

“Well, Mykonos close by,” Klymene said. “Beyond that, nothing much for a long way. Due east gets you to Ikaria and Samos. Northwest are Tinos and Andros. Northeast, well, a biggish gap of sea and after a while you get to Chios and Lesbos.”

“And on the mainland, Troy,” Ficino pointed out.

“Why would Kebes have gone to Troy?” Klymene asked.

Ficino shook his head, as if to ask why anyone would go anywhere else.

We went back to the
Excellence
before nightfall, as the priests had asked. Phaedrus was in the same boat I was. “What was that?” he whispered to me.

I shrugged. “The island? We should ask Father, maybe.”

“Our souls?” he asked.

Ficino was looking at us curiously. “We should ask Father, when we can be quite sure we've got him alone,” I whispered.

 

12

ARETE

I couldn't sleep that night with thinking about what had happened. We sailed northeast to Mykonos, which had some scattered fishing settlements a little more civilized than those of Naxos and Paros, but only a little. A party tried to talk to them, again without success. I didn't go ashore, and I couldn't catch Father alone. We sailed on east to Ikaria, which we reached late on the next day. There was no sign of life visible from the ship. We anchored for the night and the next morning put down a shore party, which now felt routine. We sailed around another long thin island, and met up with the shore party in the late afternoon. They had seen nobody, and we concluded that Ikaria was deserted like Ios and Amorgos. We therefore went ashore as we had done there, and began to build fires to cook a meal.

While we were ashore, the three of us cornered Father and took him off into the trees away from everyone to ask about Delos. There was a wonderful scent of pine needles all around us as we walked and scuffed up the droppings of years, a thick layer of pine must which felt as if it had never been disturbed before. Although it smelled amazing, it was uncomfortable to walk on the strange surface. My feet sank in at every step and it took a real effort to move them. Old needles kept finding their way into my sandals and scratching my feet.

“I'm glad to see you found the spring,” Father said, once we were well away.

“Why didn't you warn us?” Kallikles asked.

“I didn't know for sure Delos would affect you,” Father said. “And I didn't want to disappoint you if it didn't. I did tell Arete that it might help.”

“Was it our souls?” I asked.

“Your souls and my island,” he said. “What happened?”

“Nothing much, really,” Phaedrus said. “We went to the spring and waited, and Arete came and gave us water. That's all. But I've never felt anything like it.”

“It felt right,” I said. “It felt like knowing what was right and doing it because it was inevitable. There wasn't any choice.”

“Then you were in the hand of Necessity, at the edge of your Fate, doing what was inevitable,” Father said. “All of you. Once you were on Delos, you had to go through that ritual, and you knew it and you did it. The sprinkling on the shore is the echo of that.”

“I hated it,” Kallikles said. “Not at the time. At the time it just felt right, the way Arete said. But the more I think about it the more it felt like having my own self taken over. I wasn't in control of what I did. And afterward when Klymene spoke to me it took a real effort to answer. I felt drained, even though all I'd done was walk through the woods and drink some water.”

Father put his hand on Kallikles's shoulder. “It's hard for anyone to resist Fate and Necessity.”

“I didn't even try,” I said, and saw my brothers nod. None of us had tried.

“What did it do?” Kallikles asked.

“Connects you to me, to the world. If you weren't my children it would mark you as votaries. As it is, it marks you as what you are. My children. Heroes.”

“How does it work?”

“It's a Mystery.”

“Mother always said you said that when you didn't understand something,” I said.

“That's exactly what a Mystery is, something the gods don't properly understand,” he said. “Fate and Necessity are the bounds set on us. All of us. Fate is the share our souls chose before birth. Necessity is the edges of that.”

“If we were marked as heroes, did the others notice?” Phaedrus asked.

“I don't know, I wasn't there. Did they?”