The Spirit Wood by Robert Masello

to the hushed atmosphere of the place.
    “I hope not,” said Meg. She felt like a character in a fairy tale who had unwittingly stumbled upon the witch's hut.
    “You've even got your own vineyard?” Byron said, directing her attention to the rows of vines ranged along one side of the cottage.
    “Nikos's private label. Don't worry,” she said, “I'm sure he'll show up with a bottle tonight.”
    But Nikos, to Meg's surprise, did not turn up at the dinner table; while Leah served a less exotic meal than she had the previous time—roast chicken, baked potatoes, fresh vegetables from the garden—Byron enthusiastically held forth on the myriad wonders of the place. In addition to the hall mosaic, he'd already turned up several other antiquities of tremendous, if somewhat arcane, interest: a polished urn on a pedestal in the upstairs corridor, depicting the flaying of Marsyas by the enraged Apollo; a fragment of wall fresco in which only a sliver of moon and a chariot wheel were still discernible; a carved capital on one of the house's interior columns which, to the best of his knowledge, showed Diana on one of her nocturnal hunts.
    “As far as I can tell,” he said to Peter, “your grandfather had a taste for myths of the moon. Diana was its goddess.”
    Peter helped himself to another potato. “I wonder why.”
    “Well,” Byron said, “I do have one theory. Arcadiawas known, to its own ancient inhabitants, as Proseleni—”
    “Why didn't you say so,” Peter interrupted with a laugh. “Of course that explains it.”
    “And Proseleni, translated, means ‘before the moon.’ That's how ancient they thought their country was—the haunt, way back when, of satyrs, nymphs, and centaurs.”
    “Is that why we've got our phallic friend on the back lawn?” Meg joked.
    “Oh, the fountain,” Byron said. “Probably so. Of course, it's also a priapic fertility symbol. Supposed to make everything from crops to babies grow.”
    Meg's eyes dropped to her plate; it was no more than that, but Byron wanted to kick himself all the same. Babies and pregnancy were still a touchy subject, and he should have thought of that before he'd spoken. He quickly went on to how astonished he was at the size of the estate, and the lush, verdant look of it, until Leah, much to his relief, came in to clear the table.
    The crisp night air, and the exertions of the day, had left them all feeling tired unusually early, and after fixing up a bed for Diogenes in a corner of the kitchen, with a bowl of water and his favorite blue bath mat, Byron followed Meg and Peter upstairs. His room, illuminated only by the moonlight filtering through the gauze curtains, had a dreamlike quality to it, with great, pale shadows swaying across the walls and ceiling. He closed the window near the bed and then stood for a moment looking out on the dark, sweeping lawn. The bay beyond was as smooth and black as the floor of the room he'd seen at the rear of the house. The room that faced out on the statue. The priapic statue. Damn—he hated himself for giving Meg that pang. He'd have to be more careful . . . for however long he stayed. Would he really be able to settle in herefor the summer? The house itself was a wonder—a treasure trove of bizarre antiquities. It was amazing to find himself living in a place where he was surrounded by objects and artifacts he'd been studying in classics textbooks for most of his life. But to remain there as a guest, a middleman, week after week . . . that he wasn't so sure about. He could hear the sound of the tap running in the master bathroom next door—was it Meg, washing up?—and already he felt more lonely than he had in ages. He put on his pin-striped pyjamas, the bottoms flapping six inches above his ankles, and got into bed.
    For a while, he tried to read a secondhand novel he'd picked up at the university store, Homer's Daughter by Robert Graves. Graves was a happy compromise between bedtime reading and professional