crowd for someone I recognize: one of the men from Plios’s party, a soldier, Euphranor himself? But it’s too early in the morning for the quality, and all I see are slaves, market-women, vagrants. Each face shows horror.
The milkman is beside me. “Come on,” he says. “He’ll wash up on the beach there.” He points towards our swimming beach. “If he washes up.”
I climb up onto the cart beside him and he tchas the horse into a trot. At the head of the beach path, he ties the reins to a stump. Tycho and I run on ahead.
The beach is empty.
“No,” the man says, puffing up behind me. “No, no, no,” like he’s forbidding me something. My arm shoots out to point to something far out in the bay: a head. The man strips angrilyto pudge-buttocked bareness and wades in, then dives. Tycho is ahead of him. Tycho swims out to Daddy and brings him back, expertly, in a kind of swimming headlock. When they’re fifty paces out, I wade in myself, waist-deep, to help bring him the rest of the way. Daddy’s face is white and his eyes are closed.
On the sand, Tycho wraps his own clothes around Daddy and rubs him hard all over his body. The onlookers have caught up with us now, and someone has a blanket for the milkman. I rub Daddy the way Tycho does, sitting beside him on the sand, propping him up against my body. Tycho is blue-lipped and shivering convulsively now.
Someone dumps a blanket over Tycho’s shoulders, and another over my legs. Perhaps I’m crying.
“Pythias,” Daddy says quietly, without opening his eyes.
The crowd exhales. The air goes white from the ember in every chest.
At home, Herpyllis proves she could have made a soldier. She has Daddy put to bed wrapped in sheets warmed with stones heated in the fire; gives the milkman a set of new clothes, a hot meal, and a bag of coins; thanks Tycho; and slaps me across the face.
She spends the rest of the day at Daddy’s bedside, spooning hot broth into his mouth and singing to him like she does to Nico when he gets a tummy ache. I can hear her soft voice from my bedroom, which she’s ordered me not to leave.
Daddy soon gets a cold. He snots and sneezes and aches allover, he says, and where is Pythias? Herpyllis relents, and lets me in to see him.
“Hello, pet,” he says.
I ask him how he’s feeling. Herpyllis snorts.
“Fine, fine,” he says, and then he coughs until his face goes purple. He waves angrily at Herpyllis to leave the room.
“It’s nothing,” he says, when the coughing stops. “She’s hysterical.”
“She’s not.”
He pats the bedside and I sit. “She loves us both,” he says. “She knows you were trying to help.”
I hold his hand for a while, his baby-soft hand.
“A child is a line cast blind to the future,” he says. “Like an idea, or a book. Who knows where it will land, or what it will draw out?”
I ask him if he’d like me to write that down.
“No, pet,” he says. “That’s just for you.”
I think we’re both joking.
The cough stays with him. He begins to cough up a yellowish thickness that Herpyllis says is a good sign; it’s the sickness coming out. He runs a low fever and has shivering fits. He eats little and drenches the sheets with night sweats. Still, he gets up sometimes, to use the pot or sit for short periods in the garden in the thin autumn sun. He asks for books, not to read, but just to hold on his lap. Sometimes I read to him. When he coughs, now, he holds a hand to his chest against the pain. His lips arepermanently blue. Moving from bed to chair is enough to make him gasp like a runner at the end of a race. He takes to coughing into a cloth. Herpyllis does his laundry, angrily forbidding me or the servants to help. She thinks she can carry this secret by herself.
After a week of coughing blood, he lies down to die. It takes four more days. He complains of stabbing pains in his side, and his skin takes on a blue tinge all over.
“What did you see?” I ask him, late one
The milkman is beside me. “Come on,” he says. “He’ll wash up on the beach there.” He points towards our swimming beach. “If he washes up.”
I climb up onto the cart beside him and he tchas the horse into a trot. At the head of the beach path, he ties the reins to a stump. Tycho and I run on ahead.
The beach is empty.
“No,” the man says, puffing up behind me. “No, no, no,” like he’s forbidding me something. My arm shoots out to point to something far out in the bay: a head. The man strips angrilyto pudge-buttocked bareness and wades in, then dives. Tycho is ahead of him. Tycho swims out to Daddy and brings him back, expertly, in a kind of swimming headlock. When they’re fifty paces out, I wade in myself, waist-deep, to help bring him the rest of the way. Daddy’s face is white and his eyes are closed.
On the sand, Tycho wraps his own clothes around Daddy and rubs him hard all over his body. The onlookers have caught up with us now, and someone has a blanket for the milkman. I rub Daddy the way Tycho does, sitting beside him on the sand, propping him up against my body. Tycho is blue-lipped and shivering convulsively now.
Someone dumps a blanket over Tycho’s shoulders, and another over my legs. Perhaps I’m crying.
“Pythias,” Daddy says quietly, without opening his eyes.
The crowd exhales. The air goes white from the ember in every chest.
At home, Herpyllis proves she could have made a soldier. She has Daddy put to bed wrapped in sheets warmed with stones heated in the fire; gives the milkman a set of new clothes, a hot meal, and a bag of coins; thanks Tycho; and slaps me across the face.
She spends the rest of the day at Daddy’s bedside, spooning hot broth into his mouth and singing to him like she does to Nico when he gets a tummy ache. I can hear her soft voice from my bedroom, which she’s ordered me not to leave.
Daddy soon gets a cold. He snots and sneezes and aches allover, he says, and where is Pythias? Herpyllis relents, and lets me in to see him.
“Hello, pet,” he says.
I ask him how he’s feeling. Herpyllis snorts.
“Fine, fine,” he says, and then he coughs until his face goes purple. He waves angrily at Herpyllis to leave the room.
“It’s nothing,” he says, when the coughing stops. “She’s hysterical.”
“She’s not.”
He pats the bedside and I sit. “She loves us both,” he says. “She knows you were trying to help.”
I hold his hand for a while, his baby-soft hand.
“A child is a line cast blind to the future,” he says. “Like an idea, or a book. Who knows where it will land, or what it will draw out?”
I ask him if he’d like me to write that down.
“No, pet,” he says. “That’s just for you.”
I think we’re both joking.
The cough stays with him. He begins to cough up a yellowish thickness that Herpyllis says is a good sign; it’s the sickness coming out. He runs a low fever and has shivering fits. He eats little and drenches the sheets with night sweats. Still, he gets up sometimes, to use the pot or sit for short periods in the garden in the thin autumn sun. He asks for books, not to read, but just to hold on his lap. Sometimes I read to him. When he coughs, now, he holds a hand to his chest against the pain. His lips arepermanently blue. Moving from bed to chair is enough to make him gasp like a runner at the end of a race. He takes to coughing into a cloth. Herpyllis does his laundry, angrily forbidding me or the servants to help. She thinks she can carry this secret by herself.
After a week of coughing blood, he lies down to die. It takes four more days. He complains of stabbing pains in his side, and his skin takes on a blue tinge all over.
“What did you see?” I ask him, late one
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