Stone Blind(19)

She nodded.

‘And as and when you get your voice back, you can tell me your name and the name of this handsome young hero,’ he said. ‘I’m Dictys, fisherman and finder of women who wash up on the shores of Seriphos.’

Some hours later, full of baked fish and fresh bread, Dana? managed to tell him her name, and the name of her son. He gave her a room to sleep in, with a proper bed and a small window. He found a flat basket and a blanket, so the baby could sleep comfortably by her side. When she woke in the night – which was often – she would jump up from the bed to listen to her son’s breathing, and then look out of the window to check the stars were all still there and that the blackness of night was not total. She would do this every night for the rest of her life.

*

It took several days for her to tell her story to the fisherman. He would leave silently before she was awake and return after the middle of the day, carrying his catch. Only when she had begun to recover from her ordeal did she notice the appearance of the man who had freed her from her second prison: stocky, hair bleached by sun and salt, bright green eyes shining from his leathery face, nose bent from an old break. In her Argive life she might have described him as kindly and paternal, but her perspective on these matters had shifted. He lived in this spacious house alone with no company. He cooked his fish and his bread each day and drank his wine well watered. It was such a simple life that Dana? almost choked on a fishbone when – after listening to the story of her father’s descent into paranoia and cruelty – he told her that he had also witnessed insanity descend upon a king.

‘There’s nothing to be done when it strikes them,’ Dictys said. ‘Any attempts at reasoning with them just make it worse. Because they convince themselves you’re the threat.’

‘I didn’t have the chance to reason with him anyway,’ she said, thinking again of the raging glint in her father’s eyes and the fear behind them. ‘It was all so fast.’

‘It is natural for a man to fear for his life, I suppose,’ replied Dictys. ‘But to turn on his only child? And to be so afraid of an infant who could not possibly do him harm? It’s hard to imagine what could make a man behave in such a way. The gods must have sent him out of his wits.’

Dana? wondered if she should tell her rescuer that she knew from an unimpeachable source that the gods had had nothing to do with her father’s madness, but she decided she had probably told him enough for now, and changed the subject.

‘What happened to your king?’ she asked.

Dictys reached for the ladle and served them both more wine. ‘He believed his younger brother wanted to displace him.’

‘And did he?’

‘No.’

‘Did he hear a prophecy like my father?’

‘No.’ Dictys leaned over the table and looked hard at his cup. ‘No, he didn’t need one to rouse his suspicions. He was always angry with his brother, even when they were both boys.’

‘Why?’ She tried to read his expression, or at least work out what he was studying on the wine cup.

‘Who knows? Brothers don’t always get on, do they?’

As he turned the cup in his hand, she saw it showed Prometheus stealing fire from the gods.

‘No, I suppose they don’t,’ she said. ‘So what did the king’s brother do?’

‘As you see.’ Dictys smiled as he gestured at the room in which they both sat, plain but comfortable with everything he needed in its place.

‘You’re the brother of the king?’ she asked.

‘I am,’ he said, dropping his head in a small bow.

‘But you’re a fisherman.’

‘You of all people, Dana?, know why. At the palace I was putting my brother on his guard and myself in danger. I like the sea, I enjoy my own company. I’m happier living this way. It’s much safer than a wooden box.’ She shivered. ‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But your tale has brought back painful memories for me.’

‘When did you last see him?’ she asked.

‘Years ago,’ he said. ‘I live a quiet life here. And you and your boy are welcome to stay for as long as you’d like. If you’d prefer to be in the town, I will take you inland and find you somewhere safe.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘We’ll stay here for now. You’re very kind.’

‘Fishermen have a rule that if you find a shipwrecked sailor, you have to offer him a safe haven,’ he said. ‘If I failed to extend that courtesy to you, the fish would swim away from my boat and I would starve.’

She saw he was smiling and also serious. And she knew now that Zeus had protected her after all.





Athene


‘I want a thing,’ she said to Zeus. ‘Everyone else has one.’

‘What sort of thing, dearest?’ asked her father.

‘You have thunderbolts,’ she said.

His chest puffed up. ‘I do,’ he replied. ‘You can’t have thunderbolts. They are indivisible from my nature. People call me Zeus the Thunderer.’

‘I don’t want thunderbolts,’ she said. ‘I want something of my own. Like Apollo has a lyre and he has a bow. He has two things. I don’t even have one. Artemis has a bow and a spear.’