Because of the loss of multiple folios, how Aethon escapes his post at the miller’s wheel remains unclear. In some versions of the ass tale, the donkey is sold to a cult of traveling priests. Translation by Zeno Ninis.

… always farther north, the brutes drove me, until the land turned white. The houses were built from the bones of wild griffins, and it was so cold that when the hairy wildmen who lived there spoke, their words froze and their companions would have to wait for spring to hear what had been said.

My hooves, my skull, my very marrow stung with the chill, and I often thought of home, which in my memory no longer seemed a muddy backwater but a paradise, where bees hummed and cattle trotted happily in the fields and my fellow shepherds and I drank wine at sunset beneath the gaze of the evening star.

One night—for in that place the nights lasted forty days—the men built a great fire, and danced, working themselves into a trance, and I chewed free of my rope. I wandered alone through the starry darkness for weeks until I reached the place where nature came to an end.

The sky was black as the Stygian crypt, and on the Ocean great blue vessels of ice sailed to and fro, and I thought I could see slippery creatures with massive eyes swim back and forth through the sluggish water. I prayed to be transformed into a bird, a brave eagle or a bright strong owl, but the gods stayed silent. Hoof by hoof I paced the frozen shore, the cold moonlight on my back, and still I hoped…

KOREA

1952–1953

Zeno

In winter stalagmites of frozen urine reach up out of the latrines. The river freezes, the Chinese heat fewer bunkhouses, and the Americans and Brits are merged. Blewitt grumbles that they’re already packed tighter than two coats of paint, but Zeno feels excitement as the British prisoners shuffle in. He and Rex meet each other’s gaze, and soon their straw mats are next to each other, up against the wall, and every morning he wakes with the promise of finding Rex on the floor an arm’s reach away, and the knowledge that there’s nowhere else for either of them to go.

Each day, as they climb the frozen hills, cutting, collecting, and carrying brush for firewood, Rex produces a new lesson like a gift.

Γράφω, gráphō, to scratch, draw, scrape, or write: the root of calligraphy, geography, photography.

Φωνή, phōnḗ, sound, voice, language: the root of symphony, saxophone, microphone, megaphone, telephone.

Θεός, theós: a god.

“Boil the words you already know down to their bones,” Rex says, “and usually you find the ancients sitting there at the bottom of the pot, staring back up.”