The summer before she began her formal schooling, her grandmother called upon her to return to Rhodos, and to spend some time with her. The sophē was reclusive. Many Rhodians thought she was a goddess. Her origins and the stories that had grown up around her supported their beliefs. Rhita had no fixed opinions. What the Lindians said and what her father and mother told her were confusingly far apart on some points and close on others.

Rhita’s mother was almost frantically thrilled by this privilege, which Patrikia had accorded to none of her other grandchildren. Her father, Rhamōn, accepted it with the calm, self-assured air he had in those days, before the sophē’s death and the factional fighting at the Akademeia. Together, they took her to Rhodos by horse cart, driving along the same cobbled and oiled road they had followed two summers before.

Patrikia’s house stood on a rocky promontory overlooking the Great Naval Harbor. It was a small gypsum-plaster and stone dwelling, in late Persian style, with four rooms and a separate study on the low cliff above the beach. As they walked up the path through the vegetable garden, Rhita looked over a brick wall at the ancient Fortress of Kamybsēs across the harbor, rising like a huge stone cup from the end of a broad mole. The fortress had been abandoned for seventy years, but was now being refurbished by the Oikoumenē. Workmen clambered along its thick crumbling walls, tiny as mice. The Neos Kolossos guarded the harbor entrance a hundred arms beyond the fortress, still armless, standing with more dignity withal on its own massive block of brick and stone, surrounded by water.

“Is she a witch?” Rhita asked Rhamōn softly at the front door.

“Hsss,” Berenikē warned, crossing Rhita’s lips with her finger.

“She’s not a witch,” Rhamōn said, smiling. “She’s my mother.”

Rhita thought it would be nice for a servant to open the door, but the sophē had no servants. Patrikia Vaskayza herself stood smiling in the doorway, a white-haired brown-skinned dried stick of a woman with shrewd, deep-seeing eyes wreathed in leathery wrinkles. Even in the heat of summer, the wind blew cool on the hill, and Patrikia wore a floor-length black robe.

She touched Rhita’s cheek with a dry finger tip, and Rhita thought, She’s made of wood. But the sophē’s palm was soft and warmly sweet-scented. From behind her back, she brought out a garland of flowers and looped them around Rhita’s neck. “An old tradition from Hawaii,” she explained.

Berenikē stood with head bowed, hands pressed firmly to her sides. Rhita saw her mother’s awe and vaguely disapproved; the sophē was very old and very skinny, to be sure, but not frightening. At least not yet. Rhita tugged at the flowers around her neck and glanced at Rhamōn, who gave her a reassuring smile.