As I straightened up, there was Hermes skiing along right beside me, at precisely the same speed. He was grinning at me. I recognized him immediately. It wasn’t like the time when Jathery was imitating him and showed up in Thessaly. This really was Hermes. He skied along beside me for a little while. I didn’t know what to say. I knew he was my father, because Pytheas had explained it all to me, and to my mother, who seemed to find it all much more amazing than I did. But knowing somebody is your father is pretty meaningless when you have five parents already and he’s a god and a stranger. I smiled back at Hermes, tentatively. And then he was gone, without any conversation or anything.

Sokrates said he saw him, and also that there were three sets of parallel ski tracks when he came down to where Hermes had been. Camilla hadn’t seen anything, so she wanted to trudge back up and see the tracks, but we didn’t because the sun was going down and we needed to get to the station to catch the train home.

Camilla’s real parents died in a sailing accident a long time ago. Jason has told her about them, and so has Dion, who was also their friend and is kind of like a grandfather to Camilla now. We’ve spent a lot of time examining the question of parents, especially with Sokrates. I may write a dialogue about it when I’m older. There are lots of ways I don’t really know what it’s like to have a god for a father, or what it means. But I remember how Hermes looked when he grinned at me that day as we were skiing, and that’s good enough for now.

VI. Sokrates

My dear, I understand why you want me to write an account of my long and fascinating life, but I think you understand too why I am not going to.