“It makes me feel dizzy to think about it,” I admitted. “I don’t understand how this works at all.”

“Time is like a place we can step in and out of. And we can be in time in many different times and places, though never twice in the same time. We’re outside time now. We could go back in to an instant after we left, either right now or after spending months or years of our personal experienced time here. Or we can go back in somewhere else, which is what we’re going to do, and later we can go back to your home time an instant after we left.” I kept my eyes on the vibrant green of the leaves as he spoke.

“So what you call time is the material world, the sensible world?” I asked.

“You could say that. And where we are now is another world, if you like, the next layer out.”

The World of Forms, I thought. “And where is Athene?” I asked.

“Where she really shouldn’t be. She should be either somewhere in time or here, and instead she’s gone around it. Underneath it. There was a time—well, not a time, and not a place either. But maybe it’s easier to imagine if you think of time as a place, a location. It’s hard to talk about. Long ago, Father … built both time, and Olympos like a shell around it. I don’t know how. Before that there was only him and Chaos. And they say that time will one day end, and after it there will be Chaos again. And that’s where Athene is, out in the primal Chaos that surrounds both time and Olympos.”

“And she’s been there for two years, since she gave us Hilfa?”

“No.” I glanced at Hermes. He seemed to be stable again. He smiled at me in a kinder way. “It is hard to follow, I know. We have no idea how long she has been there. She could have gone into time this afternoon, stepped into your life of two years ago and given you Hilfa then, and then directly after that she could have gone to Lucia four thousand years before and given his part of the puzzle to Kebes. Or it could have been centuries for her. We don’t know when she did this, in her own time frame, only that she’s there now.”

“And we’re outside time and there’s no hurry?” The very idea of hurrying seemed alien to the air we were breathing.