“Well, maybe,” Aristomache said. “But for now it is the Good Life. For now it is definitely aristocracy. And besides, we’re sure we’ve changed the world, introducing Christianity here and now, introducing civilized ideas and sanitation and medicine in the time before the Trojan War. We’re not hiding away expecting everything we do to be destroyed by a volcano. Athene put us on Kallisti so we’d make no changes, cause no ripples, have no posterity. But we’re out here making a difference, keeping the peace, helping the poor and the hungry. This is a new world. Maybe everything will be different and the Age of Gold won’t vanish and there’ll never be a Plato.”

Maia hesitated, and I remembered that she had worried about breaking history if we intervened in the Kyklades. Father had reassured me that it wasn’t possible, but I couldn’t pass that reassurance on, at least not with proper citations. It might not be all that reassuring anyway, to think that Plato was right about everything degenerating. She closed her mouth as if she’d changed her mind about speaking, and when she did open it again what she said was: “You’re right to be rescuing people.”

Aristomache smiled at the rescued people around the table. “You know what you should do,” she said, looking back to us. “You should go to Lucia for Passion Week. In addition to the religious celebration we have a music festival. You’d love it. And that’s when the majority of the people who left the city are together, in Lucia at Easter. If you want to find out what we’ve been doing and see everyone, that’s where you ought to go.”

“When’s Easter?” I asked.

“It’s—” Aristomache and Maia began together, then caught each other’s eyes and giggled, exactly as if they were both ephebes. “It’s the first Lord’s Day after the first full moon after the spring equinox,” Aristomache finished alone. “So it’s soon.”

“What’s the Lord’s Day?” Erinna asked.

The locals clucked, but Aristomache explained quickly and easily. “Instead of having Ides and Nones, we call each seven-day period a week, and the days of the week have names, and the seventh day of each week is the Lord’s Day, and a day of rest and religious worship.”

“How can you celebrate Easter before Yayzu is even born?” Maia asked.

“He is our eternal savior,” Aristomache said, serenely confident.

16. Maia

16

MAIA

People say I left the City of Amazons because I wanted comfort, but I have never loved comfort, only learning. I left for reasons of conscience—religious reasons.