I announced generally that I was leaving, though it hurt me to go. I had put eight years of my life into this city, this second attempt to do what Plato suggested, and I had a new generation of students growing up. I packed up my few possessions in my cloak: my comb, the notebooks where I was writing this autobiography, and my Botticelli book. I opened it and looked at the angels clustered around the Madonna of the Pomegranates. They were beautiful, and perhaps they were real, but Athene wasn’t one of them. She was too much herself. She was real and imperfect and divine. She had rescued me from a life of unfulfilled emptiness and brought me to the City. I prayed to her now for guidance, and found myself thinking of my old house in the Remnant, and the rich colors of Botticelli’s Autumn on the wall in Florentia, and Ficino’s welcoming smile. I was right to leave. And I’d give this book to Simmea. That felt right too. I closed it and put it into my cloak, and went off to one last day’s teaching. Other people would be taking over my classes the next morning.

“I’ve done you an injustice and I want to apologize,” Ikaros said.

“What?” He had surprised me, coming up behind me after a gymnastics class. I had been teaching the littlest ones how to fall and roll and come up again, while the older ones were practicing with the discus. Then I had escorted the children through the wash-fountain, and handed them over to another teacher for their lute lesson. I was standing alone in the palaestra drying my hair on my kiton. It was autumn, almost olive season, so my damp bare skin was covered in goosebumps. I felt at a disadvantage, and quickly twisted my kiton back on, which left my damp hair dripping down my back. I never seemed to have any dignity around Ikaros. But when I looked at him, he wasn’t looking at me but down at the sand.

“I like you, Maia, and perhaps Providence meant us to be together, but I messed everything up between us at the beginning. I didn’t understand that you were truly saying no. I thought you were making a show of modest protest. Klio has explained to me that you were not. I’m really sorry.”

I glared at him until he looked up at me. He wasn’t laughing at me. He seemed sincere. “Klio had no right—why were you talking to her about me?”

“Because I want to understand why you oppose me so much.”

I was astonished that he was taking me so seriously. “And you’re finally acknowledging that you did something wrong?”

“Yes. I said so. I truly misunderstood all this time.” He sat down on the wall that separated the palaestra from the street.

“I was screaming and struggling!”