I had always protected myself against mortal death. When time is a place you can enter at will, it’s easy to do that, to save some moments so the ones we love are never wholly lost. Even with Hyakinthos there are moments left I can visit and savor. I can see him smile again, and if I choose I can spend decades of my own personal time illuminated by that smile, working, planning, contemplating, knowing there will come a next instant, another breath, when I am ready to take it. There are whole days I did not spend with him that I hoard against my future loneliness. That has always been my strategy, and it has always protected me. Simmea knew that, we’d talked about it after we lost Sokrates. She loved me. But that never made her go easy on me. And that was one of the best things about her.

She wouldn’t have killed herself just to have me endure mortal grief. But she drew out the arrow rather than have me go back to being a god without learning about it. I couldn’t understand it until I saw Ficino, old and unarmed, unhesitatingly put himself between Arete and a sword. He died of the blow. Simmea did the same for my own personal arete. Of course she did. What else would she have been willing to die for?

That was a very good question. I sat up with a jerk. Kallikles and Arete turned to me in surprise “I’ve been an idiot,” I announced. They exchanged glances. “What did she put her body in the way of?”

“You?” Kallikles hazarded.

“What I mean is, what did Simmea care most about?” I asked, Socratically.

“Philosophy, and the City, and art, and you,” Arete answered promptly.

“All of us,” I corrected. “She cared about our whole family, not just me.”

“She did, but she cared more about you,” Kallikles said. “And that’s right, that’s how it should be. We’re growing up, we have our own lives, the two of you would have gone on together.”

“And you’re Apollo,” Arete said. “You’re more important than we are.”

“You seem to be choosing to become gods yourselves,” I said. “But whether you do or not, she’d have put herself in front of a blade for you. For Neleus as fast as any of you.”

“Yes,” they both agreed, with no hesitation.

“And of those things she cared about that much, the one she put her body in the way of was art.”

“Yes,” Arete said.