I kept on grieving for Ficino. Maia missed him even more. She wasn’t grieving extravagantly the way Father had. She withdrew into herself and never mentioned him. She spent hours standing at the rail in the wind. She avoided Aristomache much as Erinna was avoiding me.

“He always said he’d die when he was ninety-nine,” I said, coming up next to her.

She jumped. “Arete, don’t creep up on people that way!”

“I wasn’t creeping up, you were completely locked in your thoughts.”

“It’s not true that I don’t love people,” she said, out of nowhere. She had Ficino’s hat crushed between her hands.

“Of course it’s not! Who said that?”

“Ikaros,” she admitted.

“That idiot.” I had never met Ikaros. “What does he know about it? You love lots of people. You love me.” I put my arm around her.

Maia snorted, half way between laughter and tears.

“Come on, Magistra, you haven’t taught me anything for days.” It was the best way to cheer her up, giving her something to do. And besides, my birthday was coming the next month, and with it my tests and my oath. I wanted to be ready.

We sailed on among the islands, and I wished them unknown again and empty of consequences. I stood my watches and did lessons with Maia and had occasional conversations with Father and my brothers. We did not stop at Ikaria, but I looked longingly at the shore and the pine woods as we sailed past.

We struck the shore of Kallisti from the northeast, and so we saw the City of Amazons first, immediately recognizable with its immense statues on the quayside. We sailed on. “Home first,” Maecenas said, decisively, and nobody disagreed.

We arrived home at sunset on the twenty-ninth day after our departure, though it felt as if we had been away for centuries. The mountain was rumbling and belching out red-black streams of lava as we sailed in. “Just a normal little eruption,” Phaedrus said reassuringly.

“You know?” I asked.

“I do,” he said, sounding a little awed.

It is a testament to how much had happened on the voyage that our gaining god-powers seemed such a minor part of it. And yet the story of what had happened to us wouldn’t make an epic. Or would it? I thought it over. It seemed too ambiguous, but Homer embraced ambiguity. Homer had heroes on both sides. I remembered Ficino saying he’d fight for Troy. How would people tell the story of Kebes? Would they tell how Apollo beat him in a contest and skinned him alive? Or would it all be forgotten as Father believed? But Father had said everything the gods did became art, and he was still a god. Maybe it was more like a tragedy, heroes overcome by their flaws.

We tacked in to the harbor and tied up, safe at the wharf, home at last.