“Come, let us discuss this,” Zeus said. He pointed at Father and my brothers. “And you can come too.” He pointed at Ikaros.

“Me?” Ikaros squeaked.

“Yes, you, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Count of Concord, Ikaros of the Amazons. You. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you when you profess to know so much about me? Come.”

Maia had her mouth open, as if she was about to say something. Ikaros grabbed her arm.

Erinna was stepping forward too, and the Archon was reaching for me, and then they were gone and I was standing on a sloping mountain meadow, green with soft spring grass and dotted with strange blue and golden bell-like flowers, nodding in the gentle breeze. It felt like Delos, only much more so.

31. Arete

31

ARETE

Father was there, and my brothers, and Zeus, and Athene, and Ikaros, and Maia, standing in a rough circle. I sat down at once on the soft grass, and so did everyone else, almost simultaneously. There was something strange about how everyone looked, as if perspective didn’t work properly here. Zeus and Athene both were and were not normal human sizes. They were much too big to be sitting in a circle with the rest of us, yet there they were, sitting right there, not taking up any more room, and not far away. Zeus was big enough to fill the mountain and the sky, and at the same time only a little taller than Phaedrus. It made me feel a little dizzy when I focused on him and anything else at the same time.

“Why did you bring Pico?” Athene asked Zeus.

Zeus raised an eyebrow. “He’s the reason you did all this, isn’t he?”

I looked at Ikaros. He looked different, younger. His long hair was chestnut brown and his face was unlined. He looked only a few years older than my brothers. He was still clutching Maia’s arm. Maia also looked younger, very much the way she looked in her statue in Amazonia. She was staring at Athene. Ikaros opened his mouth as if he was about to say “Me?” again, but Porphyry put a hand on his shoulder and he subsided. Athene didn’t turn her head in his direction, but the owl was staring at him, and I felt she didn’t need to look at him to see him. I could also tell by the way he was looking delightedly at everything that he could see properly.

“It’s true I wanted somewhere interesting to take him. But he prayed to me for the Republic. They all did, all the Masters. And I could grant their prayers and help. It seemed like a good time and place for such an experiment.”

“It was meddling for your own vanity,” Zeus said, decisively. “And dragging Phoebus into it, where’s the sense in that?”