“Of course you did,” Zeus said, his gaze still fixed on Athene. “You took Pico and Ficino and Atticus careering through time rescuing books and art, you turned Sokrates into a fly because he beat you in a fair argument, and you’d like me to regard this as something other than sheer unadulterated self-indulgence?”

“I have learned a lot I could have learned nowhere else,” Father said.

“I have lived a life I could have lived nowhere else, and I shall always be grateful to Athene for giving me my life,” Maia said.

“I accept your judgment,” Athene said, inclining her head to Zeus.

“My judgment. Yes. But how shall I judge what I shall do with it? They’ve already left the island and started to reach out. I can’t leave them there to tangle with history. For us, what’s done is done. But for them, it might be kindest if—”

“No! Please!” Father said. He flung himself down before Zeus, flat on his face, with his hands on Zeus’s knees. My sense of scale quailed, for in one way Zeus’s knees were as huge as mountain ranges, and in another Father, who was the same size he always was, could comfortably clutch them. Also, the posture was ridiculous, but Father managed to make it seem not only graceful but entirely natural. “Not the darkness of the oak! Don’t unmake them. I beg you, Father, not that.”

I had never before heard of the darkness of the oak. But as soon as I heard what Father said, I understood what it meant. Zeus had the power to undo time, to make things never have happened. He could do that with the city, unmake it. The Masters and Children would never have left their own times. The Young Ones would never have been born. The City would never have been more than Plato’s dream. The darkness of the oak. I shuddered.

Fear is a strange thing. I had been afraid I wouldn’t qualify as gold, but I had not been afraid when all-knowing Zeus had appeared before me and carried me off outside time. I had sat through the debate so far listening to Athene being chided and been calm and interested. But as soon as Father said “the darkness of the oak” I was terrified—and yet still a little detached from my fear, observing it rather than being swept off in it. Was this what it was like to be a god?

“But why, Phoebus?” Zeus grumbled. “You’re outside time. You’d still remember what you’ve learned. Your children are here, even Neleus.” Neleus straightened Ficino’s hat as Zeus glanced at him. “And however much agape you felt for her, your woman is already dead. The whole thing is ludicrous. Their souls are going back where they came from. It has only been a few years. The darkness of the oak would be a mercy—”