His eyes were precisely as blue as the sky, and his expression wasn’t human at all. “They can. But they have such a brief span to do it. And a lot of their life is misery, and while that’s a productive subject for art, it’s a limited one. And then they die and lay down their memories in Lethe and go on to become a new person. They come to the end of themselves and change and start again. Gods may or may not make art, but they can’t come to the end of themselves. Not ever. And we are art. Our lives are subjects for art. Everything we are, everything we do, it all comes to art, our own or other people’s. Mortals can forget and be forgotten. We can’t. Everything we do has to be seen in that light. There’s no anonymity. If you’re a god, your deeds will be sung. Even the ones you would prefer to forget about.”

“And I can choose, whether to be a mortal or a god?” I felt as if the whole world was holding its breath before he answered.

“Going ashore on Delos might help you. But time is the best gift.” He stared out over Delos again. “I don’t understand why she wanted to die. How she could have been ready. She told me not to be an idiot, but I don’t understand how I was wrong.”

We’d had this conversation a hundred times already, but this time I thought of something new. “Why are you assuming she was right?”

“What?”

“You’re assuming she was right. Mightn’t she have been wrong? Mistaken?”

He looked stricken. “But that would make everything worse! If she’d been wrong then I should have done it, and now it’s too late.”

“Somebody’s coming up,” I said, as I felt it through the mast.

It was Klymene. “Good to see something that looks halfway like civilization,” she said, after she had greeted us. “I’m leading the shore party today. I thought I’d come up and see if I could spot any signs of life.”

“There’s smoke rising from the altar over there,” Father said, gesturing. It was a thin thread of gray smoke, almost invisible. I hadn’t seen it until he pointed it out. “I expect you’ll find a priest or two.”

“Somebody who isn’t too terrified of us to talk would be good,” Klymene said. “And Kebes can hardly have avoided coming here if he came this way at all.”