“Not by name, but they know the Goodness. They say the captain is called Massias. Some people from the Goodness have been here for the festival, and behaved appropriately. They said they thought our ship was the Goodness at first. They don’t know the location of their city, but they come here from the northeast, so that gives us a direction.”

“Northeast. Interesting,” Ficino said. “What’s northeast of Delos?”

“Well, Mykonos close by,” Klymene said. “Beyond that, nothing much for a long way. Due east gets you to Ikaria and Samos. Northwest are Tinos and Andros. Northeast, well, a biggish gap of sea and after a while you get to Chios and Lesbos.”

“And on the mainland, Troy,” Ficino pointed out.

“Why would Kebes have gone to Troy?” Klymene asked.

Ficino shook his head, as if to ask why anyone would go anywhere else.

We went back to the Excellence before nightfall, as the priests had asked. Phaedrus was in the same boat I was. “What was that?” he whispered to me.

I shrugged. “The island? We should ask Father, maybe.”

“Our souls?” he asked.

Ficino was looking at us curiously. “We should ask Father, when we can be quite sure we’ve got him alone,” I whispered.

12. Arete

12

ARETE

I couldn’t sleep that night with thinking about what had happened. We sailed northeast to Mykonos, which had some scattered fishing settlements a little more civilized than those of Naxos and Paros, but only a little. A party tried to talk to them, again without success. I didn’t go ashore, and I couldn’t catch Father alone. We sailed on east to Ikaria, which we reached late on the next day. There was no sign of life visible from the ship. We anchored for the night and the next morning put down a shore party, which now felt routine. We sailed around another long thin island, and met up with the shore party in the late afternoon. They had seen nobody, and we concluded that Ikaria was deserted like Ios and Amorgos. We therefore went ashore as we had done there, and began to build fires to cook a meal.

While we were ashore, the three of us cornered Father and took him off into the trees away from everyone to ask about Delos. There was a wonderful scent of pine needles all around us as we walked and scuffed up the droppings of years, a thick layer of pine must which felt as if it had never been disturbed before. Although it smelled amazing, it was uncomfortable to walk on the strange surface. My feet sank in at every step and it took a real effort to move them. Old needles kept finding their way into my sandals and scratching my feet.

“I’m glad to see you found the spring,” Father said, once we were well away.

“Why didn’t you warn us?” Kallikles asked.