“Ares is a God of frenzy; he drives men to battle and reaps them like grain on a bloody field. Achilles was His, and died young and childless and alone, trading length of days for everlasting fame. Athena is the defender of the polis, of art and skill, including the art of war. Odysseus had Her for a patron; the man of cunning mind who wanted nothing to do with Troy, but who ended the Trojan war and spent ten years scheming and fighting to get home to his wife and son so that he could end his days among his own people, by Penelope’s side.”

“That sounds a lot better than Mr. Frenzy.”

Delia nodded soberly: “Athena gave Her people the olive and the high fortress that was their strength; she carries a spear and a shield and a tall crested helm. Her symbol is the owl, for wisdom and clever plans. And . . .”

Delia looked at her, blue eyes suddenly a little laughing as they met her glacier-colored ones.

“And?”

“And she was the Gray-Eyed One.”

Tiphaine found herself laughing. There weren’t many people she did that easily with, and only one when anything serious was happening.

“It’s a natural.”

“Then, let us go on a journey . . .”

Somehow they had reversed positions and Tiphaine was lying in Delia’s arms, not vice versa, and she was feeling lazy and floaty; much more pleasantly than when it had been fever induced.

Delia’s voice ran on, like a spring wind through the treetops, while you lay and looked up and made stories in the clouds.

“And Ouranos wed Gaia . . . Metis was swallowed by fearful Zeus and their daughter Athena who was born from the bloody head . . .”

Umbrella pines growing twisted on a rocky headland with asphodel blooming beneath them, a sea dark purple stretching to a horizon of islands. Sails, and a white froth where the oars stroked and the water curled back from a bronze ram. The smell of dry spicy dust and the taste of wine; a tower of rock and the gleam of marble atop it and the scent of incense. Water-broken light glittering on a great helmed form, ivory and gold, the shield leaned against her knee with the contorted Gorgon face and Victory poised in Her palm, up and up to the calmness like stars in her eyes. Chanted prayer and the music of the aulos. A bull with golden horns pacing to the altar before robed and flower-garlanded maidens who lifted a great embroidered cloth in their hands and sang . . .

Tiphaine came to herself with a start and looked up at Delia’s face hanging over her and blinked.

“You witched me!” she said.

“Not so much,” said Delia with a smile, and kissed her. “I relaxed you with the brandy. And then I put you in a hypnotic state; so you could hear and see the Gods as I spoke to you of them. And then She spoke.”