“I always thought it was a strange way to thank the poor beast, breaking off one of her horns,” Polydeuces said. “But it’s not my place to question the gods.” He, too, patted Milo’s shivering back and added, “So, boy, how does it feel to be pouring out a never-ending stream of—?”
“Stop that!” I scowled at my brothers as I shooed them away from Milo. “How can you make such jokes in front of him?”
“To be honest, the only thing in front of him right now is the sea and the supper he ate three days ago.” Castor’s grin got wider.
Polydeuces was contrite. “We mean well, Helen. We’re only trying to make him laugh. A good laugh might take his mind off being so ill.”
“It’s a shame we’re bound straight for Corinth,” the old sailor said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Since nothing else seems to be working for this lad, could be that a short rest on dry land would steady his stomach.”
“You think we’d ever be able to get him back on board afterward?” Castor asked.
The sailor shrugged. “What would he have to say about it? He’s your slave, isn’t he?”
“He’s our sister’s slave, or was,” Castor replied. “She freed him as soon as she bought him.”
“And still he came onto this ship with you, sick as seafaring makes him?”
“This is his first voyage,” I said, stooping beside Milo to place one arm protectively around him. “He didn’t know he’d get sick.”
“Oh, he’d have come along even if he’d known that a sea monster was waiting to gobble him up,” Castor said, with another of those annoying, conspiratorial winks to his twin. “Anything rather than be separated from you, little sister.”
Polydeuces eagerly took up his brother’s game. “That’s true,” he hastened to tell the old sailor. “If you could have seen the way he’s been gazing at her, all the way from Calydon!”
“Can we blame him, Polydeuces?” Castor asked with mock sincerity. “Our little sister is the most beautiful woman in the world.” They collapsed laughing into each other’s arms.
Milo made a great effort and pushed himself away from the rail, away from me. He took two staggering steps, fists clenched. “She is.” Then he spun around and lurched for the ship’s side once more.
My brothers exchanged a look of pure astonishment. The old sailor chuckled. “He may have been a slave, Lady Helen, but he’s braver than many a free man, to talk back to princes that way! But it wouldn’t be the first time a man found courage he never knew he had until he met the right woman.”
My face flamed. I wanted to thank Milo for putting an end to my brothers’ teasing—whether or not it was all in fun, I still found it annoying—but I was strangely tongue-tied.
Fortunately for me, the old sailor chose that moment to say, “That’s not something you see every day, a mouse trying to take a bite from a lion’s tail. Mark my words, this lad has the makings of a great hero. Why, if I had it my way, I’d put in at the next port and carry him all the way to Apollo’s temple at Delphi, just to see what marvels the Pythia would have to predict about his future.”
“Delphi?” my brothers echoed as one.
We all knew the name of Delphi, we just hadn’t realized it was so near. The town was a famous place of prophecy where Apollo’s chief priestess, the Pythia, foretold the future. The poets who’d sung of Delphi in our father’s hall told how she answered questions and made her predictions in a small room under the sun god’s temple, a cave where a crack in the rocky floor released strangely scented vapors from the earth’s core. Seated in a giant tripod set above that crevice, holding a twig from Apollo’s holy laurel tree, she inhaled the rising mist, then spouted a jumble of weird gibberish. Only the priests of Apollo could interpret it for you.
Now my brothers felt the inescapable need to hear what the Pythia might have to say to them. So that was why, after a short conversation with the old sailor and a shorter one with the ship’s master, we all came to be put ashore at the port just south of Apollo’s sacred city.
The old sailor who’d become my friend insisted on carrying me from the ship to the land, so I wouldn’t wet my feet. As we said our good-byes, he gave me a leave-taking present, a little carving he’d made out of a smooth, creamy white nub of material too hard to be wood, too soft to be stone. When I asked what it was, he told me, “That’s the tip of a genuine monster’s tooth, a beast that was a gray, five-legged mountain! I saw it with my own eyes in the lands south of the Middle Sea.”
“Five legs?”
His head bobbed emphatically. “Four where you’d expect ’em to be and the fifth not so much a leg as a long, boneless arm growing right out of the middle of its face.”
I smiled at him. “Now you’re teasing me as badly as my brothers.”
He held both hands out, palms upward, as if to show me he was hiding nothing, not even the truth. “Lady, if I’m lying, may Poseidon the earth shaker, ruler of the seas, make this my last voyage! The world is full of marvels, if you’re willing to travel far enough to see them.”
I looked at the carving he’d given me. It was the image of a goddess, her feet resting on the back of a dolphin.
“Do you like it?” he asked eagerly. “That’s Aphrodite.”