Iatromea snatched the coins. “By sundown.” She threw a contemptuous glance at Alea, then shuffled off down the dusty road.
“Ma?” Alea said in a trembling voice.
“It’s all right,” Eleni said quickly as she ushered the girls away from the house. “I’ll take care of it.”
They began to walk back through the village.
“I’m sorry,” Alea said so softly it was barely audible.
“It’s not your fault. These things can happen early in a pregnancy. I should have gone on my own.”
Danae watched Alea with an iron weight in her stomach. Intuiting her sister’s mind used to come as naturally as breathing. Now she felt like a stranger. She was slipping away, and Danae didn’t know why.
Her gaze trailed over the large, sun-bleached houses to her left and lingered on one with blue-painted shutters. She comforted herself with the knowledge that their mother’s plan had worked. Perhaps her sister would end up living in a house like one of these, with her own courtyard garden and an apple tree in the center. Apples were Alea’s favorite. Danae smiled. She’d sneak out to Timon’s orchard when they got home and bring her sister back a skirt-full.
She stopped walking. In the shadowy gap between two of the houses was a pair of red eyes, the same crimson orbs she’d seen at the Thesmophoria. The air around them seemed to ripple, as though the eyes were attached to a body that was somehow there and not there at the same time.
“Danae.” Her mother touched her arm and she blinked. The eyes were gone. “What are you staring at?”
“Nothing,” she said as her mother pulled her away.
A couple of weeks after their visit to Thaddeus, Danae and Alea were lugging their family’s hydria along the dirt track to the village. With each step the vase grew heavier. Danae readjusted her grip as the handle slipped between her moist fingers. The midday sun was relentless. Normally, they would make the journey in the cool of morning, but Alea’s sickness had delayed them.
Before Alea’s disappearance, the sisters would chatter all the way to the well. But the gulf between them was widening, gorging itself each day on their silence. Danae could not shake the sense that there was something Alea was not telling her.
Sticky and irritable, they finally reached the square. After hefting the hydria across the last stretch of dirt and setting it down against the bricks of the well, together they heaved the heavy iron handle and hoisted the pail up from its watery depths.
A crash of broken pottery echoed from the far side of the square. Philemon and his father were standing outside the blacksmith’s hut, shattered fragments of an amphora scattered around Philemon’s feet, his sandals drenched with wine. He didn’t seem to notice. His red-rimmed eyes were fixed on Alea.
Behind them, Melia emerged from her husband’s hut. She’d halved in size since the death of her daughters, a grief-ravaged skeleton of the woman she’d once been. She staggered past Philemon and Thaddeus, her face twisted with hatred.
“You don’t deserve to be alive,” she shouted. “My beautiful daughters are gone butyouare still here. Disgusting, depraved...” She collapsed to her knees, sobbing. Her husband ran forward and half dragged, half carried her back inside.
Danae couldn’t breathe. Melia knew.
Thaddeus seized Philemon by the scruff of his tunic and barked something in his ear before shoving his son in the direction of the sisters. By now, a crowd had gathered, waiting in rapt silence for the drama to unfold.
Watching Philemon walk across the square was agonizing. When he finally reached them, he looked like he was going to be sick. For the longest moment nobody moved. Then a peal of laughter rippled around the square. Anger flushed his cheeks.
“Philemon, I—” Alea began.
With as much violence as if he’d hit her, Philemon spat in Alea’s face.
4
The Followers of Dionysus
The tension ruptured. All around, the villagers shouted, given permission by Philemon’s act of condemnation.
“Filthy animal!”
“Whore!”
“You aren’t welcome here!”
Through the commotion, Danae spotted Iatromea in the crowd. She wore a look of satisfaction, reserved for those who believe themselves the agents of justice.
“How could you?” Danae shouted, wrapping her arms around her sister. “You promised! You took our coin!”
