Alea smiled. “Would you like to hold him?”
Kafi’s face broke into a toothy grin, and she took her nephew in her arms.
“Danae, the cakes!” With a clatter, her mother set down the bowls and cups she’d carried from the hut and rushed toward the smoking oven. “You had one job!”
She had been so absorbed in watching the exchange between Kafi and Alea, she’d forgotten the honey cakes. She winced as the tray emerged, the cakes blackened at the edges.
“Don’t worry, Ma, I like them charred.” Santos strode across to their mother and pulled her into an embrace. As he drew away, he looked at his feet. “I’m sorry we’ve not come as often as we should.”
Danae threw an arm around her brother. “You’re here now.”
He smiled and walked over to Alea. “I was inspired by my own sons when making Arius’s birthday gift.” From his tunic pocket he drew out a wooden figurine of Heracles.
Alea took the doll and ran her fingers over the carving. It was lovingly detailed, even down to the famous lion hide the hero was known to wear.
“Oh, Santos, it’s perfect. Now he will know what his brother looks like.”
Danae’s heart tripped a beat. Santos looked quizzically at his sister.
Not now, not like this. Please let us have this day.
She felt a tug on her tunic. Egan was beside her.
“Play with us!”
She seized the opportunity to create a distraction. “You areboththe mighty Heracles, and I am the terrible many-headed Hydra!” She launched after the boys, gnashing her teeth and jabbing her hands like pincers, as her nephews squealed and scurried away.
Santos laughed and ran after them, holding his fingers to protrude from his jaw like tusks. “AndIam the fearsome Erymanthian boar!”
“Honestly you two, we’re about to eat!” The scold in Eleni’s voice was tempered by the smile she could not prevent from curling her careworn mouth.
Alea laughed and took Arius back from Kafi, her world narrowing to the rosy glow of her son’s face.
As Danae sprinted across the yard, the knot in her stomach loosened. Alea’s secret was safe once more. At least for now.
Danae woke drenched in sweat. The mat she’d slept on since Arius’s birth was sodden. She rolled over to stare at the pallet her sister now shared with her nephew. As the darkness solidified into shades of gray, the clarity of their sleeping bodies came into focus, and her fear abated.
She’d been woken by the same dream for weeks.
In a starless sky, the moon and sun loomed together over the beach, both burnt to blood-red craters. Danae stood paralyzed in the shallows, feet rooted to the seabed by some invisible bond. Then threads of golden light cracked through the darkness. They cleaved the air, growing brighter and brighter, until the night shattered. She threw her arms over her head, expecting to be flattened by a falling shard of moon or sun, but the blow did not come. She lowered her arms. The celestial bodies were gone, so too was the spider’s web of glowing threads. The heavens were empty, and her limbs were coated in a fine film of black dust.
Her mother told her once, dreams come through two gates, one of horn and one of ivory. The dreams fashioned from horn reveal the truth of what is to come, but those cast from ivory are woven with tricks.
Her gaze drifted to the wooden figurine of Heracles lying forgotten on the floor. Toward the end of the day, Alea had shut herself away in the hut. Her mother had accepted the excuse that her sister was weary and needed rest, but Danae knew the real reason. Zeus had not come, and Alea was bitterly disappointed. Despite the lie tasting acrid on her tongue, Danae had tried to convince her sister that a mortal celebration was too lowly a place for the King of Heaven, and he would surely honor his son in his own way. But Alea had still cried herself to sleep. Danae didn’t know how much longer she could keep doing this.
She blinked. Perhaps some remnants of sleep still lingered, or the night was casting illusions, but she could have sworn the miniature Heracles just moved.
A ripple seemed to pass through the air, drifting beside her sister’s pallet. Danae rubbed her eyes. It was as though she was looking at the bed through an undulating pool.
Then the breath solidified in her chest.
Arius was floating. One minute he was asleep in Alea’s arms, the next he was levitating in the air.
She must be dreaming. She pushed herself up and dug her nails into her palms. Pain spiked across her skin. She was definitely awake. At the sound of her movement, the air around the baby shimmered, and dread seeped into her limbs.
The space around Arius blurred, then a pair of crimson eyes twisted toward her.
She screamed.
