Page 121 of The Hymn to Dionysus

Another hour or so proved him right. The springs had shrunk, a lot—there were smooth patches on their banks where the water had used to be—but there was still water, and it was full of birds and animals that must have come from all around the forest, including what I was almost sure was the same leopard I’d met before. Some of the birds were amazing, brilliant green, with red crests, not normally to be found at all in Achaea, or not that I’d ever known; they must have come a lot further.

As if he were opening a door, slowly, in a way that felt very much as though he was hoping I might not notice, I started to hear all their minds, little bright things delighted with the water and stealing shiny things from the big featherless boring birds and their stone nests down in the plain below, and feeling the tug of north, where there would be cooler weather.

I lifted my eyebrows at him, pretend-stern.

He faltered. “Too much,” he said.

I pushed him in the pool. “What sort of moron doesn’t want to make friends with the adorable birds, Dionysus? Who have you been talking to for the last thousand years and why did you put up with such a luxurious selection of dickheads? Fuck!”

He laughed, and incredibly, much more incredibly than finding myself able to overhear the interests of birds, he blushed. I couldn’t see it, he was too dark, but I felt the blood rush. I pretended not to notice and started refilling our flasks, a little away from the smaller animals who would have been frightened if I got too close. The leopard sat down opposite me, coiling her tail and thinking how useful it would be to have the weird claws that could carry things like water, even when you were away from a pool; very ugly, though. Imagine being that ugly all the time. Amazing how more of their fathers didn’t just eat them at birth to spare everyone else the unpleasantness of looking at them.

“Yes, well, I hate your ears,” I told her. “Look, they’re all wonky, someone’s eaten one.”

Funny noises they made as well. Still, probably anybody would make all sorts of distressed noises if they had go around all bald and minus two legs and with stupid prey-teeth that weren’t any good for anything except—urgh—vegetables.

I flicked water at her.

Probably, probably, the One from the Trees wouldn’t mind if she ate his friend, just a little bit. It wouldn’t be very delicious, but it couldn’t be flicking water annoyingly if it didn’t have its weird claw things.

“Dionysus, the leopard wants to eat me.” One from the Trees; it was like she knew, somehow, about the Hunt and the forests, and where he had come from.

He pretended to bite my shoulder. It was only when I twisted back that I realized twisting should have hurt. Yesterday the knife wound had been raw and barely closed. There was just a slim scar now. I looked down and pushed my fingers against what had been most painful place. Nothing. He saw me notice and this time, he pretended to look stern, which doesn’t work so well when you’re beautiful and half your face hasn’t been minced.

I smiled. “Got enough water?”

He nodded. “Shall we go?”

“Very slowly,” I agreed.

His dark eyes strayed up ahead. “I’ve never walked so far in this kind of heat, is it . . .?”

“Miserable, but it’ll be fine. I’ll tell you riddles. You’ll be too annoyed to notice it’s hot.”

“I’m . . . very old, I know all the riddles.”

“Oh, not that old, surely,” I said, filling up with the glee of someone who can see victory laurels waiting right there on a plinth.

“I’m trying not to think too hard about it, actually, given how recently you were a baby.”

“So you won’t mind,” I said, trying hard to sound boyish and innocent, “if I bet you dinner in Aulis I can tell you a riddle you don’t know?”

“Lovely, I’ll take free food.”

“You promise?” I really do sound about sixteen if I half-try, it’s dreadful.

He shrugged. “I promise I will eat the dinner you are assuredly going to pay for with the silver you will somehow have to acquire between here and there, yes.”

I grinned. “I like scallops, by the way, they’re very expensive.”

He watched me for a second, hunting for whatever he’d missed, and then hissed. “Oh, fuck, you’re a fucking sailor!”

“Too late! Dinner in Aulis, old man!”

He started to laugh, but then stopped, and touched my arm to stop me walking. “Phaidros.”

It wasn’t anything he’d seen. It was that down in the city, something had shifted, and minds sharp and well-fletched were turning their attention towards the mountain.

It wasn’t like having a god’s-eye view. I’d always thought the gods knew things because they were looking down from Olympus, maybe with some kind of holy device to help them focus on the people of specific interest, but the way he saw—the way he was making me see—was the same way I always saw, but with lots of different eyes. It wasn’t only seeing, either. I was hearing, and feeling the heat, and noticing things filtered through different minds that perceived everything a little bit differently to the way I did.