Page 60 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“Welcome.” He looked down at me for just slightly too long, and I thought he might come closer, but then he dipped his head and stepped back. “Sleep well, knight.” He walked away into the dark, and from a tree, an owl swooped down and flew ahead of him, for all the world like it was showing him the way.

The house was quiet, but there was still a line of lamplight beneath my bedroom door. I tapped on the middle panel. “Boys?” I said softly. “Are you awake?”

The lock clacked, and there they all were on the other side, looking like lost ducklings. I froze when they lurched forward and hugged me, then put my arms around them as well as I could. They were still just little enough.

“It’s just a man,” I promised. “He’s gone mad. Dionysus is looking after him. I don’t think he’s going to try to come into the house. But you stay in here tonight, just in case. Keep the door locked. I’ll sleep in the other room. Wake me up if you hear anything inside the house.”

But actually, I’d wake up, because I could hear. It was only slowly breaking over me, all the things I’d be able to do now.

They looked at each other uncertainly, and I realized they wanted to keep up their normal night watch of me.

“Why do you do it?” I asked. “Why do you watch me at night?”

There was a kind of silent conference, and then the one I suspected was the eldest looked up at me properly.

“Because you walk at night,” he said. He looked nervous mentioning it. “The mad god possesses you.”

A sort of heaviness came over me, like all my bones were turning to lead. “Mad god.”

“There is a god who you do not worship here,” he said, small, as if he expected me to throttle him. “He has—cursed you. He curses soldiers. He makes you think normal people are enemies, at night. We have seen this curse at home. We watch, because we want to make sure you do not kill us.”

I stepped back without meaning to. “What?”

He glanced at his brothers again. “And—this last couple of days . . . you’ve been killing other things. In the garden.”

Gods on Olympus.

“I see.” It was hard to talk, because my throat had turned to rock. “All the more reason to lock yourselves in. I’ll put locks on your doors tomorrow.” I had been going to leave it at that, but I couldn’t. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because—you don’t like us, and we do not know what you will do.”

Silence. Horrible things always are simple.

I didn’t know what to say, except the only solution I had, for all it was less than bronze-clad. “If you think I might hurt you, bring Dionysus, because if that happens, I’m not in my right mind, and he needs to take me to Ares. Do you understand?”

They nodded.

“I like you fine,” I said, lower. “You’ve been wonderful. I know this is a hard life for you now. You’re doing beautifully.”

“We are?” the middle one said. He looked like he might cry.

I brushed the top of his head. “Are you joking? You haven’t poisoned me or anything, it’s all very relaxing.”

Something was different. They were just ordinary children now, not guarded and blank. They were caught exactly in the strange half light between childhood and adulthood. I could see how they had been when they were five, all round and tumbling, and how they would be when they were thirty. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t had the sense to put it together earlier.

“Now off you fuck, get some sleep.”

For the first time since I’d met them, they all smiled.

“Night, Phaidros,” the oldest one said softly, once the others had gone into the bedroom ahead of him. He gave me what might have been a smile through the narrow gap between the door and the frame.

“Night, Kat.”

He looked taken aback.

“Ah, you see? Sometimes I’m not just a pig in a Phaidros disguise,” I said.

He laughed. It was still a small-child giggle, deep and involuntary, and it chimed down the corridor, finding its unfamiliar way around the rafters, and the house felt different entirely.