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I woke to a murmur in my ear, close and warm: "Best of mornings, O King."
As I blinked in the early light, the shape bent over me resolved itself into Thettalos, grinning.
"Perhaps my lord wishes his rehearsal room and all its company brought to the royal bedchamber?"
I heaved myself up onto one elbow. My head felt sluggish and scrambled with the last melting scraps of a dream, and Thettalos' words meant nothing at first. Then with my next breath I tasted the fresh crisp air coming in at the window, and with an instant painful clarity I was young again and waking for the first rehearsal morning of my first Dionysia. I let out that breath, long and shaky, and young Niko melted away as surely and uselessly as the dream.
Above me, shimmering with restless energy like Helios leaping into his chariot, was my beloved—and this time around, my competitor. He put his hands on his hips, head back, neatly dressed and brushed and smug. "Come come, Niko! I wouldn't have you oversleep on the first day. Even if you do deserve it."
Returning to my pillow was so tempting—not now to sleep, but to hide my face from that brightness. I steadied myself, and said mildly, "I seem to remember someone keeping me awake with his thoughts on the many ages of Theseus."
"You aren't interested in Theseus? Not even with so many plays on him this year?" He offered me a hand up, but I climbed ostentatiously to my feet all by myself, heading to the washbowl to splash my face.
"I suppose I have my mind more on Aigeus," I said, rubbing wet hands through my hair, and we smiled.
Thettalos stood by like a dutiful page and handed me things in perfect time—a towel, a comb, a chiton, a bread roll. His impatience showed round the edges, his eagerness to be gone, to leap and stretch and fly, up and up like—
—this time my scattered mind almost thought of Icarus instead of Helios, for the ladders of sunbeam in the window and the glow of his matchless young face, before I stopped myself.
For the upcoming Dionysia, I had been selected early and offered the protagonist's role in "Aigeus the King", while Thettalos had been chosen hard on my heels and would be starring in "Theseus at Knossos". We had competed like this before, of course, and I saw no reason for it to disconcert me this time. But now Aigeus, Theseus, the Labyrinth, its architect Daedalus, Daedalus and Icarus escaping Knossos with the traitorous waxen wings, they all muddled together in my head.
I drank a gulp of watered wine to help a big bite of bread go down. "Breakfast, my dear, is not the sort of sacred rite requiring an audience."
He was so happy to go, so excited to meet all his company and start grappling with the play. But he stayed where he was, though the very air rippled around him. "I can wait and walk with you...your rehearsal room is on my way."
I simply took another bite and shook my head, waving him gently off.
He waited another moment, to be absolutely sure. Then with understated grace he made the actor's gesture of luck at me, and was gone.
This mouthful of bread was much harder to master, despite the wine. I sat down heavily on the side of the bed now that there was no one to perform for.
My rehearsal rooms weren't very far away, but lately it seemed to take me longer to get anywhere at all. The morning air had lost the bright taste of my first Dionysia. It reminded me now, as most things still did, of the morning after Dion's death, when I had lain awake all night with a black void inside my heart where the last of my hope had guttered and extinguished. No thought, only the cold and fading smoke.
It had not been even a year. Less than a year of Dion dead and gone, Kallippos squatting in the wreckage like a venomous toad to gloat over the land he defiled. I told myself that time would heal. I repeated it like a sacred song, but it only came to me from a distance, like someone else's choral ode heard from over the hills and far away.
I was not the last arrival at rehearsal, although it was a close thing. But our second actor Eryx was a family man, and he arrived late and laughing over some tale of his young sons.
"As soon as they can run, you're lost," he said, and I nodded as if I knew all about children, as if Menekrates' little ones had not suffered the worst of deaths, as if my only sister had not died in the getting of hers. Eryx was a good-natured fellow, playing Medea and Theseus to my Aigeus and Athene, in this tale of fear and betrayal conquered at the last moment by destiny and proper respect for the gods. I had read plays with more depth, but the role of Aigeus had nagged at me so that I had had to take it on—I knew the feeling of Apollo's command by now, though he and I had not spoken since my final return from Sicily.
I stepped to the front of the room, and the entire company stopped their morning chatter and watched me with calm expectation, experienced and eager to be guided by the directing protagonist. I knew that I was where I was supposed to be, serving my gods and my city.
I knew it with my head, at least. That would have to do. Be what you wish to seem, the old man said—as if I could snap my fingers to call my heart back from wherever it had gone, as if I could pour out sacrificial blood like Odysseus and summon my own self from the depths of Hades to drink and remember.
It was simply beyond me, the mere actor, the threshing-floor trodden on by the great people and events of the world. But I wouldn't have dragged the rest of the company down with me for anything. All I could do was reverse Plato's dictum and cloak myself in seem, steeling myself to perform my new role: the role of an award-winning protagonist, happy and engaged in the beginnings of creating a new production.
Welcome, King Aigeus, I said inwardly, and slung him over my shoulders like an ox's yoke. How terrible, the way it fit.
Aigeus, says the tale, ruled for his time, and did his best. But despite his efforts, he fell: he listened to his own terror, and planned the murder of a sacred guest at his own table.
The cue had come for him to step upstage to make room for the entering player, but he could not face the brightness of the new king, the true king, who would easily surpass him and leave him forgotten. Although the gods kept him from the terrible crime of guest-murder, they paid him with his own despair and fall into obscurity, to be remembered not for anything he had done or tried to do, but as the pallid predecessor, properly eclipsed by the hero.
First day of rehearsal is long indeed, all the tangled threads in the skein needing to be organized and readied for the weaving. Even our playwright, the younger Astydamas, had stopped by for a while in a cloud of hangers-on and witty remarks—luckily, his great popularity had made him blithe and easy, happy enough to leave you to it once you had petted his ego a bit.
The sun was sinking by the time all the first-day tasks were done. The rest of the company left in a hurry, but I sat down on a low wall outside our rehearsal rooms, resting before my walk home, watching the shadows creep.
Along the road, backlit by the red billows of sunset, came the silhouette of a man. He paused abreast of me and I saw it was Ariston—neatly dressed and better fed than back in Syracuse, though the long rays of light picked out the crags of his worn face.
I stood at once and exchanged smiles with him, even if the last thing I might have needed were more memories of that evening in hindsight, remembering my happy ignorance as the ship beneath my feet tipped and slid toward its imminent capsize.
"You had a long first day too, then?" I said as I fell into step with him.
"Long and tiring," he sighed, but with the blissful ardor of the lover recalling a lush and endless night with his beloved one. Like Thettalos, he glowed beneath the skin. His first Dionysia, here at the center of the theater's world—even though he now served the god as an assistant chorus-trainer rather than the mediocre provincial actor he once had been, there was not a drop of melancholy or resentment in him. And clearly this was no pretense in courtesy to me, who had brought him here and discreetly scouted to find him work. He shone with contentment.
We talked about youths' choruses—for Ariston was in fact working with the chorus of Thettalos' play, the Young Athenians sent to feed the Minotaur. He already had tales of them that made him laugh, though a fond laughter that cherished rather than mocked. I had always remembered his kindness of soul, and here it still was, thriving in the nurturing and molding of youths in this most holy of rites. I prompted his stories so that I could mostly just listen, letting his voice flow warmly around me like one of Asklepios' hot springs. And I the sick man, vainly pretending that each moment would bring the change within, the healing turn.
At last we parted, I toward the house by the river and he toward his humble lodgings, his face still alight in the dusk. Thettalos was home already, his color as high as if he had run, full of talk about his company, the roles, his plans as directing protagonist. None of the production's special designs or secrets, of course; we knew how to discuss these things and still keep a decent discretion.
"And how about your chorus?" I asked, slipping some of my supper cheese into Thettalos' bowl.
He didn't seem to notice (which I had counted on), scooping it up along with a mouthful of lentils. "Good lads!" he said, chewing. "Handsome, too."
"The crowd will enjoy that." I crumbled more of my cheese bit by bit into my bowl to melt it away. "Not only handsome, I hope?"
"Oh, no," he said. "Our chorus-master's no fool; he knows how to pick them. And your friend Ariston already has them eating from his hand."
Inspired by this, I held my last piece of cheese to his mouth. He took it delicately between his lips, his breath warm across my fingers.
"I met Ariston coming home," I said, "and it all seems to suit him down to the ground."
"The play is lucky to have him." Thettalos spoke matter-of-factly into his wine cup. "We need the Young Athenians to carry much of the story's momentum, and I know he can mold them into a team that suits it." He brandished the cup in enthusiastic gesture. "They start as a dull chaos, you know, embodying the old city, wearing out— and then ahh!" The cup swooshed like a cart careening downhill. "Prisoners! The victims of their elders' mistakes—the victims of the sacrifice! Helpless— hopeless— what is this monster that awaits them?"
Thettalos and his cup sketched the journey of the young of Athens to Knossos and the dreaded Labyrinth, through to the way they are formed by Theseus into a team, courageous and obedient, his troops and his citizens, the future of a new Athens. Our steward passed through at one point and refilled the cup with aplomb in between its dramatic journeys; I was able to pass him my mostly-full bowl without drawing attention to it, and he left us to our wine and the lamps burning low.
But later, in the warmth of the blankets and the shutters closed against the chill, Thettalos murmured against my neck: "Will you eat your supper tomorrow, do you think?"
I ruffled his hair. "I thought you engrossed in your Minotaur."
"I know." His sigh was long and easy, the sound of sleep rising over him like the sea-tide.
One would not think Thettalos someone to be underestimated. And yet, somehow I managed it. I kissed his temple. "I'll try."
Sleep came a little easier that night, now that I could occupy my mind with the journey of Thettalos' Young Athenians, the placement of their songs and dances, rising with Theseus to glory. Aigeus and his decline could be set aside until tomorrow.
Tomorrow after tomorrow rolled past, as they do. I slowly wrapped Aigeus all around me, donning and adjusting him like a complicated festal robe. We rose, went to our companies, and came home every night worn out (myself) and effervescent (Thettalos). I did try to eat my supper, and sometimes even managed it; Thettalos in his turn tried not to press me.
Once, though, he studied me especially closely over the wine. The meal had had some fine cuts of lamb with it, a gift from a neighbor's sacrifice that morning.
"Glyke won't be happy to see so much of her cooking sent back," he said, refilling my cup. "No matter how much you stirred it around."
"The servants will be glad to finish it themselves, and I wish them joy," I said. "Fresh meat feels like a feast day."
He finished his cup but did not reach for the jug again, being typically abstemious during rehearsals, like an athlete in training. Instead he swirled the lees around and peered into them. In the flickering lamplight with his chiseled northern features, he could have been a foreign sorcerer, ready to tell my future.
"It can't be that your play goes badly," he said at last. "Even though you don't say much about it, I can tell."
"No," I admitted.
"Sometimes people avoid the doctor when they're ill," he went on. The depths of his empty cup kept his perceptive eyes from mine. "Even though they know better. Like my father did. But that isn't you, not really... you know the importance of the body, for the sake of the theater if not for yourself. It's the dwelling place of the god."
"Yes." I was down to the lees myself now, but swirling them brought no pattern. Just a muddy, tangled mess...which was after all accurate.
"Displeased is the god," Thettalos recited, "at the worshiper who passes by his sacrifice." His voice rang with meaning; my throat and chest ached at it. He could have been a god himself without any mask—god of youth and future, god of true genius, striding forth kind and pitiless.
"For whom was the sacrifice this morning?" I managed, striving for absent curiosity, dreading the answer. Don't say Apollo, don't say Apollo... Apollo was not gentle with grief, and had no patience with unreason—his was the clarity of the sunbeam slicing through the fog. Even his riddles were clear, for those with ears to hear.
Thettalos looked up at me at last. "Oh, it was Hermes," he said. "Their sons are bound for a long journey."
I could breathe again. "May it prosper," I said, and tipped out the last few drops of my wine in libation.
Thettalos followed my lead. There was a long moment in which he studied me, and I crouched inside myself, unwilling—or was it unable?—to be seen. And then, with one sharp motion, he flicked the lees out across the floor as if playing at kottabos.
"N," he said. "N for Niko," and indeed, the dregs formed a clear Nu. He smiled at me—the long, slow smile of promise, the smile of Dionysos' sweetest rite and the brief peace that comes after abandon.
I took his strong warm hand, accepting the mercy he offered, even though I was unable at that time to pay him back with the truth I knew he longed for. He had learned some patience, even with the inexplicable. And as at last he held me into sleep, the fingers stroking my hair were gentle, as if waving to a comrade on a distant ship. I am here, they said. I see you.
I continued to need a rest before setting out in the morning, and before coming home in the evening. Not a true illness of the body—Thettalos had been right about that. And not a weariness of imagination, as with the old-man's ache that had come to me with Priam in that ill-fated play years ago.
Aigeus was too heavy, perhaps. But so was my soul. So was my memory, weaving the promise and rise of Dion with the promise and rise of not only my hopes for the world, but also, childishly, my hopes in myself. The fall of one had not caused the fall of the other, but revealed it, like a beautifully-painted skene collapsing to show a plain pine skeleton.
Rehearsal after rehearsal we found new depths in each other, actor and king, both past our pinnacle and sinking before we knew it was happening. We were both just the Messenger in a great play's prologue, laying out the carpet for the Protagonist, the audience coughing and rustling, waiting for us to finish and clear the stage.
"Now?" Eryx asked one day, his boxer's face alight.
I nodded, turning from my consultation with Isidoros, our young third actor. Eryx and I moved to our places. "To Aigeus, praying, enter Medea," I said.
Raising his chin into the barbarian witch's imperious posture, he began her big speech, the tale of the supposed usurper coming to dethrone Aigeus and destroy Athens. At the start, a ghost story for children; by the end, a clarion call to murder. Upon a first reading, I had seen in the lines the rough sketch of a serpent, wicked to the core, coiling around Aigeus and seducing him into this terrible crime.
Eryx seemed to have seen this sketch as well. His Medea was taking shape—sinuous, patient, dripping sweet poison. Fresh enough, not a copy of the enraged Medea from Achaeus or Euripides whose flattery is a bare cover for her own personal and unstoppable wrath.
But as our scene continued, it fell into stops and starts, the characters refusing to mesh into a unity. We were both trying hard—too hard, reaching out across a gap that was narrow but far too deep. At last I called a stop to it—as protagonist I longed to keep butting my head against the blockage, but as director I had learned when it was time to regroup and let in the fresh air.
Literally, in this case—Eryx and I stepped out to sit on the low wall, leaving the room to the flute-player and chorus-master for some complicated planning of their own.
"Sorry, Niko," said Eryx, wiping sweat from his forehead.
"You're not doing anything wrong." I sat and breathed, and Eryx knew enough to let me alone, thinking his own thoughts.
Sometimes I had privately imagined Thettalos in that role, Medea and Theseus both: the bellwether bearing tidings of the new age, and the hero rising above all seedy plots to blaze into destined glory. But now he was his own Theseus, which I would behold when it was time. It only remained to be seen if, on that day, the levin-light would turn me to ash like simple Semele, who had thought herself ready for the sight.
"I think," I said slowly, "Medea is not after all the serpent tickling the ear of the hapless man."
Eryx shifted to face me. I was grateful to see him interested, ready to engage with a new map for the journey, rather than taking it as a criticism.
"No?" he asked. "But she brings him the story. She gets him on the bad path."
"Everyone knows the story." I was feeling my way along, seeing the tale reveal itself as if I dug an old mosaic whole from the earth. "The Messenger tells it at the start. The chorus sings it: all the barons hear a rumbling in the stone of Erechtheus."
"Ahh. Hm." He folded his hands together. "But doesn't she herself kindle the idea of the crime?"
"I think..." I groped for words. "I think she is not the serpent. She is...the mirror."
One beat, two beats, longer, Eryx looked at me uncomprehending. I couldn't create Medea for him, though she had now stepped forth whole within my mind. She doesn't bring evil from the outside—she sees and speaks only the despair and decay already within Aigeus, showing him to himself, until he can no longer pretend. He knows now that all hope is in his past, the dream of a child, and from here there is only loss—loss of his imagined city, but more, loss of his imagined self.
Then, in that moment that must itself come straight from the god, Eryx's eyes widened. He saw. All the business we came up with after, the matching poses and the echo of gesture, was born from that instant.
I felt a glimmer of the old heat within me on my walk home, savoring the taste of what we were making. But it wasn't an antidote. Aigeus is indeed saved from his terrible crime at the last moment; there is the Recognition, and at the end I stand upon the god-walk gazing out through Athene's cool martial eyes to declare the dawn of the new age. On the horizon, however, we know there hovers the sad end of the old king: impotent against the capture of the youth for the Minotaur, having no answer to the black sail's hopelessness but to jump from the Rock. He has to die anyway, to clear the way for the hero...but there is no meaning to his sacrifice except the fact of it. He might as well have never existed.
Days blurred, despite how hard they were and how full of work. Time had lately risen around me like a flood tide, and never had it run so quickly. Once, going through a clothes-chest, I came upon the blue necklet from my half-Macedonian, and I sat there on my heels, awash in memory. How long my days had been then!
And how full of promise...or, how much the distant horizon of life had looked like promise. But perhaps now what was hard to swallow was how much of that promise was revealed to have come only from the sheer gauzy distance. Man can hope for anything, as long as the prospect is fine and perfect and far away.
I touched the necklet to my lips and put it back in the depths of the chest. By now I was exhausted with myself, thinking, oh splendid, more sorrow to add to the tedious bushel. There was a time my memories had brought me joy, perspective, even a sweet and holy tenderness. But now it seemed that all my hindsight burned, going down like poison. It is the looking back that shows Orpheus his tragedy.
The performance was soon. My company was thriving, Eryx working at his mirroring Medea, Isidoros settling nicely into his speeches, our extra still not-so-secretly delighted at his single line as the palace chamberlain. Our chorus had the power and richness one hopes for with grown men, and the work ethic as well.
No one drew attention to my increasing efforts and difficulties—not at performing Aigeus or Athene, which weren't going badly, but in the role of Nikeratos, son of Artemidoros. Perhaps I had them all fooled...or perhaps they were kind.
One night, I came home to find Thettalos there before me, just turning from the Apollo mask where it hung in its shrine.
"Supper in the garden?" he asked. "It's so nice out."
I had no energy to resist the idea. And thus we reclined on blankets and cushions in the sweet night air, braziers making us a warm-lit haven.
Thettalos, keeping my cup full, turned our conversation to music. We talked about other chorus-masters we had worked with, how choruses of men or youths or boys suited different types of story, the natures of the various choral odes. We sang together late into the night, pieces from old plays we had performed or seen or heard of. Finally we even danced, the whole greensward down to the river our orchestra floor, together becoming a whole chorus and yet one single character. I couldn't bear to consider Aigeus, and in fact at times in the talk and the singing and the whirl of our bodies I forgot about him. Thettalos never reminded me; privately I blessed him for it.
The music loosened the bonds around my soul enough for a rare good night's sleep. I blessed him for that too.
The next night, I sat with the Aigeus mask in our little guest room, his haunted eyes flickering in the lamplight.
Thettalos and I had both brought our masks home with plenty of time, as he had learned from me and I from my father. I had sat with mine, alternating Aigeus and Athene, as my performances developed. But something about tonight felt different—perhaps because I was rested, perhaps because of our night of song and the way it draws air through the body, who was to know.
All that I knew was the difference I felt, sitting and studying Aigeus, leaving myself open and waiting for the voice that Dionysos and his rites can provide to the faithful servant.
At last, those eyes in the softening amber light warmed to study me back. They said, You were tempted once, Nikeratos.
"Yes, O King," I replied, remembering the boy Thettalos kneeling before me, hungry and innocent.
You could have poisoned your own Theseus, he said.
"After a fashion," I said. "Nobble the colt before it can learn to race. There are names for that sort of thing."
And yet you didn't.
"Nor did you, son of Pandion."
Only because the gods let me learn the name of his father in time. But how self-serving is it, to stop from murdering the holy guest only because I created him?
I considered. "You feared for your people. This foreign princeling would overthrow you, and you didn't know what would become of Athens. Finding he was your son meant you could trust the passing of the kingdom into his hands."
Who can know what the next step will bring when he must walk in the dark? It could as easily be uphill as downhill. But after a hard fall, I could only think of cliffs.
I remembered Dion's final night—his own offstage death scene, with the Messenger's speech to bring it to the crowd, sending them home in shock and weeping. All I had seen since then were cliffs, everywhere outside and in, imprinted on my eyes as if I had stared too long into the sun.
I almost let my fear overmaster me, said Aigeus. I couldn't simply wait.
"One can't create hope out of ashes," I said.
No. But there is time, and also trust.
I laid a hand to his cheek, the beard finely carved and painted with grays. "Trust in Theseus? Or the gods?"
Yes.
I closed my eyes and we sat together: the actor thinking himself inside the mask, while the mask thought his way inside the actor.
"Niko?" Thettalos was there, a shadow in the doorway. Only then did I realize I had let my lamp go out, leaving me alone with the mask by moonlight.
Actors need no excuses for their strange behavior, not with each other. "Help me up," I said.
He took my hands but didn't pull, only pressed them in his as I rose. "There, you're back," he said, laughter in his voice. "Now come and get at these prawns with me. Glyke mixed a bit of vetch in the sauce—she says you look peaked, and your liver needs seeing to."
It was the day of our performances, and Thettalos and I stood before Apollo, tipping out libation droplets of thick spiced wine from our breakfast possets.
"Does Apollo care for gruel?" Thettalos said, and set to his, supping it down.
"I suppose we shall see." I took one taste, then another. It warmed my stomach, at least, as our voice exercises at dawn had warmed my throat and chest. I felt obscurely comforted; though I might be lost somewhere off the path, these rites remained, handholds to pull myself forward through the day.
Thettalos finished first, as usual. He tossed on a half-cloak against the lingering morning chill but stopped by the door, watching me.
I made the actor's luck sign, followed by one of the appeasing formulas, miming the sprinkling of dust on my head and shoulders. We had both shared our tales of the mishaps in this last week of rehearsals, so presumably the luck god had been amply fed—but I had been at this too long to tempt a reversal.
He returned the gestures with swift economy. But then, abruptly, he strode over to me and took my hand, lifting it to his brow, bending his knee. It was swift and silent, and almost before I knew it, he had risen and departed.
I was longer in finding a mantle to wrap around my shoulders and putting on shoes, perhaps a little dazed. "Who is this prince, what is this stranger," I murmured, from one of Aigeus' speeches. "What lies behind this suppliant's prayer."
My company were first in the day, granted the gift of the fresh audience and the sweet morning air. To the sound of the flute, I stepped out upon the god-walk as Athene Xenia, patroness of Athens, of Theseus, but here most particularly of the stranger become the sacred guest-friend.
The crowd's eyes settled on me in hunger. I waited one last moment in the prescribed posture, then took in the long breath that drew in the air from all the watchers and all the backstage company, mixed it within, and let it out in the word of the goddess.
The play began.
We rose to heights we had not before managed. The chorus' words were controlled thunder— Isidoros as the Messenger discovered a new gravity— Eryx and I were as connected in the mirroring of Medea and Aigeus as if we were dolls tied with invisible string.
I leaned into Aigeus and he into me. I felt him purging himself through me, his darkness and sorrow and regret, scouring my insides clean. Not that I acted with my own feelings, as poor Menekrates had had to after the deaths of his family—I wasn't trapped within myself, but instead rose to meet and embrace the character, this man born in the moment of breath and mask. When Aigeus cried out at the play's climax—in relief, but also in grief—his voice was neither mine nor his, but both and more.
Athene of Guest-Friendship at last gathered the characters and audience into her hand and created an ending for them. Behind the tying off of this thread she knew, as we all did, what would become of Aigeus. But it was what was, as the spinners spin it, and he did what he could do, this halting prisoner to his own fear.
I met the final applause among my company, the Athene mask warm under my arm and the air cool on my sweating neck. They cheered Eryx, but even more they cheered me, and he and I smiled at each other, the mirror-tie between the characters glimmering for one more moment before dissolving away. Thank you, O King, I said inwardly to Aigeus' shade, though I couldn't yet have said for what.
Luckily, I had plenty of time to recover afterward in the First Men's room, the dresser skilfully cooling me down and rubbing my muscles loose again with the sort of lightly-scented oil that always said Theater to me. There was another play before Thettalos', and I would not miss him if I could help it.
Freshly dressed and with an apple in hand to quiet my wakening belly, I met my company in the traditional side-seats and enjoyed the end of the second play, "Pallantides". There Theseus and Aigeus were allies, as the newly-acknowledged prince came to the fore with strategy and wiles to defeat his invading cousins. The eclipsing of the old king had begun.
I didn't dwell on that, though. I was too busy enjoying the chorus of Pallas' sons and their military-style dances, while also imagining how I would have directed the production myself. The irony in this enormous kin-slaying, right after Theseus has barely escaped being killed at his own father's table, was too delicious and complicated to leave alone the way this version did. It filled my thoughts up to the end, though of course I applauded with the rest, and declared the chorus-work particularly fine.
And then, after a brief change of scenery, the grand hush fell once more. The prologue began which would take us to Knossos.
I can't remember just when I started weeping. Not so as to draw attention, nor anything shameful, but a natural and unnoticed overspilling of my eyes, blurring my sight between blinks. And not for sorrow, exactly...nor for joy, exactly. Perhaps the word for it has not yet been made, even among the philosophers.
I saw not my Thettalos, but his Theseus, god-born, young. He saw the injustice done to the Athenian boys and girls, and he stepped out before them—with some fear, for he was himself mortal, but more with a burning need to protect, this Theseus whose shrines would one day succor the humblest suppliant. No simple destined king, he. He worked hard at his labors, his eyes not on kingship for himself but on caring for the kingdom and its people.
And yet within this youth were also masterful hints of all that came after, bringing bitterness to the sweet fire. We who knew could hear the far-distant curse, the roaring bull on the wave, the scream of the horses. The youth who had escaped death at his mortal father's hand would one day kill his own beloved son. It sounds as if I mean that the end of the story blotted out all that went before—but no. None of that tainted the story of Theseus conquering at Knossos. It added the shadows we all know, that the figure may step out from the background, and breathe, and be. No one escapes the darknesses of the world...and yet those darknesses are not all we are.
There came a dance and song that stopped time for me: the chorus of Young Athenians encountering the mighty Labyrinth. Twisting and weaving they danced, the maze as the spider's web. Bravely and hopefully they sang, finding gleams of light even along the path of terror.
I could scarcely breathe. I looked all around me, and saw the faces of my comrades. I saw the whole sweep of my craft, from our god Dionysos' statue in his front-row seat of honor, to the noble poets and the wealthy sponsors, to the actors of high prestige or no prestige at all. Above us the stand-ins and extras, the chorus men and boys, mechanic and skene-painter and dresser and humble fig-seller. Near the front, the great Theodoros watched with his eyes heavy-lidded, savoring, as if he were bathed in fresh sea-spray. Eryx beside me took it all in with a slightly skeptical curiosity. Higher up, Ariston beheld his young charges with such a proud and loving delight that he seemed to overflow his own body.
One of the gestures in the dance called up the old-fashioned obeisance I remembered from this morning: the hand caught and held to the lowered brow. Here it was not the simple direct line from commoner to prince: here it rippled among the dancers, along all the lines of the web. Every one of them—every one of us—part of the living chain.
Through my salt-water eyes I saw what I should have seen before: this trade, this art, this life: it was a torch race. Each of us carried the holy fire forward, not for himself, but to kindle the next, who kindles the next. No one in this Labyrinth is the loser even if—even when—he falls. The same shared flame burns into the future, long and long.
Thettalos stood modestly at center stage, crowned with the ivy garland, winner of the actor's prize. Applause thundered all round him. Wreathed in victory, shining with sweat—he looked both a striding kouros from the ancient shrines and a modern sculpture of a noble athlete all at once, like a god on a vase, ascending to Olympos. I could have gazed at him forever.
Then suddenly, he glanced over at the side seats; his face woke somehow from its timeless moment, warming, the sculpture coming to life. His eyes unerringly found mine as if we were the only two in the huge theater, and now instead of god and worshiper, or even Theseus and Aigeus, we were Thettalos and Niko.
His prize party was crowded and noisy—the good kind of noise, rising and mixing and bubbling, where even the quarrels are full of laughter. Actors drank and sang, drank and flirted, drank and talked technique. At this festival the wine was holy above all else, the gift of our patron god, and the joyous feelings as the wine did its work were his thanks, his warm loving hand loosening body and breath and spirit.
I did my part, keeping Thettalos' cup full, circulating among the guests to make sure the food and drink flowed. Suddenly the doorkeeper was bowing, and in stepped Theodoros with his friend Medon.
"Niko, my dear!" Theodoros cried, slipping his arm through mine as Medon was shown to their supper couch. "Splendid work, that mirroring. I would almost steal it the next time I direct, but for my sacred duty to my host."
I shook my head, grinning, and sang a scrap from one of our interludes: "Holy is the guest, sacred his cup..." Then I dropped the tune and said, "So fill yours up, my friend, by all that's holy!"
"Oh, darling, I would never disobey the god's command," he said, pursing his lips with bright-eyed solemnity, and we laughed.
As we strolled through the crowd toward his couch, I felt him studying me.
"What?" I smoothed my hair down self-consciously.
"You look so much better," he said.
I blinked. "It's growing a bit too long for my taste—getting that cowlick on top."
"No, no." He stopped and held both my hands in his. "You look better. You've come back."
While I stood perplexed, he kissed me and went to his couch, settling in with Medon and food and wine. Medon fed him an olive and started a skolion, at which the nearby guests roared.
I drank toasts with various guests on my next circuit round the party, and answered a riddle, and lost at a kottabos throw. When next I looked around me, my empty cup and I were standing before the mask's shrine. I gazed into his eyes, remembering as best I could how it had felt to look through them in the other direction.
Nikeratos.
A start prickled down my backbone, and I hastily tried to straighten up and tidy myself. The damn cowlick would not stay flat.
Do you think, said that remembered voice, full of amusement, that I never saw you in wine before?
"Well...I didn't really expect this to be your kind of party, my lord."
Lamps and torches, flickering as guests' shadows passed this way and that, brightened his eyes. Would I begrudge my brother his own realm? He works within his mysteries as I do in mine, and neither alone is sufficient.
I considered this, glancing down into my cup. "But your mysteries are eternal. Wine is only temporary—or at least it had better be."
I don't mean the wine, he replied, with the voice of a tutor trying to educate a dull pupil. Look, son of Artemidoros.
I turned, and truly looked.
Rivals, colleagues, friends, all overspilled the house with their fellowship. The great Theodoros, transcendent and immortal on stage, here looked relaxed and human, murmuring something to Medon who leaned against him on their couch. They were both watching Thettalos, standing in talk with my company's Isidoros and a friend equally young and gawky; both youths had obviously taken pains to dress in their very best, and were trying to look poised. They listened with huge eyes to Thettalos, crowned and kind. And beyond the gift of this night and the drink that takes one briefly from oneself, I saw again that torch race and all of us in it, hand-to-hand.
I faced the mask again, and couldn't help but smile. The warmth of the wine and the guests and the joyous racket were like a comforting arm around my shoulders.
He regarded me. No more brooding. Go back to the dance, and lift your face to the kiss of the god.
I started to turn away, but stopped. "My lord...it's long since you've spoken to me."
It's long since you have listened.
His voice alone was never entirely tender, but mixed with that of his brother coursing through my body and heart alike, it had a chiding gentleness to it.
I bowed. "I've come back," I said, and echoing Theodoros' words I believed them.
The stars wheeled, telling their stories through the spring night. And as dawn at last approached, the guests departed in pairs or groups, arguing or laughing or singing still.
"My feet hurt," I murmured, reclining with Thettalos among the cushions of our supper couch. We had long since sent the servants to bed.
"You never do sit down at these things." He laid his head on my shoulder and I stroked his hair. The ivy garland was tangled among the chestnut strands as if they would never be parted; I blessed the omen.
"What was old Geleon saying to you on his way out? The way he fastened himself to you, it looked very earnest."
Thettalos shifted against me, but didn't reply.
"Hmm," I said, flicking his ear. "This seems serious...a love confession? A recitation of the fancy bit from your speech to Ariadne, with your name shoved in?"
He sighed. "I was going to wait until tomorrow."
"Never put off till tomorrow..." I yawned. "Something something today."
The cushions moved beneath him as he sat up and looked at me rather seriously. At least, he was trying to be serious, despite the tousled hair and crooked garland that made him look like a debauched faun. "Well...he has a lead on an out-of-town Kore festival planned for the end of the summer."
"He would," I agreed. "He always has his nose to the ground."
"There'll be a new play going up, and he desperately wants you for Persephone."
"Hmm. The abduction? The pomegranate business? Or with Orpheus?"
"He didn't say. He wanted me to sound you out first, see if he could come give you the pitch."
I tucked one arm behind my head. "Yes indeed. There's a lot one could do with Persephone." I was already starting to consider her different angles—an interesting figure, and a role my father had never chanced to play.
Thettalos gazed down at me, his brows drawing together. "Are you sure?"
"Not yet, anyway. No guarantee. But I'll hear him out."
He didn't lie back down, but considered me in silence; his eyes were deep with the room's shadows and none of their usual sparkle.
"What's the matter?" I asked. "You want to wrestle for the chance to play her, is that it?"
When Thettalos doesn't respond to an innuendo, you know he has something very serious on his mind. "No," he said simply. "I see you in the role, and no one else."
A warmth rose in my chest and my face; hearing those words from Thettalos were their own kind of garland. But he looked so troubled. "What pain has touched your heart? Do not conceal it," I recited gently in the familiar Iliad rhythm.
He smiled a little, unconvincingly. "Nothing as grand as that. It's just... Do you think it's a good idea right now?"
I stared at him in silence. Never had he discouraged me from taking work as I saw fit.
"I don't mean anything by it," he said at once, wincing. "Not really. Only, you've had such a hard year. And Persephone..." He shrugged sheepishly. "She goes down into the dark."
"Do you think me that kind of actor now?" It was an honest question, and one I had already asked myself. "One who thinks it's a higher calling to wear his mask day and night, onstage and off?"
"Not at all," he said. Which was in fact the same way I had answered myself. My journey with Aigeus had been something else entirely.
"Then why be afraid of Persephone? She never meant anyone any harm."
I meant it to be light, to turn the topic aside, but he nodded gravely. "In ordinary times she wouldn't do any. You can't tell me this is an ordinary time."
I rubbed his arm comfortingly. "Are anyone's times ordinary anymore?"
"Niko!" Even exasperated, he looked like something from a mural, timeless. "I mean it, you know."
"As do I. Come here, come."
I pulled him down against me, though he felt all angles. "When a man has his head broken by a kick from a donkey," he said intensely, more like a sophist in the agora than a young man in the lamplit dimness after a very good party, "he needs time to get back on his feet. To walk himself to health, with care, before he starts picking up heavy burdens again."
"Heavy as Persephone."
"If you like."
I lightly scratched his nape and the fine short hair at the base of his skull. "Is that the diagnosis you and Apollo have been whispering about together this whole time?"
He half-raised himself and made the gesture mystai use to indicate a holy secret, but his eyes shone with mischief. I remembered the noble bronze Apollo in Dion's house before ever he rose to his fatal heights: the deadly bow in one hand, yes, but in the other the healing cup.
I smiled ruefully. "A kick from a donkey! That's not a very poetic way to describe what happened. The rise and fall of a great city...and of a—" my smile wavered, but the soft remainder stayed, and felt genuine. "A great and tragic king."
"One kick can so easily kill." Thettalos slid back into my arms. "You should have seen yourself, when you finally got home."
I kissed him in silent apology. He hummed against my mouth. "Thank the gods you brought Ariston back with you. It was to rescue him, yes, and they've blessed your efforts. But the task kept you on your feet, I think. He was there for you to lean on, more than he on you."
Just as when I was young. Now I could see this very clearly, as Thettalos sketched it with his usual sharp perception. There was still a pang at the memory, but I didn't fight it, tangled as it was with my reawakening joy and gratitude.
"And now I think it's Persephone's turn," I said.
"Hmm?"
"As it was Aigeus's. And whoever calls to me next. Do you see, my dear?"
Thettalos blinked thoughtfully, if sleepily. We rested together a while, his lids heavy and heavier; I thought he was just about to doze off when he said, "You're saying that all this isn't the burden...all this is the walk."
I pulled him in tight and spoke soundlessly against his skin: the shape of Yes, the tracery of his name. All this—our instinctive work since childhood, the call we couldn't help but answer—it was my healing walk, my torchlight race, my fate, my nourishing cup from the gods we both served.
We eventually extricated ourselves from the sliding cushions and went to our room, where a cool sweet sunrise smiled on us around the edge of the shutters. I would talk to Geleon about Persephone, Thettalos would start planning his next tour. There would be the daily details of this and that, the mishaps, the annoyances. There would be the kiss of the god like Thettalos' seeking mouth on mine. And onward we would go, in our lap of the race.