Ichor and Ambrosia

With his newfound free-time, Acacius would find himself roaming about the rolling hills of Sifnos. He would never roam too far, just enough to see the sea over the horizon. Heron’s longhouse sat on one of the highest hills of the island, and he knew that to the northwest was the town of Kamares. When he trudged far enough, and got high enough on the hills, he could see the bustling town and port on a clear day. It was the only town Acacius had actually traveled to; he had yet to see Apollonia to the east, or Artemonas to the southeast. Nor had he been south to Vathi or Platys Gialos, or to the southern tip of Sifnos to Heronisos, where Heron claimed to have been born. He had so much of the world left to see, and he felt the passion to go out and see it burn hotter than ever when he sat high on the hills early in the morning, watching the ships dock at the port in Kamares. He wanted to see it all, to sail the vast Aegean and see sites unknown.

Acacius made it a ritual to visit the eastern hills every morning, to a different spot each day. He would climb the tallest tree and spend the morning gazing out at the world. He’d sometimes heard travelers refer to Sifnos as small when Myrrhine took him on an errand, but when he was in the trees it seemed like his tiny little island was the whole world. He could see the golden-yellow sandy shores, the buildings of white-and-red clay, the ships sailing in the distance, and—when he climbed a tall enough tree—he could sometimes see villagers, soldiers, and nobles traversed the unpaved roads in the lower hills below.

On one particularly dry April morning, when the sky was painted with a gradient of blue and purple, and the clouds against the black sea stood in stark reds and oranges, Acacius found a place near the eastern coast to climb a lone tree and watch the world. From his perch on the cliffside, with the ocean a steep drop below, he watched as a wandering woman came through the hills and passed right under him. Acacius was silent as he watched her; she wore robes of beautiful blue silk from the east that Myrrhine would sometimes admire, but never bought. Her dark brown hair was tied in a long braid down the length of her back, and through it weaved ribbons of gold and silver. Bangles and bracelets decorated her pale arms, and jewels hung from her neck like fruit from a tree. She stopped just barely a foot’s step from the edge of the cliff, with the jagged rocks below. There, she stood silently, looking out into the ocean. Acacius was so surprised to see someone that he sat dumbstruck in his tree.

The woman stood there a long while, staring out at the endless sea, and Acacius wondered what she could have been looking at. Was she waiting for a husband, a friend? Was she longing to get out and see it all? Or was she simply taking a relaxing break to bask in all the beauty the world had to offer? No matter what seemed to be true, she stood there a long while, much longer than Acacius had wanted to stay in the tree. So, as silently as the boy could muster, he made his way from branch to branch toward the ground until he could safely rest his feet on the soft, rocky earth. Before he took a single footstep, the woman’s voice came from behind him, “Turn around, boy. Would you, please?”

He bit his tongue and cringed as if a sudden pain had struck him. Slowly, with his teeth grinding with anxiety, Acacius turned to face the mysterious woman.

She took a few steps, closely examining her face with eyes like topaz stones that danced with the sunlight. “That numeral,” she said, close now, and took his chin in her hands to look at his mark. “One. You’re a slave?”

“Yes,” Acacius said.

She hummed to herself, and turned his cheek this way and that, up and down. She looked him from head to toe, resting her eyes on ears, his lips, his arms and his bare feet. “Your name?” she asked finally, taking a step back.

“…Acacius,” he said, then added, “and yours?”

“Bold,” the woman remarked, “A slave asking a lady for her name. To you, Acacius—was it?—I am nameless. You need not know who I am.”

He looked her face for a deep breath of time. She had a small, pointed chin, high cheekbones but full cheeks; her topaz eyes were cushioned by thick tufts of dark eyelashes. Light freckles were sprinkled across her face like sand in the wind; looking at her, she looked in every way what Acacius had imagined his own mother to look based on what Myrrhine had told him. “Why is that?” he finally asked.

She looked, half-turning, to the sea. “We are all ships sailing one sea, Acacius. We will pass other ships, ships who do not have names. Nameless ships are most often the least important, and I can tell you now that you have a name for a reason. And right now, we are sailing the open sea, and in that open sea I am just a nameless ship the wind has carried you past.”

“I see,” Acacius said, although the woman’s words confused him. She stepped closer and knelt to his height, caressing his face with her soft hand.

“In your eyes I see great deeds. You will sail this sea, and all seas beyond it. You will climb the highest mountains, slay the fiercest beasts, and win the greatest wars. You will bring justice to the unjust, and protection to the defenseless.”

“But I am just a slave,” Acacius told her. “How am I going to perform these deeds a slave?”

Standing, all the woman said to the young boy before her was, “Your destiny will show you where you need to go,” and without a word she strode back where she came in long strides under her silk robe, leaving Acacius alone on the cliffside, with the roar of the crashing waves hundreds of feet below.