4.4 In Achaea

In which Zeus destroys again

‘“I will tell you what you will weave for them.”

‘I was irritated but masked it. He was wasting my time with pointless questions.

‘“Just an extension of your proper work. You can adapt to it easily, I am sure.” Now he was laughing at me.

‘“What are you talking about?” I felt relieved that he was getting tired of his obsession.

‘Then, I heard a noise from down the hill, something I knew I should attend to.  But I had to keep talking to him. “What can I make them that they can’t make for themselves?”

‘He smiled with his teeth. “Shrouds.”

‘I rose quickly and walked away from him, moving rapidly through the grove of trees, their branches parting ahead of me. I could hear shouts, and a scream, and I began to run. The ground trembled under my feet and I broke through the thicket onto the edge of the escarpment, above the edges of Etylos’s fields, lined with stones set aside from the ploughing. Smoke billowed from the farmhouse below me in the valley. Orange flames were licking wildly out of the open door, and the roof was already blackening. There was a body lying in the yard, and one of the draught oxen was stamping, trampling another figure into the dust. I ran through the fields down the hillside, heedless of the new shoots under my feet, while the screams of Etylos’s woman filled my ears.

Klotho’s tears streaked her face again. ‘But I would not yield. I will never yield.’