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asked.
    Pythia patted my hand. “That is the energy of youth. To do something, anything, in the face of the gods’ disfavor.”
    “We must do something,” I said.
    “What can we do? Can I rid the seas of pirates or raise men from the dead to plow fallow fields?”
    I did not answer. I had not thought of these things before.
    “Yes,” Pythia said. “Now you must think. You must think about the causes of things, about the shape of the world, even though you will never leave this place. You must understand such things if you are to give counsel to kings as well as country people.”
    “But I will leave this place,” I said. “I saw myself on a ship.”
    Pythia frowned. “Sometimes we are called to come to where the king is to give him counsel. That is it, surely. For once you are Pythia, you may not go forth long from the Shrine where you serve. Surely you do not wish to go?”
    “No,” I said. “I am happy here with you and Dolcis. This is my home. Why should I wish to go?”
    And yet as I said it, there was something that strained inside, some yearning for shores I had never seen, for the songs I had heard as a child, in my own tongue. For someone like me. Perhaps, I thought, everyone feels this. But we are all still alone.
    “Like calls to like,” she said. “And you have the sea in your veins, the blood of the Sea People. Perhaps you would have been better as Cythera’s servant rather than mine. But She led you to me, so we take what is given.”
    “I have never been unhappy here, Pythia,” I said. And it was true that I loved her, almost as a second mother, or as the grandmother I had not known. “I would not wish to go to Pylos and Cythera’s service if you offered it.”
    She kissed my brow. “You are a good child,” she said. “You are my Linnea, and I die content knowing that you will be Pythia when I am gone.”
    “You will not die for many years,” I said, and knew it was not true.
    S HE DIED a year later. In the fall, at the beginning of the sowing season after the Kalligenia, she fell to the ground and a paralysis took her right arm and leg. It dragged down the corner of her mouth and slurred her speech so that Dolcis and I could hardly understand her. It made it difficult for her to eat, so Dolcis cooked grain in milk from our goat and I fed her with a spoon.
    “It is Her hand,” she whispered, though I could barely understand the words.
    Four months later I woke in the night to find her dead. The Lady’s hand had touched her again, and taken her in her sleep.
    I knew what must be done. I sent for Cythera and her handmaidens, for Dolcis could not go beyond the veil, and I could not carry Pythia to the place she must go alone. We wrapped her in black, and Cythera held the silver mirror for me while I painted my face for the first time.
    White as bone. Black as night. My hair was pinned up with the copper pins Pythia had worn, pinned into the elaborate puffs and curls of the wig, like a painting from the islands that are lost beneath the sea. I did not need the wig. My hair was dark and thick and had no touch of gray.
    When I looked in the mirror She was looking back.
    I led them into the darkness. I went in front, and Cythera and her two maidens came behind with She Who Was Pythia. Down into the darkness we went. Through the great chamber with the wolf skins, through the narrow passage that dripped with moisture. The sound of running water echoes far in darkness. I could hear that and the choppy breathing of one of Cythera’s acolytes, terrified of the dark, of carrying a body to the very Underworld itself.
    The body of Pythia cannot be given to the fire, like these lately come Achaians. It must be returned to Her.
    There was no odor in the chamber. Thirty years and more She Who Was Born the Sister of Nestor had been Pythia. Her predecessor was dry bones. We laid her in the chamber. I do not know how many were there. Twenty-seven skulls I had counted, but there may have been more who