Read Deep Water for Free Online Page B

looked again under the blanket. Nice tits. Okay, this is weird.
    His new body sat up on its own and
stretched, then pulled a large, wide-mouthed pot from under the bed and
squatted over it to urinate. A chamber
pot. God, please tell me I’m not a maid at Downton Abbey.
    He glanced at the walls as he peed and did
a mental double-take. They were made from marble blocks, cut and fitted so that
there was no gap between them. Definitely
not Downton Abbey, then.
    His body stood and picked up the pot,
dumping the contents outside the window. She then slipped into a simple tunic
before wandering out of the room. Griffin tried to stop and go back to study
the walls, but this new body wasn’t responding to his commands.
    Well, damn. Resigning himself
to a passenger/observer role, he watched as his hostess went into a small
courtyard, heading to a rustic fountain set into the corner. There she shucked
off her tunic, using the water (spring-fed, judging by the warm temperature)
and a handful of sand from a nearby urn to scrub herself clean.
    In the opposite corner of the courtyard an
olive tree grew, its grey branches heavy with fruit. Marble walls, olives, tunics. Is this Greece?
    His theory was confirmed when a bodiless
voice said, “Good morning, my child. How did you sleep?” Somehow he knew the
voice spoke in an archaic form of Greek.
    His hostess smiled brightly as she toweled
herself off with a cloth. “Very well, my lady. Give me a moment to dress and
break my fast, and I’ll tend to your altar.”
    “Once you are finished with that, bring an
amphora of the best wine to my chamber,” the voice instructed. “I will be
entertaining a guest today.”
    “Yes, my lady.” The young woman bowed
towards the tree before redonning her tunic,
fastening it at both shoulders with bronze pins. After depositing her towel in
a basket, she headed to a small storeroom. Griffin was fascinated by the
amphorae stored neatly along one wall, while another held shelves supporting a
variety of bowls and baskets decorated in bold shades of orange, red, and
black.
    His hostess lifted the lid of a basket and
pulled out a small round bread loaf. Selecting an amphora, she unsealed it and poured
the contents, wine from the color, into a plain wooden cup, taking bread and
wine back to the courtyard. Seating herself at a small table in the corner
opposite to the olive tree, she shredded the loaf and dipped pieces of bread
into the wine before eating them.
    A fragment of a BBC documentary on ancient
Greece floated into his mind, about how suspect water sources made it safer to drink
wine or beer with meals, even breakfast. Weird meal or not, Griffin found he
was able to enjoy the taste of the wine and bread along with his hostess. After
a year of undergoing radiation and chemo, it felt damned good to be in a young,
healthy body, even if it was the wrong gender.
    After breakfast, his hostess brought the
cup back to the storeroom, picked up the amphora and headed into a short
corridor that led outside. Griffin couldn’t look back, but somehow knew that
he’d left a small residential compound.
    All curiosity about the compound
evaporated when he saw where his hostess was going. The stately temple ahead of
him was one of the iconic structures of Western civilization. He had visited
the ruins a number of times on trips to Greece, but had only seen the complete
building in renderings and models.
    Jesus God, it’s
the Parthenon. I’m going into the actual Parthenon.
    The young woman didn’t seem overawed by
the magnificent structure. She went inside and headed to the large rectangular
altar, where a massive statue of the goddess Athena sat in majestic glory. There,
a fire burned in a great bronze dish. Genuflecting before the altar, the young
woman put down the amphora and picked up a small flagon of oil, adding a
measure to the bronze dish to keep the fire fueled. Once that was done, she
fetched a willow broom and started sweeping the hall clean with