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branch. Lailaps whipped his head around and growled, and Kephalos, thinking the hound had spotted prey, flung his spear into the woods. He heard a moan and ran to where his target had fallen. He gasped in horror at the sight of his beloved wife, who lay on the ground with his spear in her chest. He cradled her in his arms, calling her name, but there was nothing he could do. She gave him one last, loving look, took one last breath, and died.
    Kephalos was so distraught that he didn’t even care when he was ordered to leave his homeland and never return for the crime of murdering his wife. He wandered through many countries, eventually settling on an island that was renamed Kephalonia in his honor. Memories of Prokris haunted him, as did her ghost, who came to him in the semi-darkness of dawn and looked at him reproachfully.
    Finally, Kephalos could no longer stand the terrible guilt he felt—for testing Prokris with the golden crown, for going off with Eos, and especially for throwing his spear without seeing what he was aiming at, thereby killing his beloved hunting companion and wife. He climbed up onto a cliff and flung himself into the sea. With his last breath, he called out, “Pterelas!” for that was the name Prokris had been using when he found her again.
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    Can We Just Be Friends?
    Romances between Greek gods and humans rarely had happy endings, partly because of that irritating habit humans have of dying, while gods live forever. The dawn goddess, Eos, thought she had figured a way out of that particular problem when she asked Zeus to grant eternal life to her boyfriend (not Kephalos; a different one). Unfortunately, Eos forgot to ask for eternal youth for him as well. The result was that while she stayed young and active, he grew older and older and more and more bent, and his voice got creakier and creakier, until he shriveled up and turned into a cicada.

APPLES AND LOVE
    Oh, dear. That myth is even sadder than I’d remembered.
    And it reminds me of my own problems. I didn’t trust the gods of the underworld, and look what happened to me. Kephalos didn’t trust Prokris, and Prokris didn’t trust Kephalos, and they both wound up dead. Kephalos couldn’t live with his mistake, and he jumped off a cliff. I couldn’t forgive myself, so I lost my mind and wandered into mortal danger—a kind of death by nymph.
    For story seven, let’s have something a bit more cheery. All right?
    Apples play a big role in the love stories of my people, the ancient Greeks. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because they’re sweet. Oh, I know, other fruits are sweet, but we didn’t have many back then. Some people had a picnic here once, about a hundred years ago, I think, and they were eating this big green thing that was red inside, with black seeds—you know what I’m talking about? A watermelon? I guess you’re right. Whatever it was, a lot of the juice dripped on me, and it was amazing. The ants and bees that got stuck on my face weren’t so amazing, but it was worth it.
    Where was I? Oh, right. The apple tree is special to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Maybe that’s why people think of apples when they tell stories about love. Prince Paris gave an apple to Aphrodite in order to win Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, and that’s what started the Trojan War. In another myth, a young man threw golden apples in front of a fleet-footed princess named Atalanta during a footrace, so that she would lose the race and have to marry him.
    The apple that you’re going to hear about, which a young man named Akontios used to trick a beautiful girl named Kydippe, was just an ordinary apple. It wasn’t made of gold and it wasn’t the prize in a goddess beauty contest, but it had its own kind of magic.
    Akontios was a handsome young farmer from the small island of Keos, near the even smaller island of Delos. Delos was the birthplace of Artemis, goddess of the moon and of the hunt, and her twin brother, the sun