Chapter Two

Apollo led me out of the courtyard that, for a time, had almost made me forget where I was. That courtyard could have been one in my old temple, and those who gathered to meet me and share stories, beautiful as they all were as other chosen mortals of the gods, could have been my former fellows.

But to see the god of the dawn approaching like a sudden sunrise, I had once again been reminded that I was in the presence of the divine. And oh, how divine it was to hear Apollo finish the "Death of Adonis" for me. To hear poetry from the god who reigned over it! I was struck as dumb as when my tongue had failed me again and again last night.

Now, today, Apollo brought me to a shallow bowl on a pedestal at the very edge of the salon where I had first walked among the gods. Within its waters, I was surprised to see a man, a healer, tending to someone who had been injured and who was clearly growing more ill.

The water rippled, and the man was in a glade, searching for something. It rippled again, and though he was still in the glade, he was now kneeling, lips rapidly moving, with his eyes closed.

"May I?" Apollo held up a hand, and despite now knowing what he intended, I nodded.

He touched two fingers to just behind my ear, and suddenly, I could hear the prayer falling from the healer's lips. He hoped the right mix of herbs might help his dying friend, but he was getting desperate and prayed for guidance from Apollo, god of healing himself.

Apollo removed his fingers, and I heard the man no more.

"Are you going to answer his prayer and heal his friend?" I asked.

"No," Apollo said plainly. "If gods answered every prayer with a miracle, you would never learn to better yourselves. I know that might sound cold, but there are times when we might allow a… nudge. The healer asked for guidance, didn't he? Shall we go?" He nodded at the water.

"Um… yes? But how?"

Apollo touched my shoulder, and Olympus spun around me like I was toppling from its heights. I was, I came to realize, for a moment later, I felt a jolt as we landed. No longer were we in the home of the gods but on the earth, in a lush glade.

The very glade where the healer knelt in prayer before continuing his search for herbs in his next attempt to create something that might save his friend.

My tunic had become plainer, less pristine, longer too, unlike the more revealing garment I had chosen from the multitude within the chest in my new quarters. I was as confused as I was amazed and turned to Apollo—only to see a stranger beside me.

He was and was not the same man. His face was similar, but his hair was not quite so golden, his eyes a humble brown, his features weathered, and he too wore a garment that was plain, like that of a shepherd.

"Hail, friend!" Apollo called ahead to the healer, who had yet to notice us.

The man straightened, surprised, but raised a hand aloft in greeting from where he knelt among the greenery. He was not much older than I was, at most a decade, but like the guise Apollo had draped himself in, he seemed weathered and weary. I did not think anyone else was out here.

"Be you travelers, friends?" the healer asked.

"Indeed, just passing through." Apollo approached the man. I followed. "What are you doing there? Gardening in the open woodland?"

"Seeking medicinal herbs," the man said gravely. "Perhaps the most frustrating truth of medicine is that not every patient reacts the same way to every remedy. I have a friend with a recently broken leg. While it is healing, the redness and swelling, his fever, none of it is lessening, and I fear he is not long for this world if I cannot temper it.

"The right salve, the right tea, the right decision might save him, but it is like a riddle. I am moments from solving it, yet the final details elude me."

"I am very sorry to hear that." Apollo knelt beside the man. "I have some knowledge of herbology. May I ask what you have tried so far?"

The man told him of the various herbal concoctions he had attempted, some even I was familiar with. I had rarely been ill as a child, but I broke a bone after a tumble during a footrace once, a silly thing, where I pivoted my ankle, but my foot betrayed me and chose to stay in place. The bone snapped. I was lucky, I had been told, for less clean breaks caused more trouble, were rarer to heal right, and were far more painful. Once realigned, mine healed with little complication.

Another acolyte with a similar break died in the throes of a terrible fever only a year later. Bodies were fickle, and at the time, I believed so were the gods.

"Ah, difficult then that you have tried many trusted remedies, but your friend remains in peril," Apollo said. "You have my sympathies. Perhaps it is the doctor now who needs to rest."

"No, not until I solve this—" The man reached toward the herbs around them, sage I thought, but Apollo caught his wrist.

"Friend, trust me, a weary healer can do no healing at all. Your mind is overtaxed, sluggish. Your efforts are noble, but you would think clearer after a break and some thyme and honey tea."

"No." The man wrenched his hand away. I wondered if he would be so fierce if he knew he defied a god. His anger was not directed at Apollo though, but internally, and his expression immediately softened. "I appreciate your concerns, but I cannot rest. I cannot risk that his condition might worsen until I… I…" His eyes widened like the high-noon sun. "Thyme. Yes! I recall an instance of thyme aiding similar symptoms. I haven't tried thyme!"

The man leapt to his feet. The glade was in some high elevation of the hills and not far from a small settlement, in the perfect conditions for a patch of thyme to be growing nearby.

"Please, will you help me gather some?" the man asked of us as he ran to it. "The more the better, so I might add it to both tea and a salve to speed the process. Please."

"You needn't ask twice, friend. Of course we will aid you," Apollo said.

I didn't hesitate to follow his lead as we gathered thyme alongside the healer. When he deemed it enough, he led us to his home in the settlement. The abode was modest but had two bedrooms, one he used as his own, and one as his healing room, where his friend lay on the bed in a fitful sleep.

The leg did look inflamed, especially around a sewn-shut wound where I assumed the bone must have protruded when he broke it.

We helped the healer prepare the herbs, mixed with others, along with honey, and oils. When all was done, the salve applied, and his friend fed the tea, though he barely roused to full consciousness even as he drank it, we sat with the man at his sitting room table.

"Please, stay for a meal and some of that tea, while I pray to Apollo that this time my efforts are enough." He said the last almost under his breath, but I knew even if he'd prayed in thought alone, Apollo would have heard him.

Again, I had to wonder, what would this man think, what would he do, if he knew the very god he prayed to was in his home? I could still hardly believe I was in his company myself.

"You're a courtesan?" the healer questioned when we had finally conversed enough to better know each other. Although as far as he knew, Apollo was the very shepherd he'd guised himself as.

"Former courtesan," I corrected.

"It was not the life for you?" he asked.

"I loved it, but something was missing, and the gods had better plans for me." I slid my eyes to Apollo, and he seemed content with that answer.

"Might there be any bread and olives left for me?" a tired, croaking voice drew our attention to the room's entrance. The friend was up, standing with a walking stick that had been placed beside his bed. His forehead was sheened with sweat, but the red, swollen, and angry wound was less so now. "I'll take wine too, if you have it."

"Theo!" the healer raced to his friend, nearly toppling his own chair back in his haste to leave it. "More tea is what you'll take. You shouldn't be out of bed yet!"

"Ah, but with my fever broken, I feel like I could climb a mountain." He hobbled closer, and his friend kept him steady with a tender and careful embrace. Theo wrapped his free arm around the healer's back and sagged against him. Whether only friends or lovers, their reunion made my heart feel full.

"You really, really should still be in bed." The healer sniffled. "I can bring you something—"

"Let me stay," Theo insisted. "Just for a little while, so I might sit with you and eat something in good company. The conversation I woke to has been riveting." His eyes turned to the table as their embrace ended, with the healer keeping an arm around him, lessening reliance on the crutch. "A courtesan of Aphrodite in our midst? We have never had anyone in this settlement more elevated in the gods" eyes. A pleasure, even if you were reduced to picking herbs."

Apollo and I both laughed.

"I didn't mind," I said. "To see you roused, friend, it was an honest honor."

He joined us for the remainder of the meal, but while the worst seemed to be over, he still had much recovery ahead and more of the medicine would be needed to keep his fever and the inflammation at bay.

"Thank you both so much," the healer said, teary-eyed and even more exhausted than when we'd found him, especially now that he knew he could rest. "I truly feared he might never rouse again. Apollo be praised."

The actual Apollo, still in disguise, rested his hand on the man's shoulder. "As was said, it was our honest honor to help. But it was you who saved your friend."

We took our leave, being only travelers after all, just passing through. When we reached an area out of view of anyone from the settlement, Apollo touched my shoulder like he had on Olympus, and the world tumbled like the mountain had as we returned to its heights.

Beside me was the god of the dawn once more, golden, and gleaming. I only realized that I had grown as weepy as the healer when I felt a tear slide down my cheek. Apollo wiped it away, and his touch was warm enough that the moisture instantly evaporated.

"Thank you for showing me that," I said. "It was a beautiful thing to witness, to partake in. Rather than perform a miracle, you gave him the means, the inspiration to perform one himself."

Apollo's smile was more radiant to me than ever. "I am glad you understand. Shall I see you again tomorrow?"

I felt the same stir of disappointment at our impending parting as I had last night. I had never experienced courtship. I was trained to serve, to please and pleasure. In recent years, I had not gone a single day without some lesson or endeavor toward providing and taking physical enjoyment with another.

Aikos had tasted this very god already. It seemed unfair that I was being made to wait, especially after beginning to know Apollo and looking on him with greater awe because of it.

Damn Aikos, you sweet, glorious bastard. You beat me again. I was following a step behind him again. And yet, I knew now that my reward at the end of this if I could only be patient would be, for me at least if not what Aikos would have wanted, a far greater gift than any physical pleasures or even godhood.

Before Apollo could try taking my hand to kiss it in farewell like last time, I took his. I kissed the back of his fingers gently and said, "Yes. Tomorrow."