‘I didn’t mean to blind you,’ said the man. ‘I didn’t know someone was inside.’
She tried to tell him that it didn’t matter, and of course he couldn’t have known she was inside a chest, and to ask him who he was and where she was and if it was safe, but her throat was too dry and all that came out was a croak.
‘Wait,’ he said, and reached beneath the edge of the chest, where he must have placed his belongings before using both hands to open the lid. He brought a wineskin into view, and offered it to her. She wanted it desperately but could not let go of her son to take it.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me help you.’
She flinched as he reached into the chest and his hand brushed her hair. ‘I’m sorry, if we can just get you sitting up, you can drink,’ he said. ‘If I give it to you as you lie there, I’m worried you’ll choke.’
This was such a sensible, normal thing for someone to say that Dana? forgot her fear. This man did not want her dead. He pushed his hand beneath her shoulders, and helped her to sit. She drew her knees up, to protect the baby. The man undid the stopper of the wineskin and held it closer, so she could take it with one hand. She snatched at it and he stepped back. She was relieved to discover that she was drinking water, not wine, and she drank it greedily.
‘You’re safe now,’ the man said. ‘Let me get you some more water?’
‘Yes please,’ she tried to say, but she couldn’t make a sound yet, so she just nodded, and felt herself coming back to life.
The man disappeared for a few moments but returned with a fresh skin of water. She drank again, trying to finish it all before he took it away.
‘You keep that,’ he said. ‘We can refill it at the spring up there, when you are recovered enough to walk.’ She didn’t loosen her grip on it. ‘If you can’t walk up there, I will go and get you some more,’ he continued. ‘There’s no need to worry. You won’t be thirsty now.’
She nodded again. Her throat was still too painful for speech.
‘I’m thinking, given how thirsty you are, that you might be hungry as well,’ he said. ‘When you’ve had time to adjust to not being thirsty, or seasick, or afraid. So this is what I suggest we do: I give you my hand to help you out of your little boat.’ He smiled at her, and she tried to smile back, but her lips cracked and she stopped. ‘You can wait on those rocks while I build a fire and I will cook you some of the fish I caught today. Or we can go to my house – it’s just up there, on the ridge, you can see the roof from here – and then you can have bread with your fish, if you’d like. I also have clean tunics, because you might want one of those as I reckon the one you’re wearing is probably scratching your skin now. Salt water is an itchy thing once it dries, isn’t it?’
She nodded.
‘And as and when you get your voice back, you can tell me your name and the name of this handsome young hero,’ he said. ‘I’m Dictys, fisherman and finder of women who wash up on the shores of Seriphos.’
Some hours later, full of baked fish and fresh bread, Dana? managed to tell him her name, and the name of her son. He gave her a room to sleep in, with a proper bed and a small window. He found a flat basket and a blanket, so the baby could sleep comfortably by her side. When she woke in the night – which was often – she would jump up from the bed to listen to her son’s breathing, and then look out of the window to check the stars were all still there and that the blackness of night was not total. She would do this every night for the rest of her life.
*
It took several days for her to tell her story to the fisherman. He would leave silently before she was awake and return after the middle of the day, carrying his catch. Only when she had begun to recover from her ordeal did she notice the appearance of the man who had freed her from her second prison: stocky, hair bleached by sun and salt, bright green eyes shining from his leathery face, nose bent from an old break. In her Argive life she might have described him as kindly and paternal, but her perspective on these matters had shifted. He lived in this spacious house alone with no company. He cooked his fish and his bread each day and drank his wine well watered. It was such a simple life that Dana? almost choked on a fishbone when – after listening to the story of her father’s descent into paranoia and cruelty – he told her that he had also witnessed insanity descend upon a king.
‘There’s nothing to be done when it strikes them,’ Dictys said. ‘Any attempts at reasoning with them just make it worse. Because they convince themselves you’re the threat.’
‘I didn’t have the chance to reason with him anyway,’ she said, thinking again of the raging glint in her father’s eyes and the fear behind them. ‘It was all so fast.’
‘It is natural for a man to fear for his life, I suppose,’ replied Dictys. ‘But to turn on his only child? And to be so afraid of an infant who could not possibly do him harm? It’s hard to imagine what could make a man behave in such a way. The gods must have sent him out of his wits.’
Dana? wondered if she should tell her rescuer that she knew from an unimpeachable source that the gods had had nothing to do with her father’s madness, but she decided she had probably told him enough for now, and changed the subject.
‘What happened to your king?’ she asked.
Dictys reached for the ladle and served them both more wine. ‘He believed his younger brother wanted to displace him.’
‘And did he?’
‘No.’
‘Did he hear a prophecy like my father?’
‘No.’ Dictys leaned over the table and looked hard at his cup. ‘No, he didn’t need one to rouse his suspicions. He was always angry with his brother, even when they were both boys.’
‘Why?’ She tried to read his expression, or at least work out what he was studying on the wine cup.
‘Who knows? Brothers don’t always get on, do they?’
As he turned the cup in his hand, she saw it showed Prometheus stealing fire from the gods.
‘No, I suppose they don’t,’ she said. ‘So what did the king’s brother do?’
‘As you see.’ Dictys smiled as he gestured at the room in which they both sat, plain but comfortable with everything he needed in its place.
‘You’re the brother of the king?’ she asked.
‘I am,’ he said, dropping his head in a small bow.
‘But you’re a fisherman.’
‘You of all people, Dana?, know why. At the palace I was putting my brother on his guard and myself in danger. I like the sea, I enjoy my own company. I’m happier living this way. It’s much safer than a wooden box.’ She shivered. ‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But your tale has brought back painful memories for me.’
‘When did you last see him?’ she asked.
‘Years ago,’ he said. ‘I live a quiet life here. And you and your boy are welcome to stay for as long as you’d like. If you’d prefer to be in the town, I will take you inland and find you somewhere safe.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘We’ll stay here for now. You’re very kind.’