Had Menedemos said something like that, Sostratos would have made a crack about being able to taste his feet. But his brother-in-law didn’t take gibes like that in stride, and so he refrained. No matter how angry I get at Menedemos, there’s no denying he can laugh at himself. Damonax? No.
“So you’ll want to visit the Valley of the Butterflies tomorrow?” Damonax asked.
“If it’s not inconvenient, yes,” Sostratos answered. “I’ve heard of it since I was small, of course, but I’ve never had the chance to see it.”
“We’ll go, then,” Damonax said. “It’s not inconvenient. I told you I’d show it to you if you came out here. You’re back from Athens a little sooner than I thought you would be, so I’m sure they’ll still be there.”
“Good.” Sostratos manufactured a yawn to show he was tired and didn’t much feel like talking. “I look forward to it.”
Damonax dipped his head. Something in Erinna’s eyes glinted. His sister knew him too well, and knew he wasn’t so tired as all that. She didn’t give him away, though. When Damonax went out of the room to tell a slave to bring in lamps, Sostratos grinned at her. Erinna smiled back.
“Is everything all right?” Sostratos asked her in a low voice.
“Everything is fine,” she answered. “I’ve had a son, and I haven’t caused any scandal. How could things be better?”
Did she sound bitter, or just matter-of-fact? Sostratos couldn’t tell, and didn’t dare ask. He’d never worried about how Hellenes treated women. He still didn’t, not in any general way. But he worried a lot about how Damonax treated Erinna.
His brother-in-law came back. The slave followed a couple of minutes later. The lamps he set out fought the gloom without vanquishing it. As twilight deepened, their small yellow pools of radiance seemed weaker and more fragile by the moment. Sostratos yawned again, this time in earnest.
“You must be tired,” his sister said-she could take a hint, even if Damonax seemed to have trouble.
“A bit,” Sostratos admitted. “The nap helped less than I’d have liked.” A slave with a lamp led him to his room. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep right away, but there wasn’t much else to do. He hadn’t brought a book, and reading by lamplight was an unsatisfactory business anyhow. He stretched out on the bed and looked up at the beams of the ceiling. A little gecko with sticky feet scurried along upside down, on the prowl for moths and mosquitoes and spiders.
The next thing Sostratos knew, the room was dark except for a thin, pale strip of moonlight slanting in through the window. The smell of hot oil still lingering in the air said the lamp hadn’t gone dry long before. Yawning, Sostratos reached under the bed and pulled out the pot. After easing himself, he lay down again. He watched the moonlight creep across the floor for a little while. Then sleep claimed him once more.
He woke with the morning sky going from deep blue toward predawn gray: early, but not impossibly so. Noises from the rest of the house said he wasn’t the first one up. From the days when he was a boy and Erinna a baby, he remembered that infants woke up whenever they wanted to, not when anyone else wanted them to.
Sure enough, when he made his way to the dining room, he found a slave woman there feeding Polydoros bits of barley roll and heavily watered wine. A lot of the wine dribbled down the baby’s chin. “Hail, sir,” the woman said. “I hope he didn’t bother you.” If Polydoros had bothered Sostratos, she might get in trouble.
But he tossed his head. “No, I woke up on my own. Can you bring me some rolls and oil and wine for my breakfast, or tell me where to get them for myself? “
“I’ll get them for you, sir,” the slave said. “Will you make sure he doesn’t wiggle off this chair while I’m gone?”
“Of course.” Sostratos stuck out his tongue at his nephew. The baby’s eyes widened. He gurgled laughter-and then he stuck out his tongue, too.
Sostratos was halfway through his breakfast when Damonax came in. “Hail,” his brother-in-law said. “Ready for an early start, are you?”
“I’d rather travel in the morning than in the heat of the day,” Sostratos answered. “Will we go by donkeyback or walk?”
“I was planning to walk.” Damonax eyed Sostratos’ feet. “Do you want to borrow a pair of shoes? Mine might fit you, or Anthebas’ if they don’t.”
“Kind of you, best one, but don’t put yourself to the trouble,” Sostratos said. “I’ve spent too much time at sea, and fallen into the habit of staying barefoot wherever I go.”
Damonax shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a breakfast much like Sostratos’. He ate quickly, so he finished not long after his guest. Rubbing crumbs off his hands, he said, “Shall we be off, then?”
“Lead the way. I’ll stay with you.”
When Sostratos went outside with Damonax, he saw the sun shining to the north. Damonax’s farm remained shadowed a little while longer, for the mountain to the east shielded it from sunrise. Damonax set a brisk pace, heading up toward the peak. He seemed surprised when Sostratos had no trouble keeping up with him. “Your feet really don’t trouble you,” he blurted.
“No, not at all.” Sostratos tried to hold amusement out of his voice. “I can’t recall the last time I wore shoes, and my soles are hard as leather. I’d say we could race, but you know where you’re going and I don’t. Even if I knew, you’d probably win; I’ve never been a fast runner.”
Damonax cocked his head to one side, plainly having trouble believing that. “But didn’t you fall just short of going to the Olympic Games a few years ago?”
“Me?” Sostratos laughed at the absurdity of the notion. Then he snapped his fingers. “1 know why you think so. That wasn’t me-that was Menedemos.”
“So you say.” Damonax kept waiting for him to start to sprint, or to offer a bet about which of them could run faster, or something of the sort. Only when Sostratos just kept placidly ambling along did it seem to occur to his brother-in-law that he might be telling the truth.
Several streams from the mountains ran down toward the sea. Most of them dried out in summer, leaving their beds nothing but rock-strewn gullies. One, though, kept a trickle of water even at the driest season of the year. A hare bounded away as Sostratos and Damonax came up.
Pointing upstream, Sostratos asked, “Does a spring feed this river?”
“That’s right.” Damonax dipped his head. “We follow it now, until we get to the Valley of the Butterflies.”
They flushed another hare a few minutes later. Damonax sighed, perhaps wishing he had dogs along so he could hunt. A mouse skittered into the bushes. A hedgehog rolled itself into a ball. A lizard on a boulder by the stream stared at the Rhodians out of beady black eyes. It stuck out its tongue, as if in derision.
After a while, Damonax stooped and dipped some water from the stream with his hand. “Warm work,” he remarked.
“Yes.” Sostratos drank a little water, too, and splashed some on his face. It felt good.
They went on. The stream bent a little more toward the north. “There!” Damonax said. “You see those treetops? The trees themselves are growing down in the valley, or you’d be able to spy the rest of them. We’re almost there.’
The Valley of the Butterflies was long and narrow. Sostratos wondered how long the stream had taken to carve it from the hard gray stone. Branches from the trees on either side met above the gurgling stream, shading and cooling the valley. Sostratos sniffed. A faint, almost familiar spicy smell filled his nostrils. “What is that?” he asked, sniffing again.
“Styrax,” Damonax answered. “They make incense from the gum. The butterflies seem to like the fragrance, too.”
“The butterflies…” As Sostratos’ eyes got used to the shade, he saw them, and let out a soft, marveling sigh. They were everywhere in the valley: on the rocks, and covering the trunks and branches of the trees. Their favorite spot seemed to be a big, mossy rock next to a little waterfall at the far end of the valley. Mist swirled around them; perhaps they especially liked the moisture there. “How marvelous!” Sostratos exclaimed. “Thank you so much for bringing me here!”