“Naxos is one name,” he said. Gently he closed the folio. “Homer said that she was abandoned on Dia, at the command of the god Dionysos, who killed her there. Others said that she killed herself, and still others say that it was Dionysos who saved her, coming to the island and taking her as his consort. That is the version that made it into Axel’s opera. Very likely Plutarch’s version is the true one, since Plutarch was himself a Dionysiac mystes—and so, of course, one of the Malandanti.”
I couldn’t even begin to argue with this craziness. Balthazar just gazed at the scattered books and papers on the table, as though they formed a map, an archipelago of scrolls and faded tomes. Finally I asked, “Why did Theseus abandon her? I mean, if she saved him—”
“The Athenians worshipped Apollo, and Theseus was the son of the Athenian king, Aegeus. Theseus himself was a follower of Apollo Delphinos, and as such, Ariadne would have been tainted to him. On Crete, she would have been involved in the rites of both the Goddess and the Master of Animals—the god who over tens of thousands of years was known as Dionysos, or Shiva, or Cernunnos, or Orpheus; the master of song and the theater, of chaos and intoxication and death. The oldest god, save only for the Goddess, who was his consort—
“—and mother, and daughter.” Now it was Balthazar’s voice that sounded unsteady. “The most ancient rift in the world is the one which looms between order and chaos; between those who serve Apollo and his agnates, and those who serve our enemies. Ariadne was abandoned because she would not forsake her god. Even if she had recanted, Theseus would not have given her refuge. The first thing he did after leaving her was to sail to Delos, where he made a great sacrifice to Apollo. And then went on to become the greatest hero of Athens.”
“That’s a horrible story,” I said at last.
“It is the oldest story I know,” replied Balthazar.
“But it can’t be true. I mean, you talk about all this as though it really happened—”
“But it did happen, Lit. It still does. Again, and again! In a way, it is the only thing on earth that really does happen: gods living and dying, their avatars struggling to be born and reborn.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. And you know I’m not, Lit—you’ve seen too much, you are too much—you could never begin to explain all this, any more than you could begin to understand it.”
I shot him a furious look, but Balthazar did not notice, only went on, his tone patient and somewhat weary, as though addressing a favored child who was behaving badly.
“What has happened is that we have lost the ability to see these things. We no longer perceive the sacred in our world—but it exists, Lit, oh, it does exist! It is as real as this room, as real as this—” He took a handful of papers and shook them at me, tossed them in the air so that they came down around us like so many birds settling for the night. “—More real. We just don’t see it, that’s all. Not because it’s not there, but because we have lost the senses that would enable us to perceive what is all around us. You are familiar with the work of Claude Levi-Strauss?”
“No.”
“A very great man. Not, as many people think, an anthropologist. More of a mapmaker,” said Balthazar, giving me one of his maddeningly secretive smiles; “a cartographer, and a very great aid to us in our work. In his Mythologiques, he wrote of certain sailors, the Bororo of Central Brazil and the Caribs of Guiana, and how they were able to navigate using the stars, just as sailors have for centuries. But the Bororo could see the stars in daylight. When Levi-Strauss asked astronomers about this, they scoffed at him—but of course the stars are there, and the Bororo, among others, really did use them to steer by in daylight. It is we who have lost the acuity that would allow us to see them.
“Look,” he said more gently, and took me by the hand. He led me across the room to the bay window. “Look there, above that mountain—”
He pointed to a distant peak, crowned by gold-leaved trees. “What do you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Keep looking. No, not at the mountain—at the sky. Try to concentrate. There…”
I stared, frowning, tried to see anything but the pulse of blue sky, blurring as my eyes watered. “There’s nothing th—”
I gasped. Something was there. A starburst of white, and then another, smaller flare, and another. A whole group of them, clustered close together in the northeast sky. Like cracks in blue glass, or the refraction of sun on a windshield. But these did not move, even when I did, or disappear when I blinked and shaded my eyes. They remained, burning faintly but steadily above the mountaintop.
“The brightest one is Aldebaran,” said Balthazar. “The eye of Taurus. That is the entire constellation, there—”
I shook my head, and this time the stars did disappear. “They’re gone!” I turned to him in amazement. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t. You saw them, Lit. You didn’t make them appear, any more than I did. You saw them, that’s all.”
“But how? That’s incredible.” I gazed out at the greeny-gold sweep of mountains, the river like a silver highway, and wondered what other marvels were there, just beyond my sight. “I’ve never seen them before.”
“You didn’t know where to look. You didn’t know to look. And no, not everyone can see them—not unless one is trained to, or has the nascent ability—”
“But how did I see them? I’m not trained, and I—”
I fell silent.
“No, you’re not trained,” said Balthazar. He remained standing, staring at the horizon with his arms crossed. “But you can see; you have talents. That is what the Benandanti are; that is what we do. We find those who are gifted, and train them. Sometimes children are born to our order. There are families that can trace their lineage back over three thousand years. Others want more than anything to be born into it, but are not. They can only serve us, as researchers or couriers, and in other ways. But those who choose to work with us…”
He turned, eyes blazing. “Join us, Lit. Join me. Centuries ago I failed Giulietta, but I won’t fail you, I swear it! Stay with me now and I will help you—I can do great things for you, I can show you the world within the world you know—”
His voice was pleading, desperate. He took me by the shoulders and gazed at me. “I would marry you,” he said in a low voice. “The Conclave could not deny me that; not this time—”
“What?” I gaped at him, then laughed. “Marry you? I can’t marry you! I’m only seventeen—”
“Lit! Please—”
“Let go,” I commanded; then more urgently, “let go—”
He did and I withdrew from him, shoving my hands into my pockets. “I’m not marrying anyone. Not to mention I don’t even know you—”
“Then don’t marry me,” he begged. “Just stay—no, not here, not with me! But with us. You’ll be starting college next year—I can arrange for you to be placed at the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine. We can arrange for a scholarship, you’ll be able to—”
“What?” I snorted in disbelief. “Don’t you get it? I can’t do any of this—this Benandanti stuff. It’s crazy! And I’m already going to school—to NYU. Maybe.”
I fell silent, thinking of Jamie Casson; of how even though the sun was shining here, it had been after midnight in Bolerium, and there was a train at four-thirty-five…