“What do they do?” he finally asked.

“Well, one of my brothers is a soldier, and the other brother is a watchmaker.”

“Really? Can he make those new watches that are flat instead of round in the back?” He seemed interested, and I was going to tell him that Stenides had made his first flat watch about two years ago, but the magus noticed Sophos talking to me and called him away.

As Sophos pulled ahead, I said loudly, “My sisters are even married, and honest housewives to boot.” At least they were mostly honest.

The valley eroded by the spring never deepened enough to be called a gorge. Its sides curved gently away from us, and only in a few places was the going stony. As we descended, we could see Attolia stretched out ahead of us, and to the right the sea. Dotted across the horizon, islands continued the mountain range behind us. On the far side of the Attolian valley was another mountain range, and out of that came the Seperchia River. It wandered along the plain, sometimes nearer to the Hephestial Mountains, sometimes many miles away. Just before it reached the coast, it bumped against a rocky spur of the foothills and was diverted into the Hephestial range itself. There the mountains were soft limestone, and the river had cut a pass down to Sounis to flow past the king’s city and finally into the middle sea.

“It’s much greener than home, isn’t it?” Sophos commented to no one in particular.

He was quite right. Where the view of Sounis had been brown and baked gold, this country was shades of green. Even the olive trees, planted below us, were a richer color than the silver gray trees on the other side of the range.

“They get the easterly winds that dump their rain when they hit the mountains,” the magus explained. “Attolia gets nearly twice as much rain every year as we do.”

“They export wine, figs, olives, and grapes as well as cereals. They have pastureland to support their own cattle, and they don’t import sheep from Eddis,” Ambiades said knowledgeably, and the magus laughed.

“Gods, you were paying attention!”

I thought at first that Ambiades was going to smile, but he scowled instead and didn’t speak until we stopped for the night, and then it was only to berate Sophos. It was strange behavior for someone who had been so contented by the fire the night before. I couldn’t see why Sophos liked him, but it was obvious that he did. Worshiped might be a better word. All he needed to do was build a miniature temple and get Ambiades to stand on the altar.

I guessed that Ambiades was usually more pleasant company. The magus didn’t seem likely to tolerate prolonged sullenness in an apprentice, and it seemed to me that he thought highly of Ambiades even if he did call him a fool from time to time.

After dinner Sophos asked if there were other stories about the gods, and the magus began the story of Eugenides and the Sky God’s Thunderbolts but stopped almost immediately.

“He’s your patron god,” he said to me. “Why don’t you tell Sophos who he is?”

I don’t know what he expected me to say, but I told the entire story as I had learned it from my mother, and he didn’t interrupt.

THE BIRTH OF EUGENIDES,

GOD OF THIEVES

It had been many years since the creation of man, and he had multiplied across the land. One day as Earth walked through her forests, she met a woodcutter. His axe lay beside him on the ground, and he wept.

“Why weep, woodcutter?” Earth asked him. “I see no hurt.”

“Oh, Lady,” said the woodcutter, “my hurt is overwhelming because it is someone else’s pain that makes me cry.”

“What pain?” asked Earth, and the woodcutter explained that he and his wife wished to have children, but they had none, and this made his wife so sad that she sat in her house and wept. And the woodcutter, when he thought of his wife’s tears, wept, too.

Earth brushed the tears from his cheeks and told him to meet her again in the forest in nine days, and in that time she would bring him a son.

The woodcutter went home and told his wife what had happened, and in nine days he went again into the forest to meet the goddess there. She asked, “Where is your wife?”

The woodcutter explained that she hadn’t come. It is one thing to meet the Goddess in the forest and another thing to convince your wife that you have done so. His wife thought her husband had lost his mind, and she wept all the more.

“Go,” said Earth, “and tell your wife to come tomorrow, or she will have no child and no husband and no home either when the day is done.”

So the woodcutter went home to his wife and pleaded with her to come to the forest, and to please him, she agreed. So the next day she was with her husband, and Earth asked her, “Have you a cradle?”

And the woman said no. It is one thing to humor your husband, who has suddenly gone crazy, but it is something else to let all the neighbors know that he is crazy by asking to borrow a cradle for a baby he says that you are going to get from the Goddess.

“Go,” said Earth, “and get a cradle and small clothes and blankets, or you will have no child and no husband and no home by this time tomorrow.”

So the woodcutter and his wife went to their neighbors, and the neighbors were good people. They gave to the woodcutter and his wife the things they said they needed, and they asked no questions because it was perfectly clear to them that their neighbors had lost their wits.

The next day in the forest when Earth asked, “Have you a cradle?” the woodcutter and his wife said, “Yes.”

“Have you small clothing?”

They said, “Yes.”

“And blankets? And all the things you will need for a baby?” and they said yes, and Earth showed them the baby in her arms. And the woodcutter’s wife came close to her, and she said, “Have you a name for him?”

And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods.

“Then we will call him Eugenides,” said the woodcutter’s wife, “the wellborn.”

They took Eugenides to their home, and he was their own son. The Earth sometimes came in the guise of an old woman and brought him presents. When he was very little, the presents were little, a top that spun in different colors, soap bubbles that hung over his cradle, a blanket of fine moleskin to keep him warm in the winter. When he was five, she brought him the gift of languages that he might understand the animals all around him. When he was ten, she brought him the gift of summoning that he might converse with the lesser gods of streams and lakes.

When Eugenides was fifteen and Earth would have given him immortality, the Sky stopped her on her way.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To see my son,” said Earth.

“What son have you but mine?” said the Sky.

“I have my own son and the woodcutter’s,” said Earth, and the Sky was angry. He went to the home of Eugenides and he threw down thunderbolts and the house was destroyed and Eugenides and his parents ran frightened into the forest. The Sky looked for them there, but the forest was Earth’s and in Earth’s name hid them.

The Sky grew still more angry and shouted at the Earth, “You shall have no sons but my sons! You shall have no people but my people!” And he threw down his thunderbolts on the villages where the people thanked the Earth for her gifts, but he spared the villages where the people thanked him for their creation.