Chapter 20 Echo #3
‘He will come back in the morning,’ Echo says, trying to reassure Nabu despite her fears about wolves.
‘I hope you’re right.’ Nabu claps a hand on her shoulder, knocking against her injury. She winces.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘Kosmos’s brothers…’
‘Here, turn to the light, let me see,’ Nabu says, pulling her tunic at the back, prying away the split fabric stuck to the wound. ‘It’s deep, that’s why it bled so much, but it’s not too bad. Come, I’ll dress it for you.’
They play the Game of Ur on a board Winji and her siblings scratched into the table years ago, until Echo can’t keep her eyes open and falls into a fitful sleep in front of the fire.
Whenever she wakes, Nabu is still up, sitting at the table with a scroll, or a cup of mountain herb infusion, or his own worried thoughts.
In the night’s darkest hour, she enters the dreamscape. The warmth and weight of another body at her back lets her know Hazel’s already there. ‘We’re mending the timeline,’ she says without preamble. Echo’s late, so they won’t have long to talk.
‘Don’t count your chickens on that one,’ Echo replies, every word an effort. ‘We might just have broken it again.’
‘How?’
‘Long story.’
‘Are you all alright?’
‘For now, yes, but can you get CHARL1E to double-check the mend’s still working?’
Hazel sighs long and deep, her ribcage expanding and contracting against Echo’s back. ‘No. Something went wrong our end, and he can’t feel the timeline anymore. I’m trying to fix it, but it’s looking pretty desperate.’
Echo contains her own sigh. ‘What’s it you’re always saying to me? It’s the trying that’s imperative?’
‘Sure,’ Hazel responds, but her voice sounds as forlorn as Echo feels.
Echo is woken by the back door slamming shut with Kosmos’s return.
Nabu whisks her out of the way and settles Kosmos by the fire, stoking it.
‘Fetch a blanket, and put on water for a bath. He’s freezing.
Damn this early autumn.’ Yet, once he’s warmed, washed, and dressed, Kosmos turns out to be in fine fettle, if sombre.
‘We must tell Unatti and Dagos it is safe to return,’ Echo says, struggling to find the feta for breakfast.
‘We should wait until we know it really is safe,’ Nabu replies, pouring them all more mountain infusion.
But Unatti and Dagos return of their own accord, the children streaming into the house while the adults sit at the table.
Unatti seats herself right next to Kosmos, only recognising him by his scar as he turns to her.
She makes to get up, but he takes her arm, drawing her down next to him with a smile.
‘In case you haven’t heard, I’m No One now,’ Kosmos says. ‘No need to stand on ceremony for No One.’
‘We heard something…’ Unatti replies, taking in his new appearance and kind words.
She seems unsure what more to say, so Echo pours her a cup of infusion. ‘You should have stayed away until we said it was safe.’
‘Nonsense,’ Dagos says, reaching over Echo for bread. ‘Who’d pass up the chance to be owned by No One?’
There’s a startled silence, in which Dagos bites his lip and everyone turns to Kosmos, but it’s as if out on that mountainside he took the No One character his father inflicted on him and made it his own.
This No One Kosmos laughs, and so they all join in.
Even if the school doesn’t work, something new and interesting can still germinate between them.
As they clear away breakfast—Nabu, Echo, and even Kosmos helping—a helloing comes from the atrium. Always the first on her feet, Winji investigates, returning at a run.
‘There’s a man here to see Nabu and someone called No One.’
The adults look to each other, fear visible on everyone’s face. Surely, not Hippias again, and so soon?
Kosmos runs a hand over his head. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Um.’ She hesitates. ‘Kleisthenes?’
They let out a collective breath, and Echo feels like floating off the floor in relief.
Kosmos gestures to Nabu. ‘You know him better than I do, lead the way.’
At first, it’s easy for Echo to write off her symptoms in amongst the school’s bustle. For if Pythagoras’s visit put the school on the map, Kleisthenes’s patronage places them in the centre of it overnight.
The day Kosmos returns from his exposure, Echo watches through the open door as he and Nabu shake Kleisthenes’s hand.
They settle on a bench in the atrium, watching sunbeams glance from the central pool and bees swarming the courtyard’s ivy flowers.
They speak too quietly for Echo to hear, and their faces are too self-conscious to read.
Already exiled and returned, Kleisthenes more than anyone knows Athens is always listening and watching, and that the wrong move will get him ostracised for decades once more.
If only he knew—by the time he’s done making his home a demokratia, he won’t recognise it.
Echo doesn’t entirely trust him, but she does trust Nabu, and she’s starting to trust Kosmos, so she fidgets with the excitement that maybe Hazel’s right, and they have mended the timeline.
Over the ensuing days, though they’re careful to keep noise low and word of the school whispered, the number of visiting philosophers and students increases, including those who wish to stay permanently.
The andron becomes a bunking room for liberal freemen, prospectless aristokrats, and even a few hetairai, all united by intellectual curiosity and fresh ideas about community.
Everyone shares the work, and Kosmos organises teams to convert old storerooms and what was once the women’s quarters into dormitories.
Echo runs back and forth from town with Unatti’s children and the other students, hauling bags of lime plaster, bales of straw for new mattresses, and bolts of linen for blankets.
On one such trip, she bumps into Hanno and Absalon on the road out of town, mounted on horses, with provisions for a long journey. ‘You are freed, then?’ she asks them.
‘Yes, thanks to No One.’ Hanno chuckles. The pun’s caught on everywhere, and not just because it’s funny; without realising it, Hippias made it difficult for anyone to get caught gossiping about Kosmos and the school. Absalon joins in with a silent grin.
‘You should come and stay,’ Echo says.
Absalon shakes his head, still smiling.
‘Athens isn’t our home,’ Hanno replies. ‘We’re off east, to find our people again, if we can.’
Echo nods. ‘I don’t blame you.’
‘Good luck, Echo.’
‘And to both of you.’
She watches them ride down the crowded street, taking a break from her heavy load.
Her lower back aches. She bends and stretches, trying to click it, but nothing helps.
She could talk to Nabu about it, but he’d just tell her she’s been lifting stuff that’s too heavy in a stupid way.
Or perhaps it’s almost her time of the month; she’s lost count of the days since her last cycle.
Back at the farm, the dormitories are coming on well, with Winji and her sisters making beds while Dagos sweeps out dust. Two of the school’s young aristokrats have turned out to be gifted artists and are starting to decorate the upper edges of the new dormitories with repeating grape vines.
Nabu chuckles at their debate over red or white grapes, while he hangs bunches of drying lavender from the rafters for good sleep.
Evening sun slants across the whitewashed walls, and Echo feels a sense of accomplishment.
She leans against the doorframe, ignoring the itch of her healing shoulder and the ache in her back as she watches the students arguing jovially over which bed will be theirs.
They’re far from finished, but when they are there’ll even be spare beds for newcomers.
The school seems, tentatively, finally, to be working.
On the eighth day after his exposure on the mountainside, Kosmos sacrifices one of the goats in thanks for their safety and prosperity, and Unatti roasts it with her special collection of Kushite herbs, serving it with mint yoghurt and scattered pomegranate seeds.
After the meal, Nabu leads a debate, which becomes so crowded with visitors that they run out of kylixes, and some guests—including Kleisthenes!
—are forced to sit on the floor. The candles burn bright and the dank farmhouse fills with the warmth of comfortably too-many people, so they throw the doors open to invite the breeze.
Out in the fields, the stars shine on seeding barley.
‘I enjoy living in the countryside,’ Kosmos says in the hush of everyone appreciating the breeze. ‘To see the land growing, readying to feed all of Athens.’
‘Not evenly, though,’ Kleisthenes observes from his lowly position on the floor.
Echo grins and drinks deeper from her spiced wine. Here they go.
‘Right, because the harvest is best for the aristokrats,’ Nabu continues. ‘They’ll profit from the oil and grain they sell. It’s less good for the workers, all they get is blisters.’
‘But in the long run, don’t these efforts feed us all?
’ asks one of the students. It’s never explicitly stated who they’re all students of because Nabu doesn’t want to formally teach them, even though he’s the ship’s ballast, and Kosmos doesn’t have the conviction, despite his new No One character.
They’re all just students of each other.
‘The issue is that they don’t feed us in a balanced way,’ Kosmos says, picking an olive from a bowl. ‘The workers would benefit if they owned and harvested the farms for themselves, and the aristokrats could do a lot more with a little less if they put their minds to it.’
Another guest calls out, ‘Hippias does too much from very little already!’
Kosmos holds up a hand against the ensuing laughter. ‘Now then, friends, no need to throw stones, we might make an avalanche! Let’s stick to the concepts at stake.’ He turns back to Nabu. ‘We might say it’s balance that’s important here, then?’