Free The Just City by Jo Walton

but kept on swimming strongly with my arms, drawing us along parallel to the shore. At last I told him to stop, and put my feet carefully down. He went under for a second but did not panic or thrash.
    â€œWas I swimming?” he asked.
    â€œYou’ve made a good beginning. And now you should go out and run around on the sand to stir your blood, and then we should both clean the salt off with oil. Tomorrow you’ll do better.”
    We ran up out of the water and raced on the beach with some other children who were there, none of them people I knew well. Then Pytheas sought me out with a jar of oil and a strigil and we oiled each other and scraped it off. This always feels good after swimming, much better than the wash-fountain, because salt water strips out the body’s oil.
    We were not encouraged to have erotic feelings towards the other children—indeed, the opposite, we were discouraged from ever thinking about sex or romantic love. Friendships were encouraged, and friendship was always held out to us as the highest and best of human relationships. Yet as I scraped the strigil down Pytheas’s arms I remembered the feel of his body above mine in the water, and I knew that what I felt was attraction. I was as much frightened by the feeling as drawn by it. I knew it was wrong, and I truly wanted to be my best self. Also, I did not know how to tell if he felt any reciprocal feelings. I said nothing and scraped harder.
    â€œTomorrow,” I said, when we were done. “Same time. You’ll make a swimmer yet.”
    â€œI will,” he said, as if any alternative was unthinkable, as if he meant to attain all excellence or die trying. I raised my hand in farewell and took a step away, but he spoke. “Simmea?”
    I stopped and turned back. “Yes?”
    â€œI like you. You’re brave and clever. I’d like to be your friend.”
    â€œOf course,” I said, and stepped back towards him and clasped his hand. “I like you too.”

 
    7
    A POLLO
    Athene cheated. She went to the Republic as herself to help set it up, and then once all the work was done she transformed into a ten-year-old girl and asked Ficino to name her. He named her Septima, which I thought served her right for asking him. She knew he was obsessed with magic numbers.
    I, however, did the whole thing properly. I went down through Hades and set down my powers for the length of the mortal life I chose from the Fates. Clotho looked astonished, Lachesis looked resigned, and Atropos looked grim, so no change there. I then went on to Lethe, where I wet my lips, to allow me to forget the details of the future life I had chosen, though not, of course, my memories. (The river Lethe is full of brilliantly colored fish. Nobody ever mentions that when they talk about it. I suppose they forget them as soon as they see them, and so they are a surprise at the end and the beginning of each mortal life.) I went on into a womb and was born—and that in itself was an interesting experience. The womb was peaceful. I composed a lot of poetry. Birth was traumatic. I barely remember my first birth, and the images from Simonides’s poem about it have got tangled up in my real earliest memories. This mortal birth was uncomfortable to the point of pain.
    My mortal parents were peasant farmers in the hills above Delphi. I had wanted to be born on Delos again, for symmetry, but Athene pointed out that in most eras neither birth nor death are permitted on Delos, which would have made it difficult. I had to master my new tiny mortal body, so different from the immortal body I normally inhabited. I had to cope with the way it changed and grew, at an odd speed, entirely out of my control. At first I could barely focus my eyes, and it was months before I could even speak. I would have thought it would be unutterably boring, but in fact the sensations were all so vivid and immediate that it was intriguing. I could spend hours