Free Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) by Diana Gainer Page B

shins sported a row of purple bruises. “Nose,” the little girl stated solemnly once more. With greater confidence this time, she reached for Diwoméde’s face and poked her wet finger in one of his nostrils.
    He lightly brushed her hand away at the tickle and began to chuckle. This was no madman’s vision. That was no divinity in front of him. He had seen blue-eyed children before, he reminded himself, on the northern shores of the Inner Sea. T’rákiyans often had pale eyes, and while it had unnerved him to look upon them, he knew that those people bled and died in the same way that the dark-eyed peoples of the rest of the world did. It was not altogether unheard of for T’rákiyan captive women to give birth to pale-eyed children after lying with Ak’áyan masters, even as far south as Kep’túr. He laughed aloud at the thought.
    The toddler was startled at the sound. Her eyes widened and she pulled her hand away from his face abruptly. But, as he continued to grin at her, she returned the favor with a smile of her own. She stuck her index finger in her mouth again, still smiling, and then touched the stubble on Diwoméde’s chin. “Dirty face,” she told him.
    Sudden darkness fell over the room and both the man and the child looked toward the doorway. A woman’s form was silhouetted there, this time. She was wearing a long, ragged skirt and carried a jar on her head. “Dáuniya?” Diwoméde whispered, his heart pounding, hardly daring to believe that it might be her. He tried to rise but found that his body was strangely heavy and his arms weak. His limbs shook with the effort. Then Dáuniya’s arms were around him, squeezing him tightly, pressing his face to her shoulder. He felt her tears on his cheeks, heard her voice in his ear, smelled her unmistakable scent as her hair brushed his face. She was laughing and crying at the same time, calling him “beloved” as she always had when he dreamed of this day. He did not know whether to laugh or cry himself. He did both, clinging to her with all his feeble might, trembling and repeating her name endlessly. He did not understand what had happened. Why should she and T’érsite be there on Kep’túr when he had left them in Argo? What possible reason could his enemy, Ainyáh, have for bringing him to them? He did not know. But he did not care.
    Dáuniya pressed her full lips to his cheeks, his neck, his mouth, and his eyes. “Everything is all right now, beloved,” she wept between kisses, repeating the words again and again. “Everything is going to be all right.”
    He believed her.
 
    As the sun dropped below the western hills, the number people around T’érsite’s hut increased. None wore more than a single patched and faded garment, while some did not have even that much. Many had recently cut locks of their hair as offerings for the graves of their friends or kinsmen. So great had been their losses that several no longer had a single strand of shoulder-length hair. Still, Diwoméde stood out from the rest with nothing but dark stubble on his head, on his face, and on his body and limbs. All eyes turned to him repeatedly throughout the evening, questions in their minds if not on their tongues.
    The former slave cast only cursory glances at those who gathered to stare. His mind was on food, on the flat cakes of barley and the fish soup that Dáuniya prepared for them all. As he shoveled the bread and gruel into his mouth and gulped down diluted wine, the woman nursed her blue-eyed child. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, but her face wore a broad smile as she rocked the little girl in her arms.
    T’érsite shook her head, watching Diwoméde. “So, Ainyáh, you did not think to feed the boy between Mízriya and here?” the Argive asked reproachfully.
    The Kanaqániyan answered sharply, “There was wine and barley in the hold. If he did not think to help himself to it, what is that to me?” But his eyes could not meet T’érsite’s