horses leapt, swinging us through the sky. The first constellations were already peeping through the dimming light. I remembered how my father had once told me that on earth there were men called astronomers whose task it was to keep track of his rising and setting. They were held in highest esteem among mortals, kept in palaces as counselors of kings, but sometimes my father lingered over one thing or another and threw their calculations into despair. Then those astronomers were hauled before the kings they served and killed as frauds. My father had smiled when he told me. It was what they deserved, he said. Helios the Sun was bound to no will but his own, and none might say what he would do. “Father,” I said that day, “are we late enough to kill astronomers?” “We are,” he answered, shaking the jingling reins. The horses surged forward, and the world blurred beneath us, the shadows of night smoking from the sea’s edge. I did not look. There was a twisting feeling in my chest, like cloth being wrung dry. I was thinking of those astronomers. I imagined them, low as worms, sagging and bent. Please, they cried, on bony knees, it wasn’t our fault, the sun itself was late. The sun is never late, the kings answered from their thrones. It is blasphemy to say so, you must die! And so the axes fell and chopped those pleading men in two. “Father,” I said, “I feel strange.” “You are hungry,” he said. “It is past time for the feast. Your sisters should be ashamed of themselves for delaying us.” I ate well at dinner, yet the feeling lingered. I must have had an odd look on my face, for Perses and Pasiphaë began to snicker from their couch. “Did you swallow a frog?” “No,” I said. This only made them laugh harder, rubbing their draped limbs on each other like snakes polishing their scales. My sister said, “And how were our father’s golden heifers?” “Beautiful.” Perses laughed. “She doesn’t know! Have you ever heard of anyone so stupid?” “Never,” my sister said. I shouldn’t have asked, but I was still drifting in my thoughts, seeing