Thessalonica

“That’s true,” the carpenter said. “Aye, that’s true.” He smiled at George, who thought he’d won a point. But even if he had, a point was not the game. Gorgonius said, “Why should I risk something that’s been in the family for so long, to help a stack of people who have no use for it, don’t believe it’s any good, and would destroy it if they could?”

He sent the question toward Nephele, but the female, Crotus, and the satyrs looked with one accord at George. “Why?” he said. “I can give you only one answer: whatever you think of the folk of Thessalonica, having the Slavs and Avars sack the city would be worse--for us and for you, too.”

“In the old days,” Gorgonius said meditatively, “I could have gone down into Thessalonica, and so could they.” He nodded toward the centaurs and satyrs. “Oh, Crotus and Nephele might not have wanted to, on account of the wine, but they could have. Now, though, one of those priests’d be on me like a fox on a rabbit. And my friends, they can’t go at all, not with all the saints and such who’ve been through there one time or another. Is that better than not having any Thessalonica at all? I wonder, George. I do wonder.”

“They think so,” George answered. Now he nodded at Ithys and Ampelus and Stusippus, at Crotus and Nephele. “They wouldn’t have brought me here if they didn’t. And they’ve seen more of the Slavs and Avars than you have.”

“You think so, do you?” Gorgonius touched the cap that had come down from Perseus. “With this, I can see what I like. I told you that already.” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I didn’t much like what I saw, I will say that. But to save arrogant Thessalonica with something the town’s too proud to believe in … it gravels me, that it does.”

“If I get down there, if I can get into the city, I’ll be bringing back a priest, don’t forget,” George said. “The old powers can’t fight the Slavs and Avars and their gods and demons, not alone. We know that. What I believe in” --he had to keep coming up with circumlocutions for Christianity-- “may not be strong enough by itself, either. Together . . . we can hope, anyway.”

“Hope came out of the box last of all,” Gorgonius said. He made that clicking noise again and stood very still, taking his own time to make up his mind. When Crotus started to say something, the carpenter tossed his head in negation. “I’ve heard all I want.” The centaur did not try to speak again. The satyrs masturbated nervously.

Outside, far off in the distance, a wolf howled. But it was not an ordinary wolf; George had grown too well acquainted with the horrible howls of the Slavic wolf-demons to mistake them for anything but what they were. Very slightly, Nephele shuddered.

Maybe that howl helped Gorgonius decide. Maybe, concentrating as he was, he didn’t even hear it. But he came out of his brown study only moments after its last echoes had died away. Holding out the cap to George, he growled, “You’d better bring this back, or I’ll be angry at you.”

“If I don’t bring it back,” the shoemaker answered, “odds are I’ll be too dead to care.”

The first thing George discovered about being invisible was that he wasn’t invisible to himself. That came as something of a relief. Not being the most graceful man ever born, he had trouble planting his feet even when he could see exactly where he was putting them. Had he not known where they were going, his best guess was that he would have broken his leg, or maybe his neck, long before he got close to Thessalonica.

The next thing he discovered was that, when he was invisible, people didn’t notice him. That made perfect logical sense, of course--it was why he needed Perseus’ cap in the first place. It brought problems, too, though, problems he hadn’t expected. As he walked up and down Lete’s narrow streets, people didn’t get out of the way for him. Why should they have done so? They had no idea he was there. All the dodging was up to him. Once he had to say “Excuse me” out of thin air, which startled the man who’d collided with him.

Something else occurred to him after he bumped into the villager. He asked Gorgonius about it when he got back to the carpenter’s place. “Took me years to wonder about that,” Gorgonius said, “but, seeing what you’re going to be doing, I can understand how it would be on your mind. Best I can tell, dogs don’t take my scent when I have the cap on, and nobody and nothing hears you unless you speak out loud.”

“Oh, good,” George said. “By everything I’ve heard, wolves use their noses more than their eyes, but if dogs don’t notice your odor, I’m going to hope the wolf-demons won’t notice mine.”

“I don’t know anything about demons,” Gorgonius said. “If their power is strong enough, they might be able to beat the strength in the cap.”

“The power inhering in them is not to be despised,” Nephele said.