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suddenly
radiant
. “Yes you are,” she said.
    I fell in love, at that moment. Was it because she laughed at me, because she saw through me? I don’t know. It was like lightning, and it had struck us both. I saw the same jolt in her eyes; it blazed in the air between us.
    “What’s your name?” I demanded urgently, as if I had a right.
    “Oh.” She stared, and shook her head. “Just call me Kore.”
    Now
Kore
is a Greek word, and it just means “girl.” It wouldn’t have been so strange if we’d been speaking the language of the islands, which is called “Minoan.” But I knew Mainland Greek, of course—we all do—and she was a foreigner, so I’d assumed she didn’t know our language. We were
speaking
Greek.
    “Your name is Girl?” I said, bewildered. I saw herblush, and I felt like an oaf. She didn’t want to know me; I was wrong about that lightning. It was time to quit. I tried to do it gracefully.
    “All right, er, Girl. I’m Perseus, as you may have gathered. I’m from Serifos, from Dicty’s taverna. If you’re ever passing—”
    There was a sudden frantic blowing of conches and shrilling of whistles.
Afroditi
was at the dock, and the Port Authority police were marshaling the heavy vehicles. Huge oxcarts, managed with daring and style, and drawn by four and six pairs of massive, fiery beasts (you may think an ox is placid, but not these animals), came thundering down the breakwater and crashed up the great gangplank. It was a sight I loved, this mad, dangerous and totally unnecessary race, but the noise was tremendous, the rush of their passing overwhelming. When I looked around, when I could speak, she was gone.
    The sun had gone down, and the stars began to glow in the sky above the ship. My mother was talking to friends. Something remarkable had happened. Our pal Taki the shipping magnate, owner of the Blue Star line, was on board. He’d taken pity on the most hopeless of the refugees, the ones the Naxians refused to keep, and taken them on board. Taki was not known for his kind heart! People were saying that the Holy Sisters must have threatened him with divine vengeance: like all sailors he was terribly superstitious. I was on the upper deck, onmy own. I listened to the
boom-swish, boom-swish
of the oars, the crack of canvas in the breeze. I felt the timbers beneath me taking life, from the ocean that gave the Goddess Afroditi herself birth. The girl who had changed
my
life forever was on board this ship, but I was a tongue-tied fool: I didn’t dare to look for her. A little wooden crate went bobbing by, far below on the choppy dark waves. I shuddered and backed away, stumbling.
    “Not got your sea legs yet, Perseus?”
    It was the girl in the red dress, holding a shawl around her head and shoulders against the cool of the evening. I noticed she wasn’t wearing her bracelets anymore.
    “It’s nothing. Just something I saw in the water.” I knew I was looking sick. I leaned on the side again, and she came to stand beside me, her elbow almost touching mine. Her nearness made my throat close up; my head started to spin.
    She looked down. “A wooden box?”
    “Anything small, floating, makes me queasy if I’m not expecting it. I don’t really remember why. It’s because of something a long time ago.”
    She looked at me; I looked at her. The feeling between us was so real I could hardly breathe.
    “I’ve been talking to your mother.”
    “Oh.”
    “I need a job, I need somewhere to stay, in the islands. She thinks I can work at your taverna. I’m very grateful for the chance.”
    “That’s good,” I croaked.
    “I was
Sbw’r …
,” she said abruptly, in Minoan. Something that hardly sounded like a word, that I couldn’t try to pronounce. “It’s my temple name. I can’t use it. I can’t use my real Greek name either, at the moment. Will ‘Kore’ do, on the islands?”
    I felt incredibly privileged. I knew what a “temple name” meant in Egypt and the East. It was