Chapter 10 - THE WALLS STILL STOOD
Menon died on the third day.
There was no thunder.
No omen.
No last revelation from Apollo.
He became thirsty.
Then delirious.
Then quiet.
His followers did not come.
Not one.
Leandros sat outside his room during the final hour.
Myrine asked why.
He did not know.
Maybe because Thaleia had died without him.
Maybe because Menon frightened him less as a dying man.
Maybe because leaving him alone would have made cruelty feel justified.
Menon opened his eyes once.
“You hate me.”
Leandros considered lying.
“Yes.”
Menon nodded.
“Then why?”
Leandros looked toward courtyard.
Nikias carried water.
Ione washed linen.
Timon read a list of food supplies.
Myrine argued with Damon about whether she was strong enough to carry jars.
Philon shaped clay cups because they needed more.
“Because you were wrong.”
Menon frowned.
Leandros continued.
“You said fear showed who was impure.”
Menon breathed shallowly.
“And?”
“I don’t want mine to prove you right.”
Menon looked at him for a long time.
Then laughed once.
Weak.
“Proud boy.”
“Probably.”
Menon died before sunset.
They buried him without ceremony in a trench outside cemetery.
Leandros did not tell crowd.
Some followers later claimed Apollo took Menon into the sun.
Others said enemies murdered him.
A few said he never died.
Truth had poor legs.
Rumor had wings.
Leandros stopped chasing every lie.
There was too much work.
The potter’s workshop became known simply as the Yard.
No holy name.
No founder.
No official approval.
People came for water.
Food when available.
Clean cloth.
A place to put sick relatives without abandoning them in temple streets.
Nikias trained anyone willing to listen.
Wash hands before touching wounds.
Do not share cups if avoidable.
Keep waste away from water.
Give the feverish water even when they refuse.
Cool them.
Do not bleed everyone because tradition says so.
Do not promise recovery.
Athens did not suddenly improve.
People still died.
Many.
Some after every careful measure.
Nikias never pretended otherwise.
That made his advice slower to spread than miracles.
But it spread.
Timon copied notes.
Not secret lists of survivor blood.
Instructions.
He posted them at fountains.
People tore them down.
He posted again.
Damon convinced soldiers guarding grain to carry copies into barracks.
Sailors took some to Piraeus.
A merchant took one aboard ship.
Nikias objected to being quoted because half his conclusions changed weekly.
Timon said,
“Then survive long enough to correct them.”
Timon himself became sick in early autumn.
He recognized first signs.
“Of course.”
Myrine asked,
“What?”
He smiled sadly.
“I spent weeks hunting survivors.”
He looked at Nikias.
“Now you finally get to observe me properly.”
Nikias told him to stop talking.
Timon’s fever rose fast.
No black swelling.
Burning eyes.
Rash across chest.
Diarrhea.
Weakness.
He remained lucid for two days.
On second night he asked Leandros for water.
Leandros gave it.
Timon said,
“I thought if I acted quickly enough, I could outrun grief.”
Leandros sat.
“Did it work?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Timon laughed.
“Cruel.”
“Yes.”
Leandros had stopped pretending otherwise.
Timon looked at Myrine sleeping across courtyard.
“I am sorry.”
“She knows.”
“I should tell her.”
“You did.”
“Not enough.”
“No apology is.”
Timon thought.
“That is depressing.”
“It is Athens.”
Timon died next morning.
Nikias sat beside body for a long time.
Then took up wax tablet.
Leandros almost shouted at him.
“Now?”
Nikias looked up.
Eyes wet.
“Yes.”
“What are you writing?”
“Symptoms.”
“He was your friend.”
“Eventually.”
“Then stop.”
Nikias’s voice broke.
“If I stop writing when it hurts, I will only record strangers.”
Leandros understood.
Memory again.
Fear changes it.
Grief too.
Nikias wrote Timon’s death carefully.
Then cried.
No contradiction.
Damon recovered fully from arrow wound.
He limped.
Claimed limp made him look experienced.
Myrine said it made him look old.
Damon threatened to assign her grain duty.
She said she already did more than him.
Probably true.
Philon reopened pottery work.
Not for trade luxury.
Water cups.
Cooking pots.
Urns when families insisted.
Ione refused to return to slavery.
Her owner’s household had died.
Legally, nobody knew what she was.
Property without owner?
Free woman?
The laws had not planned for plague.
A magistrate came once.
Ione stood before him.
“If my master is dead, who commands me?”
The magistrate said estate heirs.
“All dead.”
“Then city may determine.”
“City did not feed me.”
Silence.
Myrine whispered to Leandros,
“I like her.”
The magistrate left without decision.
Ione called that freedom enough for one day.
By winter, the first great wave of sickness eased in some districts.
Not ended.
Eased.
People emerged from houses.
Markets reopened unevenly.
Funeral smoke thinned.
Then flared again.
War continued.
Spartan armies still threatened Attica.
Athenian ships still sailed.
Politics returned like weeds after fire.
Citizens argued over generals.
Over strategy.
Over blame.
Some blamed Pericles for crowding rural population inside walls.
Some defended him.
Leandros avoided speeches.
He had learned that leaders could be right about war and wrong about suffering at same time.
History liked clean judgments.
Living people did not have them.
One morning, Leandros climbed the Acropolis with Myrine.
Same path as night they left Thaleia.
The city below looked different.
Not healed.
Scarred.
Empty spaces where households had vanished.
Burned roofs.
New shelters.
Lines at fountains.
Funeral trenches beyond walls.
But also smoke from cooking fires.
Potters working.
Children chasing each other near a column until priest shouted at them.
Life.
Rude.
Persistent.
Myrine stood beneath Athena.
“You said you didn’t know if Athens was dying.”
Leandros remembered.
Thunder.
Fire.
Her small voice.
“Maybe it was.”
“Is it now?”
He looked at walls.
Still standing.
Enemy outside.
Sickness inside.
“Maybe.”
Myrine frowned.
“That is not an answer.”
“Nikias taught me.”
She laughed.
Leandros untied bronze owl from wrist.
Held it up.
Sunlight reflected.
He no longer expected protection from it.
That made him like it more.
It was his mother’s hand.
Her last touch.
Not divine contract.
Myrine asked,
“Do you believe Athena saved us?”
“No.”
“Apollo punished us?”
“No.”
“Gods abandoned Athens?”
Leandros looked at great statue.
“I don’t know.”
Myrine nodded.
“Good.”
He stared.
“You sound like Nikias.”
“Terrible.”
They walked down toward Yard.
On way, a merchant collapsed in market.
For one horrible second, time folded.
Same place.
Same sound.
A year? No, only months had passed, though it felt like years.
People backed away.
Leandros froze.
The beginning again.
The merchant reached.
“Water.”
Nobody moved.
Then a girl stepped forward.
Maybe fifteen.
She placed cup on ground near him and backed away.
An old man moved to help.
Another called Nikias’s name.
No one stole the merchant’s money pouch.
Not immediately.
That was not victory.
It was something.
Leandros knelt at distance.
“Can you hear me?”
The merchant nodded weakly.
“Water is there.”
He drank.
People began making space rather than closing in.
Someone still shouted poison.
Another told him to shut up.
Athens had not become wise.
Only tired of certain stupidities.
Sometimes exhaustion could imitate progress long enough for better habits to begin.
They carried merchant to Yard.
He died that night.
Leandros wrote his name on a clay shard because family unknown.
Sosthenes.
Merchant.
Asked for water.
Given water.
Died after sunset.
Myrine looked over his shoulder.
“Why write?”
Leandros smiled sadly.
“So fear doesn’t change memory.”
Nikias heard.
He pretended not to.
Years later, perhaps scholars would argue about what sickness struck Athens.
They would count bodies.
Describe fever.
Thirst.
Skin.
Eyes.
Collapse.
They might say war worsened crowding.
They might say fear destroyed custom.
They might write of funeral pyres, lawlessness, temples full of dead.
Leandros knew none of that future.
He knew names.
Thaleia.
Timon.
Menon.
Sosthenes.
People he loved.
People he hated.
People who became both.
The plague did not reveal one true human nature.
That was too simple.
It revealed possibilities.
The man who stole from dying merchant.
The woman who opened her door to strangers when her own household was gone.
The woman who gave water despite fear.
Damon returning to guard grain.
Nikias writing when grief hurt.
Timon becoming better too late.
Menon becoming only a frightened man at death.
Ione choosing freedom because nobody remained with authority to deny it.
Myrine saying no.
And Leandros.
A boy who kept making choices without knowing whether gods, laws, or history approved.
Spring returned.
Plague remained.
Athens remained.
The Long Walls remained.
Outside them, war waited.
Inside, people rebuilt stalls beside places where bodies had lain.
Some prayed again.
Some never would.
Leandros continued working at Yard.
He carried water.
Buried dead.
Argued with Nikias.
Fought with Myrine.
Helped Damon count grain badly.
Learned pottery from Philon because clay did not care about politics.
At night he sometimes dreamed of Thaleia in burning house.
In dream he always went back.
Always carried her out.
Always woke before learning whether she lived.
He stopped treating dream as accusation.
She had told him to go.
Survival had been her final command.
But she gave another one too, though not in those exact words.
Do not let fear decide what kind of person remains.
One evening, bronze temple gongs sounded across city.
Another infected district.
People paused.
Listened.
Then continued working.
Not because they no longer cared.
Because life had learned to move beside death.
Myrine came to doorway.
“Leandros.”
“What?”
“Food.”
He looked at sky.
Smoke.
Stars beginning above Acropolis.
Athena’s statue catching last light.
He touched owl pendant.
Then followed sister inside.
Athens was not saved.
The plague was not defeated.
The war was not over.
The gods had offered no explanation.
But a cup of water sat beside a sick woman.
A stranger had left it there without being asked.
May you like
For that night, it was enough.
And behind the great walls, while enemy armies waited for the city to collapse, Athens kept breathing.
