Chapter 5 - THE FIRE OF STRANGERS
Timon survived the night.
Leandros was disappointed.
He felt guilty for being disappointed.
Then angry at the guilt.
The plague had turned morality into exhausting work.
Nikias cleaned Timon’s wounds.
Broken nose.
Split scalp.
Bruised ribs.
No fever.
Myrine sat across the room staring at him.
Timon noticed.
“You hate me.”
“Yes.”
Fair.
He tried smiling.
Bad idea.
His lip opened again.
Myrine continued,
“You would have cut me.”
“A small amount.”
Leandros stood.
Nikias raised one hand.
Myrine did not need protection from the answer.
She asked,
“Did you ask the others?”
Timon looked down.
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Some agreed.”
“And the ones who didn’t?”
Silence.
Myrine nodded.
“You’re like the mob.”
Timon looked up sharply.
“No.”
“You just use cleaner bowls.”
Nobody spoke.
Leandros almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
By morning, the Blood Sanctuary had burned.
Smoke rose above the port.
Rumor said plague victims set it.
Another rumor said guards did.
Another said Apollo sent fire.
Damon said the crowd probably knocked over lamps.
The least dramatic answer was often true.
They needed to move.
The rope-maker’s loft was no longer safe.
Timon’s former allies would search.
The mob might too.
Nikias wanted to return to Athens proper.
“There are public wells near the Kerameikos I want to compare.”
Leandros stared.
“You want to study wells while people hunt us?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because districts around some fountains report different sickness rates.”
Timon, from the floor, looked up.
“You have numbers?”
Nikias glared.
“Do not become interested.”
“Too late.”
Damon said,
“The northern road is dangerous.”
“Everything is dangerous.”
Nikias pointed at Timon.
“See? I’ve learned.”
They moved under disguise.
No armor.
No physician tools visible.
Timon wrapped his face.
Not because of plague.
Because half Piraeus might recognize and kill him.
Philon came too.
He could walk now.
The group had become absurd.
A soldier deserter.
A physician.
A failed medical official.
A bled survivor.
Two children.
All hiding from different versions of Athens.
They traveled north between the Long Walls.
The corridor had become a city itself.
Refugee huts pressed against stone.
Families cooked in drainage ditches.
Animals wandered loose.
Waste piled everywhere.
Bodies too.
No space.
No air.
No distance.
Nikias became quieter with every mile.
“This is why,” he whispered.
Leandros looked around.
“Why what?”
“Why it spreads.”
“You said you don’t know.”
“I don’t know the cause.”
Nikias pointed.
“But I know this helps it.”
Crowding.
Filth.
Shared water.
Bodies.
People sleeping almost on top of one another.
War had brought the countryside inside the walls.
The walls saved Athens from Sparta.
Maybe doomed it to sickness.
They passed a funeral pyre.
Three families fighting over it.
Wood was scarce.
One group had built the fire.
Another placed a body on top without permission.
The first tried pulling it off.
A corpse’s arm tore.
People screamed.
Then laughed.
Not from humor.
From collapse.
Leandros looked away.
Near the Dipylon gate, smoke darkened the sky.
Not plague fires.
Funeral fires.
Dozens.
A city of flame outside the cemetery.
Philon stopped.
“My sons.”
Nobody asked.
He walked toward the pyres.
Nikias grabbed him.
“You don’t know they’re there.”
“I put them there.”
He had brought their bodies before his own fever.
Then woken days later.
Philon walked between fires.
Leandros followed.
Not because he wanted to.
Because grief made people walk into flames if nobody followed.
Bodies burned without names.
Funeral rites shortened.
No offerings.
No processions.
No speeches.
Just wood if a family had it.
Someone dumped a corpse onto an existing pyre.
The owner attacked him with a shovel.
Damon separated them.
“Enough!”
The men turned on him.
He raised empty hands.
Not soldier now.
Just tired.
“Your dead are burning either way.”
One man began crying.
The fight ended.
Philon found no sign of his sons.
Of course.
Fire erased signs.
He stood watching strangers burn.
“They were afraid.”
Leandros stood beside him.
“At the end?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I was.”
That answer stayed.
Thomas had his mother's cross; Leandros had owl pendant. He touched the bronze owl.
Athena.
Wisdom.
What wisdom existed in mass fire?
Then he saw something near one pyre.
A bronze hairpin.
Simple.
Spiral end.
His mother had worn one like it.
He froze.
No.
Thousands of women owned such pins.
Still he walked toward it.
The body beside it was already half burned.
Impossible to identify.
Leandros reached.
Heat struck his face.
Damon grabbed him.
“What?”
Leandros pointed.
“My mother.”
Damon looked.
“You don’t know.”
“She had that.”
“Many do.”
Leandros knew.
Did not care.
He tried again.
Damon held him.
“You cannot take it.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll burn yourself.”
“I left her.”
Myrine heard.
She came closer.
Leandros turned toward her.
She saw the pin.
Her face collapsed.
“Mother?”
“No,” Leandros said immediately.
He did not know why.
Myrine stepped toward the pyre.
He grabbed her.
“No.”
“You said—”
“I was wrong.”
“Is it hers?”
“I don’t know.”
Myrine started crying.
Leandros held her.
The hairpin remained beside the fire.
Maybe Thaleia’s.
Maybe not.
That uncertainty became the closest thing they received to burial.
They left before dark.
Nikias examined three public wells.
He asked nearby families questions.
Who drank where?
Who became ill?
Which households remained well?
People answered until they realized he was a physician.
Then some begged.
Others accused.
One woman brought a dying baby.
Nikias could do little.
Water.
Cooling cloth.
Honey on cracked lips.
The baby died anyway.
Nikias sat beside the mother afterward.
No words.
Timon watched.
“You knew there was nothing to do.”
“Yes.”
“Then why stay?”
Nikias looked at him.
“Because she should not hold a dead child alone.”
Timon looked away.
Perhaps that taught him more than argument.
At the third well, Nikias found dead rats.
Several.
Floating.
Citizens refused to drink.
A priest declared the water poisoned.
Men searched nearby houses for foreigners.
Leandros felt the pattern begin.
He shouted,
“Rats fall into wells.”
The priest pointed.
“Who are you?”
“A person with eyes.”
Bad answer.
The crowd moved toward him.
Timon stepped forward.
He removed his face cloth.
People recognized him.
Some shouted.
Some backed away.
Timon raised his hands.
“I authorized the survivor collections.”
Nikias whispered,
“What are you doing?”
Timon continued.
“I was wrong.”
Silence.
That was rarer than miracles.
He pointed at the well.
“We do not know who caused the plague.”
Someone shouted,
“Foreign poison!”
Timon answered,
“No proof.”
“You said blood cures!”
“I said it might.”
“You lied!”
“Yes.”
The crowd erupted.
Damon drew his sword.
Leandros grabbed Myrine.
Then Timon shouted,
“If you need someone to punish, punish me!”
Nikias cursed.
Timon looked at the priest.
“Not merchants. Not slaves. Not strangers. Me.”
The priest hesitated.
He had not expected a target volunteering.
Mobs preferred prey that ran.
The crowd closed around Timon.
Leandros moved.
Timon shook his head.
“Go.”
Leandros stared.
“You’ll die.”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
Timon smiled with swollen lips.
“Because your sister was correct.”
Clean bowls.
Same mob.
He turned toward them.
The crowd seized him.
Damon pulled Leandros back.
“No.”
Again that word.
Leandros watched Timon disappear beneath bodies.
He did not know if the man died.
They could not see.
Nikias stood frozen.
Then soldiers arrived.
Real city guards.
Spears down.
The crowd scattered.
The priest fled.
Timon lay in mud.
Alive.
Barely.
Of course.
Leandros laughed.
Nikias looked at him as if he had gone mad.
Maybe.
They carried Timon to an abandoned courtyard.
His left hand was broken.
Two ribs worse.
Myrine looked down at him.
“You are bad at dying.”
Timon opened one eye.
“Apparently.”
By night, rumors spread that Spartans had withdrawn from the immediate fields because plague frightened them.
Other rumors said they planned an attack.
Another said Pericles himself was sick.
Damon did not know what was true.
Athens had become too large for truth to cross intact.
Then a messenger found Damon.
A boy from his old unit.
“Captain wants you back.”
Damon stared.
“For what?”
“Guard duty at the grain stores.”
“I deserted.”
“The captain says desertion is forgiven.”
Damon laughed.
“Why?”
The boy looked embarrassed.
“Half the unit is dead.”
That was Athens now.
Crimes vanished when manpower did.
Damon looked at Leandros.
Then Nikias.
Then Myrine.
“I have to go.”
Leandros stared.
“Why?”
“Food warehouses.”
“So?”
“If guards disappear, mobs take everything.”
“Let them.”
“And tomorrow?”
Leandros knew.
Starvation.
Another plague.
Damon put on his hidden soldier cloak.
“I hate this city.”
Myrine said,
“So do I.”
Damon smiled.
“That is why we keep trying to stop it from dying.”
He left.
Leandros watched.
His mother had said fear was killing Athens.
Maybe fear was not the only thing.
Maybe the city survived because some people kept choosing work they hated.
Nikias looked toward the darkened Acropolis.
“We need somewhere to stay.”
Philon answered,
“My workshop.”
Everyone turned.
“You have a workshop?”
“Had.”
“Where?”
“Potters’ quarter.”
Leandros looked toward the city.
Back near where everything began.
Philon smiled weakly.
“If it still stands.”
They walked.
When they reached the street, Leandros stopped.
The potter’s workshop was across from his old home.
Or what remained.
Black walls.
Collapsed roof.
Ash.
Myrine gripped his hand.
Neither spoke.
On the doorstep lay a melted piece of bronze.
Leandros picked it up.
Part of their household lamp.
Proof.
No uncertainty.
Their home was gone.
Whatever Thaleia had left there was gone too.
Myrine whispered,
“We don’t have to stay.”
Leandros looked at Philon’s workshop.
Roof intact.
Door open.
Empty rooms.
He touched Athena’s owl.
“No.”
He looked at the burned house.
“We stay.”
May you like
Not because it was safe.
Because leaving every place to fear had begun to feel like another kind of death.
