Dark of the Moon by Tracy Barrett Read Free Book Online

the matter at hand. His mild face looks resolute as he says, "Aethra." She makes no answer, although I can tell by the way she doubles her attentions to the misshapen yarn that she has heard. But he will not be ignored. He removes the spindle from her hand, gently but firmly. "No," he says. "You promised."
    The few times that my mother has promised something, she has always managed to find a way out of fulfilling it if it was not convenient for her, but I see that for once Konnidas isn't going to relent. I am also aware that whatever she has promised has something to do with me. Altogether an interesting turn of events, and one whose unaccustomed nature makes me nervous.
    She sighs and then moves over on the bench, patting it for me to sit next to her. I do so, hanging awkwardly half off the seat. She doesn't seem to notice my discomfort.
    "You know, darling, that you are a very special boy." Her tone is one usually used with a two-year-old. "Your grandfather is a king." She pauses as though this is news, but of course I am aware that she is one of the many children of King Pittheus, who rules the small town of Troizena. "And your
father
"—she sounds as if she is about to impart a delightful secret—"your very own father is Poseidon." She claps her hands and nods. "So! What do you think of that?"
    "Aethra," my stepfather says again, and I am startled to hear a note of warning in his voice.
    "Well, he
said
he was Poseidon!" Her chin juts out. "He came wading out of the water, and darling, there was no ship nearby, so where else could he have come from?"
From farther up the shore,
I think but do not say. "He was surely Poseidon. So tall, so strong and handsome. He stayed for months and months." Her voice trails off, and her eyes are fixed on the ground. When she doesn't go on, Konnidas lays a hand on her shoulder. She looks up at him, tears shining in her eyes.
    "I know this, Mother." I try to sound patient. "Don't upset yourself."
    "Tell him the rest," Konnidas says gently, paying no attention to me.
    My mother wipes her eyes and turns to me with a bright but false smile. "Your father couldn't stay until you were born, although he wanted to, because he had things to attend to."
Oh yes,
I think.
Poseidon is always busy, what with storms to raise and the earth to shake and sailors to drown.
    My mother looks helplessly at Konnidas, who comes to her rescue. "Your father left something for you."
    "For
me?
" I look from one to the other. My mother is uncharacteristically grave, and Konnidas returns my stare with his usual equanimity. "What did he leave me?"
    Konnidas looks at my mother. "Will you show him, or shall I?"
    She rises to her feet and says, "I will show him.
He
told me to." She strides off in the direction of the sea without looking behind her. As soon as I recover from my astonishment, I trot after her, followed at a distance by my stepfather.

Chapter 7
    THIS IS it?" I ask. "This is what my father left me?"
    My mother has stopped in front of a boulder lying near the sea path. She flutters her hand to draw my attention to it. I have passed this same boulder hundreds of times and have never attached any importance to it. It's just an ordinary stone, squarish, gray and brown, almost as tall as I am.
    "Not the
rock,
silly!" She laughs as if I've said something ridiculous. After her earlier reluctance to talk about my father, she now seems eager. She gives the boulder an almost affectionate slap. "He rolled it here himself, a few days before he went back to the sea. He said he left something under it for you, and if the baby was—if you turned out to be a boy, you were to move the rock as soon as you were old enough and strong enough and find it."
    For the first time since my mother and Konnidas started talking about my parentage, I feel a glimmer of interest. If her story is true and my father left me a gift, it must be something hard, not to be crushed by the weight of the boulder, and durable, since it had to last for