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was very sad,” I agreed. She seemed agitated, as if it were very important what the tutor had taught me. I sought to soothe her. “So it seems that curiosity can be dangerous,” I said.
    She took a deep breath. “Just so. Now, what of the other ones, besides Heracles and Dionysus?”
    I tried to remember. “They are the most famous because they became gods themselves, which is very unusual. The rest of them just die in the regular way. There’s Perseus, he lived near here, at Argos, and then there’s Niobe, Zeus’s first mortal woman, and her son Argus, and oh, Mother, there are so many of them! Zeus was everywhere, it seems, and—no, I cannot name them all.” It was hopeless. Even the tutor most likely could not. “Alcmene, the mother of Heracles, was the last,” I said. “Zeus comes no more amongst us.” For that I was thankful—no more additions to memorize.
    Now she burst out into that laugh I hated. “Is that what he’s told you?”
    “Yes, it is.” I backed up a step or two. She was frightening when she gave that laugh. “He said that Zeus—that that time had ended.”
    “Not entirely,” she said. She opened her mouth as if to speak more, but gave a great sigh of resignation. “Now it has. Now it has. But not with Heracles. There are younger children of Zeus. Now, did your tutor point out any odd thing about the offspring of Zeus?”
    I could not imagine what she meant. “No,” I finally said. “Of course, they are all lovely, and tall, and strong, and have—what is the saying, ‘more than mortal beauty’?—but aside from that, I do not know. They are all very different.”
    “They are all men!” she cried, leaping up from the couch so quickly my eyes could barely follow her. “Men! All men!”
    “Perhaps he has daughters, but does not recognize them,” I said. “Perhaps he feels it is not fitting to sire daughters, and so he will not claim them.” It seemed as if Zeus might believe that.
    “Nonsense!” She was trembling. “He has daughters, divine ones on Mount Olympus, and he is proud of them. Perhaps mortal women did not give him any daughters worthy of him. If they did, you can be sure he would be proud of them. If he knows of them. If he knows of them!”
    “I thought he knew everything.”
    Now came that dreadful laugh again. “Oh, Hera fools him all the time! No, it is entirely possible he has overlooked his mortal daughter, if she has been hidden away, in a place where no one comes, no one sees her.”
    Suddenly I had this dreadful feeling, as her words rang in my ears. Hidden away, in a place where no one comes, no one sees her. They had kept me hidden away, and few visitors came to Sparta, and there was so much whispering about me between Mother and Father . . . and there were the forbidden mirrors. And Mother so fierce about Zeus, so adamant about him. But no, that was a foolish fancy. All children like to think they are special, or even unique.
    I suddenly remembered something. Perhaps it was what she had been hinting at. “I am descended from Zeus!” I cried. “Yes, he told me that Zeus and a nymph of the mountain, Taygete, had a child, Lacedaemon, and that child is Father’s ancestor.” I expected her to reward me, to clap and say, Yes! Yes!
    She shook her head. “That was a very long time ago, and I see nothing godlike in your father. The blood has run very thin, if indeed it ever stretched back to Mount Olympus.”
    She was trembling. I touched her shoulder, wishing I could embrace her, but knowing she would push me away. “Well, it is of no matter,” I said. “I cannot see how it would affect us in any way.” What happened long ago, in a story, was of no moment.
    She looked very hard at me. “It is time we go to the Mysteries,” she said. “The goddesses Demeter and Persephone are bound to our family. You are old enough. We will all go to the shrine on the mountain, and there you will learn of your guardian goddess. And she can reveal much, if she