"What happened next?" Varus said. He looked into the old woman's eyes. Her skin was as wrinkled as that of a raisin, but her features nonetheless had a quiet dignity. "After, after Typhon destroyed Atlantis, what did it do?"

The Sibyl turned her palms up, then down again. "If Typhon destroys Atlantis, will it not destroy this world, Lord Varus? Who but Zeus with his thunderbolts could halt him?"

The linked islands were a sludge of steam and drifting ash. Typhon, larger by far than the monster of his first appearance, crawled eastward. The setting sun threw his shadow across a red-tinged sea.

"Mistress?" said Varus. In this place he no longer had his notebook. He regretted that, because holding it would have given him something to do with his hands. "Is Zeus real?"

The Sibyl laughed. She said, "I know only what you know, Lord Varus. Are the Olympian gods real, philosopher?"

Of course not, Varus thought, though he didn't open his mouth. I'm an educated man, not a superstitious bumpkin.

The Sibyl laughed again. "Then let your philosophy console you!" she said.

The mist rose, lapping Varus' waist and stretching wisps toward the Sibyl's chair. He could feel words of closure trembling in his heart. Before they could burst from his mouth he cried, "Sibyl, was the Erymanthian Boar real? Did Heracles kill it?"

Without turning her head, the Sibyl lifted her right hand and caressed the great tusk beside her head. She said, "You are a clever, educated boy, Lord Varus. Something was real, and someone killed it. If you wish to say they were the Erymanthian Boar and Heracles, who is there to stop you? Not I, surely."

"Open the Earth and the World to me!" Varus' lips shouted. His soul plunged through ice and fire until it filled his body again. He rocked on his stool and would have fallen if Pandareus had not caught him by the shoulders.