"He'll love the place. It's haunted. All those fortified heights, the mist, the wind.”"He's been to Mycenae.”"He hasn't been to Mistra, has he? Or down to the Mani. Or to Nestor's palace. Honest-hearted Nestor.”"No.”"He hasn't been to sandy Pylos, has he?”"Relax, James, would you.”"Come September, what happens? I think we ought to know where he's going to school. We ought to be making arrangements right now. When do you stop digging? Where do you plan to spend the winter?”"I don't have plans. We'll see.”"What have you found here anyway?”"Some walls. A cistern.”"Were the Minoans as bright and gay as we're led to believe? What have you found besides walls?”"It was a small settlement. Some of it's under water. The sea's risen since then.”"The sea's risen. No frescoes?”"Not a one.”"What pickups? Coins, daggers?”"Storage jars.”"Intact?”"Fragments.”"Big jars? Big as the ones at Knossos?”"Not nearly," she said."No frescoes, no silver-inlaid daggers, tiny broken pots. Are the pots unpainted?”"Painted.”"Dumb luck," I said.She grabbed the bottle and drank, partly to conceal traces of amusement. Tap came in, a little shiny after his bath."We have a brand new kid," she said. "I'd better hurry and take my bath so we can feed him.”"If we don't feed him, he'll blow away in this wind.”"That's right. He needs ballast. Do you think he knows what ballast is?”"He's writing a prairie epic, not a sea epic, but I think he knows anyway. Five drachmas says he knows.”He turned on a light. I'd arrived expecting him to be changed in appearance. He'd always seemed vaguely delicate to me, small-boned. I thought the open life would transform him physically. There might be something of the wild boy about him. The sun and wind would crack his skin a little, mark up the tidy surface. This unpremeditated life of theirs would break him out of his containment, I thought. But he looked about the same. A little darker, that was all.The essential Thomas Axton now stood before me.