“Only one . . .” George fell silent. He studied the satyr. He’d shot that only one generation as if from a catapult, propelled by sarcasm rather than twisted cords. The satyr, though, had taken him literally. And why not? he realized. What was a generation to a being essentially immortal? The satyr was speaking with him now. It might have spoken with St. Peter when he traveled through Greece not long after the Incarnation, had it so chosen and had the saint not driven it from his presence by overwhelming holiness. It might have spoken with Alexander the Great. George shivered. It might have spoken with Achilles before he sailed for Troy. No wonder it took mere generations lightly.

“This wolf thing eat up priest,” the satyr repeated. It ran a tongue as long and red as its phallus around its mouth, imitating a wolf licking its chops. “Then it look over to where I am. It not blind and stupid like priest--it see me. It think about eat me up, too. I see it think. Then it decide, I full. I see that, too. Wolf get up, go away.”

George wanted to say Kyrie eleison or Christe eleison, but didn’t, for fear the holy words would make the satyr flee. He looked at it with an emotion he’d never expected to feel toward its kind: sympathy. “You’re in a hard spot, aren’t you? If you come down to places like this, the priests and holy men will get you. If you stay where you have been staying, though, the wolves will do the same.”

“Not wolves only,” the satyr said. “Other things, new things, never-seen things. Frightening things.”

Frightening because they’re new or frightening because they’re frightening? George wondered. To an immortal that had grown used to the ways of its part of the world, change of any sort had to seem like the end of that world. What must the Olympians have thought when Christ overcame them? The satyr hadn’t been so strong as all that--but the other side of the coin was, lesser threats were dangerous to it.