What sleep is as deep as the sleep of a cold Januarius night, when the sky is a blanket of lowering clouds and the earth shivers below? Even with my son and wife yammering at me, I slipped back into the arms of Morpheus as easily as a boy slipping into a bottomless, downy bed of goose feathers. It seemed to me that two magpies were chattering absurdly in a tree nearby, calling me "Papa" and "Husband". They swooped down, fluttered their wings, pecked me with their beaks. I groaned and waved my arms to fend them off. After a brief battle they retreated into the frosty clouds, leaving me to dream in peace.

The frosty clouds burst open. Cold water splashed my face.

I sat upright, sputtering and blinking. With a satisfied nod, Bethesda placed an empty cup beside a flickering lamp on a little table against the wall. Eco stood at the foot of the bed, gathering up the blanket he had just pulled off me. I shivered in my sleeping gown and hugged myself.

"Blanket thief!" I mumbled grimly. At that moment it seemed the foulest crime imaginable. "Stealing an old man's rest!"

Eco remained impassive. Bethesda crossed her arms and arched

an eyebrow. By the dim lamplight the two of them still looked suspiciously like magpies.

I closed my eyes. "Have pity!" I sighed, thinking an appeal to mercy might gain me just one more blissful moment of sleep.

But before my head reached the pillow, Eco gripped my shoulder and pulled me upright again. "No, Papa! It's serious."

"What's serious?" I made a desultory attempt to shake him off "Is the house on fire?" I was irretrievably awake now, and grumpy – until I realized who was absent from the conspiracy to wake me. I looked around the room, blinking, and felt a sudden thrill of panic. "Diana! Where is Diana?"

"Here, Papa." She entered the room and stepped into the circle of light. Her long hair, let down for the night, hung loose over her shoulders, shimmering like black water under starlight. Her eyes -the almond-shaped, Egyptian eyes inherited from her mother – were slightly swollen with sleep.