Infinite 01 - Infinite Sacrifice

reaching the point where you can’t even understand what he’s saying as he rolls his head back and forth, his mouth wide open, laughing as he yells the best part.
    However, you can see Theodon’s green eyes glimmer. He yearns for one day when he might have such journeys beyond this farm. He laughs the hardest, though, when one of Nereus’s inverted burps erupts mid-sentence, and he simply continues like nothing happened. Theodon will giggle until he can barely breathe. All throughout his stories, Nereus keeps dipping his bread in the blood broth but pushes his bowl with the back of his hand in front of Theodon. “My teeth just can’t handle the pork any longer.”
    Theodon grabs the bowl eagerly as I bring a tray of dessert figs and a new jug of wine. Theodon takes a fistful of dried figs before Ophira decides it is time for him to go to bed, and I get a pang of jealousy, since she gets to tuck him in.
    Nereus distracts me. “What I really came here for was to tell you unpleasant news about Arcen.”
    My heart drops; somehow I suspect what he’s going to say. I open the seal on the terracotta jug and refill Nereus’s kylix.
    After I pour, he turns the jug to read the stamp, raises his eyebrows, and says, “Cretan wine?” Then he swallows happily before continuing. “I was in the city last night and spoke with one of the commanders of the agoge—a good friend of mine. When I asked about how my grandnephew was faring he turned to me and shook his head. He said he was the most picked on and ridiculed boy in the group. He causes the other boys to receive more punishment for his weaknesses, and they torture him for it. They deprive him of food, hoping he’ll go and steal, but he’s quickly wasting away. He’s not going to make it if he doesn’t get stronger.”
    A great shame comes over me. “What can I do, Uncle?”
    He shrugs. “Too bad he’s not like Ophira’s boy. What a specimen! Shame he’s a helot, though. What a waste,” he says as he wipes his hands with barley bread and feeds it to the dogs.

Chapter 5
    Leander’s army is sent to Thebes. I’m relieved not having to give him the news of Arcen, although he has probably heard through the army by now. I cringe to think what he’ll do about it. The best parts of my day are spent with Theodon and Ophira. One unusually beautiful day, when the intensely blue sky is scattered with fat clouds by a warm caressing wind, we take our dinner down to the cliffs. Theodon and I decide to run down to the beach and go swimming. He shuffles his feet down the steep rock steps that lead to the sand.
    I begin to run down after him but turn to a stalled Ophira. “Come on!”
    She shakes her head. “I’m not running down these stairs; I’m too old for this.”
    “We’re the same age you ninny.” I run down a few more to show her how easy it is, but she shakes her head sternly.
    She yells, “We don’t all still look like you Alcina. If you had long hair, I swear nothing’s changed since the day I met you.” She chooses to walk down the safer path. “I’m going this way. I don’t know why, but I feel like something is going to come and push me down those steps.”
    I scoff at her paranoia and try to catch up with Theodon, already halfway down.
    We dive in after peeling our tunics off, leaving them to fall wherever on the scant, pebbled shore behind us. As we play in the crystal, waveless water, Theodon comes up behind me and pushes down on my shoulders, shoving me under. I have to throw him off to come up for air. We laugh and laugh with our heads bobbing in the deep, rolling tide. Then we scale back up the cliff, soaking wet, and Ophira starts dancing, pulling us up to join her. The three of us dance around the countryside together, delirious in our tiny world.
    We straggle back into the house, laughing, and decide the night wouldn’t be complete without a late-night dessert before retiring. As Ophira fetches some figs and cheeses, I bring out some wine. I lean over Theodon to fill his cup.
    Theodon starts tapping his thumb on the table. “I wanted to talk to you, Mother.”
    Ophira turns, even though I want to, and she answers, “Yes, what is it?”
    “I’m sixteen now, and Arcen’s in agoge while I’ve nothing. I’m not working or living with the other helots, yet I’m one of them. I’m either going to join the Citizens’ Army—”
    I wince at the thought of the army Sparta uses as their shield in return for promised