I AM FIVE when it is my father’s turn to host the games. Men gather from as
far as Thessaly and Sparta, and our storehouses grow rich with their gold. A
hundred servants work for twenty days beating out the racing track and
clearing it of stones. My father is determined to have the finest games of his
generation.
I remember the runners best, nut-brown bodies slicked with oil,
stretching on the track beneath the sun. They mix together, broad-
shouldered husbands, beardless youths and boys, their calves all thickly
carved with muscle.
The bull has been killed, sweating the last of its blood into dust and dark
bronze bowls. It went quietly to its death, a good omen for the games to
come.
The runners are gathered before the dais where my father and I sit,
surrounded by prizes we will give to the winners. There are golden mixing
bowls for wine, beaten bronze tripods, ash-wood spears tipped with
precious iron. But the real prize is in my hands: a wreath of dusty-green
leaves, freshly clipped, rubbed to a shine by my thumb. My father has given
it to me grudgingly. He reassures himself: all I have to do is hold it.
The youngest boys are running first, and they wait, shuffling their feet in
the sand for the nod from the priest. They’re in their first flush of growth,
bones sharp and spindly, poking against taut skin. My eye catches on a light
head among dozens of dark, tousled crowns. I lean forward to see. Hair lit
like honey in the sun, and within it, glints of gold—the circlet of a prince.
He is shorter than the others, and still plump with childhood in a way
they are not. His hair is long and tied back with leather; it burns against the
dark, bare skin of his back. His face, when he turns, is serious as a man’s.
When the priest strikes the ground, he slips past the thickened bodies of
the older boys. He moves easily, his heels flashing pink as licking tongues.
He wins.

Chapter 1