Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Philipp was a shepherd boy.

He lived in Arcadia, the Hills of a Thousand Flocks. Philipp thought that this was a fitting name for a place that had two features: rocks and sheep.

He wasn’t related to the older shepherds he worked with—luckily. Shepherds, for the most part, are hairy and dirty-minded, and these spent most of their time telling Philipp dirty jokes that he was pretty sure he shouldn’t be hearing.

Mostly, they kept to themselves, which was good for the boy. They gave him a few lambs to tend. In his young mind, he knew that he was perfectly capable of keeping more than that—full grown ones even—but his three little whities kept him occupied. Whenever he wasn’t looking, quick as a flash they would be across the stream—staring at him triumphantly—or into a thicket—bleating for help.

At night, he slept apart from the others. The shepherds always crowded around the campfire and, waiving their hairy arms around, told obscene stories and chortled to themselves.

Every once in a while, they would call Philipp over just to poke fun at him:

“Come over, Lambchips, and tell us about the time you saw the Sphinx.”

One of them would almost choke with laughter on whatever vile thing he was drinking.

Philipp would come as he was told but give them the driest expression he could.

“Tell me! Did she ask you a riddle?” This one would almost be too drunk to speak.

“Here you are. If you happen to see her again, ask her if she’s ever heard this one!”
Then they’d tell the boy a riddle that if repeated in the presence of his mother, would have gotten him beaten several times over.

You could easily say that Philipp wasn’t too fond of shepherds.

That’s why when he was back to himself on those starry nights with nothing above him but black and stars, he would try to come up with a better job description for himself.
Anything was better than being associated with shepherds.

“Lambherds?” he would say quietly and then crinkle his nose. “Sheepgatherer? Rammer?”

But before too long the cool grass would begin its moonlit dance, and his task would be lost to sleep.

At the end of the long week, he would return home. The shepherds didn’t pay him in coins, but in wool, and he would take the two meager sacks over his shoulder and begin the winding trek back down to the abode that he and his mother shared.

His mother was a weaver, and she was blind.

A great wooden frame took up almost half of their tiny dwelling—it was a treasure really for ones as poor as they. His mother made tunics, theirs and for others as well—and with them traded for meal, oil, and dye.

She spent her days washing the long wooden fibers with the tips of her fingers—soaking them in her small pots of color—and rolling them between her palms into long, straight threads. She would then feed them one by one into the teeth of the frame. She had done this, day after day, as far back as Philipp could remember.

“Mother, how can you see what you are making?” he used to ask when he was much younger.

She would draw back her lips and reveal a smile. “I cannot see, Little One—with my eyes. But hands know, and they see for me.”

This answer always seemed to satisfy him.

When a job was done and there was plenty of wool left over, his mother would take a smaller frame from the corner and set it upon her lap. It was a tapestry—formless as of yet—one she had begun many years ago—the day his father had left for Troy.

“Tell me about the war, Mother,” Philipp would say. “Tell me about the heroes! About Achilles!”

She wouldn’t hesitate for a moment at this question—her fingers moving in and out. “Those are not stories for little boys—they are stories for men—to see their own foolishness.”

“But Father is a hero, isn’t he?” he would ask eagerly. It was here that she would falter.

“Your father had no choice, Philipp. He did not choose his fate. It was chosen for him.”

“By the gods, right, Mother? Tell me about the gods!”

“No, Philipp,” she would say softly. “Let us not put them into our minds—for we are never in theirs.”

And then she would say no more.