“
You could speak on my behalf. Try to persuade him.”
His black eyes glittered. “I’m afraid I’m only a messenger.”
“Please,” I said. “I do not want them here, truly. I am not being funny.”
“No,” he said, “you are not. You are being very dull. Use your imagination, they must be good for something. Take them to your bed.”
“That is absurd,” I said. “They would run screaming.”
“Nymphs always do,” he said. “But I’ll tell you a secret: they are terrible at getting away.”
At a feast on Olympus such a jest would have been followed by a roar of laughter. Hermes waited now, grinning like a goat. But all I felt was a white, cold rage.
“I am finished with you,” I said. “I have been finished a long time. Let me not see you again.”
If anything, his grin deepened. He vanished and did not return. It was no obedience. He was finished with me too, for I had committed the unpardonable sin of being dull. I could imagine the stories he was telling of me, humorless, prickly, and smelling of pigs. From time to time, I could sense him just out of sight, finding my nymphs in the hills, sending them back flushed and laughing, giddy from the great Olympian who had shown them favor. He seemed to think I would go mad with jealousy and loneliness, and turn them into rats indeed. A hundred years he had been coming to my island, and in all that time he had never cared for more than his own entertainment.
”
”