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But instead he only nodded at and stroked the craft.
He slowly drew his hand away and fondled his ear. "Our only problem," he said, looking at and addressing the vessel as though it was a true companion, "is that all involved in previous conspiracies never returned." Half of them had been discovered, in the sea, fish-eaten. "To join the lot will be easy, little mate." His voice was level with the groaning, squeaking boats. He wore the lanky, sinewy look of a monk in fast, but Andreas' eyes held no dreamy vision. They were clear and bright. For nearly all his life Andreas maintained his body, wit, and reason at peak. "Why Marizza?" he finally whispered. "I will not be goaded by fear alone. Other than virtue and valor there is the middle road. There is common sense, my father."
It numbed and provoked him that his father could--years after his death--pull this snare of dominance upon him from the past.
"I am your father. You will honor and heed me."
"You can't be," Andreas said out loud. The timbre of his own cry shocked him. "My father is dead."
"I am alive," the call said. "Alive as you are. I will be alive as long as you are, and more, my son, because now I cannot die."
Andreas blotted the perspiration from his chilled face. "You are only a voice inside me."
"I'm you."
"Nothing of the kind, my father."
"What is believable and what is not, be not so assured. Truths can kill as sure as lies, as the fish-eaten corpses know."
"You are an illusion."
"All the more. An illusion is not there to undergo death. You must work with illusions, dear boy, to cheat Charon from this impending death."
Andreas rubbed his stinging eyes. The vapors from the rotting cannabis sprouts that grew near the wet shore from the bird droppings made his nostril itch just then. The vapors were infiltrating the austere logic, the stern discipline of a sanity and judgement, he had been bequeathed from the thinkers of this land. But the drift of the narcotic was sweet and comforting, the very warm blanket of solace, and such hope. He felt no longer alone. "You may be me, my father. But not above me."
"I am the delusion of your hope. Without me death is not a chimera. It is certain, inescapable, final. You need me to bridle the terror reality loosens. To skirt the panic death floods. And do what you must: Steal from gods."
"How can you claim to be me when you are not at all like me," Andreas said quickly and with a low voice. "You are gone. I must fear death above life. Fear is a godly tool. It makes mortals go beyond themselves--into Olympian terrain. I will marry old prudence with mortal fear, father. I need not shame us both today."



"Ah, Andreas!" Marizza had said. "I will come with you to the Cabeirei."
"You've been spying on me," he had said two Sundays ago after church, the smile on his face waning.
Marizza was the school teacher for the island, and she was also Andreas's sister. She was the more studious one in the family. He knew well the craft of boats, how to build them, care for them, he had the talent of fishing as his father did and could out-fish any other in the seaside village.