Troped

Slowly, in time, he reaches the figure. She does not look up as he comes toward her. Huddled in a tattered and dark red cape, she is grasping a sharpened bone and shoving it into the ground and dragging dirt away. She has removed all the tablet shards and incunabula from a small circle and is digging in the dirt underneath. Able cannot fathom why but he smiles. “Hello,” he says.

“Hmph.”

“You’re digging in the dirt.”

And so she continues.

“Why?”

“Did you know that Jupiter ate one of his children?”

“No.”

“Yes. Levy. Jupiter’s son the shoemaker, Levy. He ate him whole.”

“I know that Jupiter’s father wanted to eat his children,” Able says helpfully.

She stops digging and looks at him with surprise. “You knew that, did you?”

“Yes.”

“Levy. Jupiter swallowed him whole because he could not bare the embarrassment of having such a plain child as a shoemaker when all his other creations were so glorious.”

“Venus,” Able says and nods.

The old woman furrows her brow and concentrates. “Yes. Venus was one of his more beautiful creations. But how do you feel about him eating Levy?”

“That seems sad.”

“Does it? You are a child of Jupiter. You are! For he fathered all things. And he wants all things to be good. So why shouldn’t he devour a son who chooses to waste the gift of his being on something as lowly and mundane as shoemaking?”

“Mundane means simple,” Able answers.

“That’s your answer?”

“I think shoemaking could be lovely. Especially if you made the shoes out of neat things that you could find—colorful things.”

The woman cackles. “Colorful things! My aren’t you something.” She slowly raises herself up off the ground and holds out her hand for summoning and support. “Come with me, my color-adled friend. I will show you something.”