Lysander dreams of flying through the water, of ringing in his ears, of a comely young man with a sharp grin, dark hair and flashing eyes, guiding him towards the surface. The salt stings his eyes but he looks around in awe as shoals of fish support his weakened limbs, as a dolphin nips at his tattered chiton and pulls him up. More ominous shapes move past him silently, with inexorable purpose, and the last thing he sees before his eyes close is the flat black of a shark's eye as it too, it seems, is tasked with dragging him away from his self-administered punishment. He will remember nothing of this dream except the sensation of burning in his lungs, and the pain of drowning.

Even though he managed to get up early enough to watch the village men go fishing, Lysander was still in no physical shape to get on a boat. So one of the old men stayed behind to show him the rudiments of knotting a net, and repairing the cone-shaped cages which the fishermen used as traps underwater.

He became so engrossed in his work that the hours passed quickly until the men came back with the best catch they'd had in months. Lysander ignored the sideways glances he got as the men trooped back to the houses, and the women squabbled over the catch. As only one or two still had living husbands, dividing it up was not the straightforward matter it had been in the past, and Hypatia frequently had to intervene between them.

Hipparchus came with his share, a large, rather fierce-looking lobster. Lysander left it up to him to subdue and prepare for the pot.

"You don't sell your fish?"
Lysander had spent so many years in the army, he was no longer sure of things worked in small villages, but he was fairly certain he'd heard of fish markets and suchlike.

Hipparchus shrugged.

"We have had so much loss here, that our catch has not been worth selling. We are salting and preserving fish for the winter, when it becomes more difficult to make a good catch. A couple of catches like today's, and perhaps we will not starve this year. We have some fields on the hills, but very little grows so close to the sea."

Lysander noticed that Hipparchus looked at him out of the corner of his eye when he mentioned that day's exceptional catch, but he refused to catch his eye. What did he, Lysander, know about gods and their whims? He had worshipped back at his home, more to fit in than anything else. And soldiers had their own rituals of appeasement, which he'd joined. Still, he'd never had a sign of otherworldly involvement in his affairs, and he doubted he ever would. What he'd seen in those weeks with Hyperion had disabused him of the notion of any benevolent deity watching over humans. He'd had no doubt all those slaughtered women had prayed to Artemis, to Athena, and for what? But he wasn't prepared to put his thoughts in words. And yet he knew, despite himself, that something strange was going on. He found himself unable to forget that last morning, in Hyperion's camp, being woken by the impossible – the smell and sound of the sea. He should have drowned, but here he was. And now, his arrival had heralded this bounty. Was he being courted? Or was this another cruel joke being played on him? Would he be greeted with snide laughter, and more torture, before finally being allowed to die? He realised that he was frozen in place, holding a pot which he had been asked to fill with water at the stream, and flushed. He glared at Hipparchus, and at the lobster, and stomped off. He wasn't going to consider this anymore. Damn gods and their games. It wasn't worth wasting any more thought on.

The next morning Lysander went on a fishing boat for the very first time. And after that, it seemed that five years passed in the blink of an eye. After, he tried hard to remember whether one particular day stood out more than the others, but it never did. He learned how to fish, and spent his days, spring and summer more than winter, on the fishing boat with Hipparchus, using the nets or the cages, and soon it became second nature for him (as killing used to be, the treacherous part of his brain informed him, the part that hadn't forgotten his actions or forgiven them). After that first day, any boat Lysander was on got the best catch, mountains of glittering sea bream and bass, lobsters and crayfish almost fighting for the privilege of entering his cages. Once a swordfish had beached itself on the deck of his boat, and the village had even managed to do some barter for once, with enough corn and oil to last for months. No-one had made any more snide remarks about Poseidon and his predilections after that, but the sacrifices to the god were made with more conviction than ever.

Soon he was almost indistinguishable from the other fishermen in the village – the few things which set him apart were his scars, and the fact that he was the only youthful man who never took off his chiton. A few months after his arrival the young women started showing rounded bellies, and the story circulated that they had already been pregnant when their men had been taken or killed, just not showing yet. Lysander had turned a sceptical eye on Hipparchus, who just pointed out that without babies, the village would die out. So what if the babies were born late? They would have their fathers' names. Lysander noticed that the old men walked straighter and talked louder, but he shrugged. Why shouldn't they be proud that they were keeping their village alive? Where were those who made the rules about legitimacy and so on, where were they now. He immediately, with some discomfort, flashed back to himself at ten, insulting Theseus for being a bastard. He couldn't take it back, but at least he could make up for it by turning a blind eye, when any other man would not have. Besides, what right did he have to judge? He was only alive through their goodwill, and he wasn't going to do any repopulating any time soon.

Lysander wondered when he'd stopped looking at the hills which led down to the village, waiting for soldiers coming to make him pay for his betrayal. It never happened, which made him think it never would.

In fact, the attack came from the sea.

If he'd kept count, Lysander would have realised that day was five years to the day he'd arrived in the small fishing village. But he didn't and when the huge wave swept him off the boat he'd been loading nets and baskets onto, it came as much of a shock to him as it was to the people watching. Time slowed down to a crawl. He realised he could understand what one of the men was shouting as he toppled into the sea.

"It's a hand! Look, a great hand, made of water! Look, do you see?"

Then all he heard was a ringing in his ears, and he knew no more.

For the second time in his life, Lysander woke up expecting to be dead. And for the second time in his life, he was alive. But this time, he wasn't on a sunny beach. He was in some sort of cave, which seemed to be underwater. Half of it was covered in water, like a shallow lagoon, but it was not sand which covered the bottom . . . he could hardly believe his eyes, and had to touch the smooth surface before he accepted that the floor was covered in mother-of pearl. The ceiling was even stranger – it glowed, but not like phosphorescent algae or moss, but like a warm fire. Squinting at it, he realised it was amber – a king's ransom of amber, and it covered the cave. The water was warm, and everything was smooth and beautiful, and it didn't smell damp or stifling, but salty.

He looked around him and realised that there was a man sitting in the corner, watching him closely. At first he thought it was an old man, sitting on a chair, holding his staff.

"Who are you?"

Lysander's voice was low and hoarse, and his throat burned terribly from the salt water he'd swallowed.

The man got up suddenly, and he no longer seemed old but was young and beautiful (and very naked, his mind-voice gulped), and his staff slammed down into the rock which flowed and hardened around it, and it was no longer a staff, but a trident.

"Take a wild guess," Poseidon replied, for of course it was the god himself.