GigaNotoSaurus

by Patricia Russo

The elders claim life is better now.

Since the ascension of the young dukes, the landholders no longer carry swords, and we are no longer obliged to kneel in their presence. Taxes have been lowered; we can keep more of our grain, our olives, our limes. Obligatory civic work days have been decreased to five per month. Smile, the elders say. Raise up your heads. The sun has emerged after long, long years of rain.

Raise up your heads. That is the way they speak, on warm nights when work is over, and dinner has been plentiful, and a wineskin is moving from hand to hand. They laugh, and boast, so proud of themselves for having survived to old age. But let a landholder walk through the square, or ride to the fields to inspect the crops, or make an appearance at a wedding or a festival, jovial and swordless, and the elders duck their heads and mumble, the same as the rest of us.

You see? the Younger Son-in-Law says. They themselves do not believe that all is well.

The Younger Son-in-Law knows I do not like him. He has a hairy face, and he has been the Middle Daughter’s husband for more than three years, and still there is no child. Plus I never did get along with his mother. But who else will offer him a bit of comfort when he wakes from a nightmare, sweating and shaking? Not the Middle Daughter, with her sharp tongue and sour heart. So some nights he and I sit together in the cookshed. I spin, and he tends the tiny fire, so we each have a reason not to look at the other, as he tells me his bad dreams.
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by S. Hutson Blount

We know this much: Death is an evil. We have the Gods’ word on it; they too would die if death were a good thing. – Sappho

Even grayed by the morning haze, Vesuvius still dominated the horizon of Naples’ harbor, dwarfing the merely human activity below. The city still drowsed in the dawn, for the most part, with only the harbor showing signs of industry. A small, mobile forest of masts passed westward as the fishing fleet chased the retreating gloom and schools of anchovy. They’d swarmed around bigger ships riding at anchor, merchantmen of every description awaiting their turn at pierside or on the change of tides to depart. They’d given wide berth to the unfamiliar white-hulled warship that had appeared there.

Corney could appreciate the poetry of the scene even through the billows of coal dust the ship gave off while fueling. Everything would be dirty for a while.

Corney watched a bewildered figure in dress blues searched the dust-blackened deck. The little round officer with the little round face had clambered aboard the wrong ladder, apparently arriving with the morning’s coal. He saluted his way aboard and began asking questions of everyone nearby. Corney eventually took pity on him and spoke up.

“You’re Reed? Welcome aboard Atlanta,” he said. “I’m Horace Corney, Captain Whelan’s second. You’d be our new Olympian Affairs man, then.”
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