Possibly something like divine inspiration was required, although where such inspiration might come from was something neither mother nor father knew. One glance out the night-dark window at the shimmering snow, or even just the creaking of the window frame contracting in the cold, a sound made by the cold window at precisely the moment the child fell silent, might have sufficed for inspiration, instead of the same sound occurring just half an hour afterward when it was too late. In secondary school, the child’s mother had learned that the Pythia had answered the question posed by Croesus, king of Lydia, with If you cross the Halys, you will destroy a great empire. But what the Pythia did with all the answers no one requested is something the infant’s mother wouldn’t have been able to say, nor the father either. Probably the eternal oracle sat eternally above the pneuma rising from the earth’s interior and watched as her own silence grew in size, attaining inhuman proportions.
