they scared me now — three ghoulish grandmothers with bags of knitting needles

and yam.

 

One of them looked at me, and even though she didn't say anything, my life

literally flashed before my eyes. Suddenly I was twenty. Then I was a

middle-aged man. Then I turned old and withered. All the strength left my body,

and I saw my own tombstone and an open grave, a coffin being lowered into the

ground. All this happened in less than a second.

 

It is done, she said.

 

The Fate held up the snippet of blue yarn — and I knew it was the same one I'd

seen four years ago, the lifeline I'd watched them snip. I had thought it was my

life. Now I realized it was Fuke's. They'd been showing me the life that would

have to be sacrificed to set things right.

 

They gathered up Fuke's body, now wrapped in a white-and-green shroud, and began

carrying it out of the throne room.

 

"Wait," Hermes said.

 

The messenger god was dressed in his classic outfit of white Greek robes,

sandals, and helmet. The wings of his helm fluttered as he walked. The snakes

George and Martha curled around his caduceus, murmuring, Luke, poor Luke.