Five days later I am at the market. I am stronger than I was. My legs walk further, my back can bear a greater weight. My pack is full of breakfast cereal and rye bread and cottage cheese, the only things which we can eat. My phallus is misbehaving. Every time a pretty girl walks past, it stirs and presses almost painfully against its constraints. If I even think of sex it rises and nods at me. But I do not desire women, he desires them. When a beautiful young man smiles at me, the thud of lust which used to ground at the base of my spine diverts, and then is blocked; he does not desire men. I cannot sleep for thinking of him as he was, so male and beautiful. In my sleep I remember the delight I felt as I accepted him into my body; but I cannot reach my own climax, only the male one, which leaves me unsatisfied in a mess of semen. He is nocturnal, I like to get up early; we have only had four hours sleep a night since the curse of Salmancis fell upon us.

In that sleep, I feel him weeping for his lost autonomy, and I join my tears to his as they course down our face.

I carry the cage home and stand in my own garden. I have constructed the altar as the classics textbook instructs. It is an enagismos, a hearth for the dead, and to the dead gods I must sacrifice. His hand holds a knife. I transfer it to my own. The funneled bricks will bear the blood down into the realms of the dead.

They coo as I draw them forth; two white pigeons. I cut my wrist and his, and drops of blood gleam darkly on the bricks. Then I pray as the book says, to the dead gods who stirred in their sleep to grant my prayer with such careless cruelty.

'To all the gods, to Hera and Artemis and Zeus all-father, to Heracles the hero and Hermes the messenger, this is the offering of Dion, and Danae, who regrets her prayer. Return us, Lords of Power, to what we were.'