They walked on. The forest thinned. Sunlight opened in wider sheets, and the smell of salt teased the edge of the air. Lili talked about everything: the woman who sold honey cakes near the well and always snuck her an extra broken one; the donkey that hated hats; the time her papa caught a fish so big it needed two men to glare it into submission. Halfdan made shapes out of her stories: a girl too confident to be careful, a man big enough to laugh gently at the world and get away with it.
Some time later, his hunger came back with a vengeance, and Lili, proving far more adept in the wild than he was, managed to find a patch of edible berries for them to share.
"Your papa's name?" he asked at last.
"Alcides," she said, and the name rolled like a stone in a river. "Most people call him Alci. Papa says if you shorten a name it gets faster to say and has more fun."
"Alcides," Halfdan repeated, and some old schoolroom ghost stirred, an echo of a myth from a different Earth, a hero who was loved and hated by the gods. The thought was ridiculous, and he let it go. This world had its own rules, its own names with their backs broken and reset into new shapes.
They crested a low rise. Beyond, the trees fell away entirely. The path curved along a slope of scrub and silver-leaved trees toward roofs whitewashed to a soft glow. The sea lay beyond, bright and endless, stitched with light. From here, the settlement looked like a handful of dice thrown carefully on the edge of a table.
Lili pointed, bouncing on her toes. "There! That's Ganma. The goats are probably devouring someone's laundry."
"An ancient cultural practice," Halfdan said. "Goats' rights."
"Goats have no rights," she said sternly. "They are criminals."
"I'll take it up with the king of goats," he said.
She giggled and broke into a skipping half-run. Halfdan followed at a more reasonable pace, letting the view sort itself in his head: the way the lanes braided; the low wall around a rectangle of trampled grass that was probably for games or markets; the dark green squares of gardens tucked behind houses; a ribbon of river gleaming as it meandered toward the harbor where masts pricked the sky.
He was looking at the harbor when his eyes dragged upward and stuck.
Above the settlement, not on a hill so much as making the hill seem to exist to explain its feet, a statue rose. No, statue was too thin a word for it. It was a mountain that someone had persuaded to remember a man. The figure knelt on one knee, back bowed, arms raised. On his shoulders rested a boulder, but boulder wasn't right either; it was a fragment of the world, rounded and pitted, bigger than any temple he'd ever seen. The stone of the man was weathered into planes and river-soft curves where wind had had its way with it for centuries. Moss colored the edges of a beard; gulls wheeled and mewed against the vast sweep of shoulder as if arguing with a cliff.
Lili's voice went soft at the corners. "Atlas," she said. "The man who holds the world."
Halfdan shaded his eyes. Sun made the stone blaze. For a second the statue seemed to breathe. He knew it didn't; he told himself it didn't.
"People still build gods big," he said lightly.
"Atlas is not a god," she said with first-grade scorn. "He is a Titan. Titans are… before. And also after. Stronger than gods, Papa says, but they pay for it." She bit her lip, thinking, then nodded, satisfied with her own explanation. "Once the mad god thought it would be funny to make the moon crash. Atlas climbed the tallest mountain and caught it with his bare hands."
Halfdan turned to her. "He what?"
"He never let go," she continued, voice low, almost reverent. "But the weight was too great. It crushed the land beneath his feet and pushed it into the sea, breaking a continent into a thousand pieces. That's why we live on the islands now. The Archipelago of Atlas."
Halfdan stared up at the giant again, a chill crawling down his spine.
"He saved the world," Lili said softly, "but the mad god was angry. So he cursed Atlas, made him hold not just the moon, but the whole planet. If he falters, even for a single breath, the moon will fall again, and the world will end."
She gazed at the statue, her strange red eyes clouded with something too old for her age. "They say he's still holding it… even now."
For a moment, Halfdan forgot to breathe. The weight of the legend pressed on him as tangibly as heat, the idea of someone bearing the planet itself for millennia. His mind raced. Was this truth or story? Or both?
Holding up the world for thousands of years… he thought. That's not just strength, that's madness.
He tore his eyes away from the titan's stone form and looked at his gauntlet, sunlight catching on its gold edges.
"Stronger than gods," he murmured. "And the gods punished him for it."
The words hung in the air like an omen.
If such power existed, if a man could hold the heavens themselves, then what might he be meant to hold? What do the gods expect of him? Who is tugging the strings, and to what end? How many deities were knotted into his fate, and which was the greater danger: the one who reincarnated him as Alexander, or the one who hauled him back now, gauntlet and all?
It couldn't be the same deity. The first had given him nothing but suffering; this one had armed him with a divine weapon. Unless… it was all the same plan, unfolding piece by piece.
Halfdan stared up at Atlas once more, the eternal weight on his shoulders, the unending torment.
He didn't know whether to feel awe or pity.
"Still holding the world," he muttered under his breath. "Guess some of us never get to rest."
Lili didn't hear him; she was lost in thought, looking at the titan.
"You are a great storyteller," he said.
Her smile tilted, proud and shy at once. "Papa tells it better. He does voices."
"I'll take your word for it," Halfdan said, though he would have liked to hear the voices.
They stood a moment longer. Somewhere below, someone shouted for someone else to bring a bucket; a bell clinked against a goat's neck; the sea said something in a long, patient sentence.
"Come," Lili said, gathering his sleeve and tugging. "If he is not in town, he will be by the river. He likes to watch the water pretend to go somewhere new."
"Lead the way, captain," he said, and let her pull him toward the life she believed was waiting around the next corner.
They reached the first houses as the path widened and turned to crushed shell and dust.
Halfdan blinked, momentarily speechless. After the suffocating cities of Cadeguardia, this place looked almost dreamlike, sunlit, ancient, alive. The people wore flowing robes and sandals, and everywhere he looked, there were statues: heroes, warriors, gods. Ancient Greece, his mind supplied automatically. Or close enough that he felt like he'd stepped into a myth.
Lili was right about the goats. Two of them were standing on a low roof like small, satisfied tyrants; a third was industriously eating a shirt. A woman stood below with her hands on her hips, calling up in a tone of tired outrage.
"Give that back, you brigands!"
The goat considered her, then chewed faster.
Lili sighed. "Criminals," she muttered, as if personally betrayed.
Halfdan swallowed a laugh. The settlement smelled of olives and sun-warmed stone, the metal tang of the sea, and, unfortunately, he could smell a faint odor of fish. Narrow lanes wove between white houses. Bright threads of bougainvillea hung in lazy arcs. A few people glanced up at Lili as they passed, quick double takes, flashes of recognition, and then at Halfdan and his heavy, gleaming gauntlet. That second look lasted longer. Suspicion lived everywhere like dust; he tried to be smaller than his bones.
"Any friends here?" he asked.
"Mrs. Amara gives me honey cake when I sweep," Lili said, pointing at a stall shaded with reed mats. The woman within had arms like bread loaves and a face that folded into a hundred friendly lines when she smiled. She looked up as they approached, greeted Lili by name, and then her gaze snagged on Halfdan's left arm. The friendliness thinned, not gone, just careful.
"Good day, little lily," she said. "Who's your tall shadow?"
"This is Hal," Lili said, very businesslike. "He is tolerably swift and rescues people from wolves. We are seeking Papa. Have you seen him?"
Mrs. Amara's eyes softened with a look that said "of course you are" without saying it. "Not this morning, little one. Try the river. He watches the water when he thinks too much." She said kindly but not with certainty. Something was odd about her tone, about the pity in her eyes.
Lili nodded gravely. "We shall deploy to the river."
Mrs. Amara slid a small paper packet across the counter. "Deploy these first." Inside were two honey cakes, still slightly warm. "For the rescuer too," she added, with a look that was both appraisal and warning. "Ganma is kind to those who are kind to it."
"Understood," Halfdan said. The cake stuck to his fingers and then dissolved into sugar and spice and something citrus that hurt in a good way. He hadn't realized how hungry he still was until his jaw remembered what chewing was for. He made himself eat slowly, so the wolf in his belly wouldn't show in his eyes.
They moved on. At the well, an old man argued with a boy about buckets; a cat sprawled in a window and pretended not to care about pigeons; a bell rang three times, small and practical. Everyday life had a weight and temperature he could feel against his skin. It made the edges of him stop rattling.
They passed beneath a low arch where grapevines braided a living roof, and the world opened: a slope falling to a broad curve of river, glittering like beaten tin where the sun caught it. The fields lay beyond, long green strips stitched with irrigation channels. Men and women stooped among the plants, backs shining with sweat, clothes patched in neat squares. The river made that endless sound rivers make, constantly leaving and never going anywhere.
Lili tugged his sleeve and pointed. "The stepping stones," she said. "He sits there when he is thinking. He says the rocks remember things."
"The rocks remember things," Halfdan repeated. "Sure. Why not."
They took the footpath down. The fields smelled of water and mud and young plants. A dragonfly stitched the air between reeds, its wings a silver blur. Halfdan's boots sank slightly where the earth went soft and then released with a gentle sound, like a sigh.
A woman straightened as they passed and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. "Lili," she called. "Looking for your father?"
"We are finding him," Lili called back confidently. "He is very lost."
The woman smiled and shook her head, the kind of gentle, indulgent smile adults sometimes give to a child, and for a moment, Halfdan felt as if he'd stepped into someone else's recurring dream, Lili always hunting a father who was just over the next hill, always almost there. The thought made his stomach feel hollow.
He pushed those grim thoughts aside.
They reached the stepping stones: a scatter of flat river rocks arranged in a line across a shallow oxbow, well-loved by feet that had learned them since childhood. Lili hopped onto the first, then the second, arms out like a tightrope walker, sure and delighted. Halfdan followed more carefully. His balance was good, but he kept his movements slow and deliberate. A few weeks ago, no, not weeks; less than a day ago, this would have been exhausting and frankly impossible for his weak and crippled body. Now it was nothing. He could have crossed and crossed again until the sun went out.
"Papa!" Lili called, cupping her hands around her mouth. The word went out over the water and came back empty. She waited, then called again: "Alci! You promised the lilies!"
The wind moved across the grain in the fields in a visible thought. Somewhere, a dog barked twice, annoyed, and was told to hush. Halfdan listened, thinking of a man shaped by the stories of a daughter who adored him, and tried to fit him into the landscape. A big man with gentle hands. A laugh like an oar dipping. The picture was so clear he almost waved to it.
Something answered Lili's call.
It was not a voice.