“I wish he was here, to advise us or hear our problems. I think I know what he’d say.”
“What?”
“There’s a way out of slavery... I didn’t kill my master.”
Slavery—there are all kinds.
It is a kind of slavery to long for Phaon and another kind to remember Aesop and another to hope. Perhaps Aesop would rebuke such thinking and say: Slavery is not in ourselves but in the misused power of others. Surely that is the commoner kind but I find slavery in myself and my girls and my island and my books.
Well, here is a story Phaon told me:
“Years ago, a slave broke into a temple on a deserted island and found lamps burning. On a rug lay a naked man, asleep. He’d been lying there for centuries, guarded by someone, the lamps filled and the wicks new.
“The King of Freedom, were the words on a shield beside him. His yellow hair streamed across the rug. Above him, a mask, fastened on the wall, spoke:
“ ‘Shut the temple...let the lamps burn...make no noise...take a hair from his head...go.’
“The slave shut the temple, carefully.