mythology

These stories are true and they are not true. Is a lie about unicorns a real lie? If it’s possible to be wonky about mythology, these stories are hella wonky about mythology.

Helle

The gods are sometimes merciful, but they are never kind.

I do not begrudge you your cunning, o my mother, nor your bloodlust. Child of another cradle, what was I to you? Lions, they say, will likewise build atop a child’s bones, and rabbits in a fury consume their young; so I have been told, and with my own eyes have I seen. Understanding is not forgiveness, as you know, but what of that? You won your prize, even if the knife slipped sideways at the fatal moment. Child-rearing Hera, protector of women, what whimsy took your heart that day? To save the daughter from the mother, and the mother from the daughter? But alas, my hands grew weak and my eyes grew heavy, and I slipped from Allmother’s ram, down through the sky, past cliffs and clouds, down to the winedark sea.

There I should have died, but a gift given cannot be returned: I was doomed to be saved. The sea gave way before me, bore me away to his drowned kingdom within the unlit depths, to kneel before before his throne, the upstart king, and his court of luminescent slaves and eyeless singers. He took me as his own, child that I was, not as a bride, nor even as a cupbearer, but as a toy, a bauble, bright as that traitor fleece, an idle plaything against an unproductive hour.

Here I shall remain, o my son, breathless in this airless kingdom, but you shall not. I give you to these currents and to fate; may you find a better life than you deserve.

Digory and the Seven Gates of Hell

So near, you could touch it: Hylas leans out over the quiet water and stares down into the depths, to where the light fades to blue, then to black. A rock falls from his hand and disappears into the darkness. He bends his lips to drink, and it recedes from him, daggers his hand toward the depths and touches only soft grass. He has thrown himself into these ponds a dozen times or more, and found nothing there but the muted thump of the soft forest floor.

He does not want for food, nor for drink, not physically, anyway, but his cells remember and he yearns. A second on the lips, the needle’s quicksliver dip into the meat of his shoulder, the flesh between his toes; the world spins around and he is lying in the grass, staring up at the sunlight filtering through the branches. He has been here longer than he can remember, but the light does not change, the shadows do not shift, he is neither hot nor cold. He scrubs his hands against the earth and breathes deep, comforts himself with the continued if invisible life of microorganisms.

He hears birds off among the trees, but cannot see them, cannot find them. He has wandered for hours at times and only ever found more shaggy-barked trees, more shallow pools, the occasional sleeping body. He lies down next to them, so near they could touch, if the distance could be crossed, the boundary passed, the old world made new again.

Wet Season, Dry Season

In the seventh year of the siege and a traveler comes up from the south, a refugee of sorts, fleeing sorrow. “They came out of the desert,” he says, and then has to stop and explain more about what he means. Children of a green land, they have seen the sea, the winedark sea, and they have heard of Egypt, of course, and the spreading sands, but after seven years the geography of everything except the area around Wilusa has gotten fuzzy. But he’s a good speaker, so there’s not a fire that isn’t happy to share a meal with him and listen to his story at the end of another day’s fighting.

“They came out of the desert,” says he, “and crossed the river. The city’s gates were closed against them—” a bitter laugh from the crowd— “but they tramped around the city—” another laugh, this one even more edged— “for seven days and nights. The music they played! A wild thing, all ram’s horns and reed flutes, the pounding of their feet keeping time. Like a voice speaking out of a whirlwind. Time seemed to slow, then stand still, then run backward. The sun blazed motionless in the sky, one day, two, three, and the walls quaked and fell and they came in among the houses with fire and sword. Men they killed, and women, and children; blood for blood, they said. We ran, from the river to the sea, we ran, and along the coast toward stranger lands. What can you do when the gods have shut their eyes to your suffering?”

The bitterest laugh of all.

Stratigraphy

Hylas has been doing the webcam grind for nearly a year now and he’s just barely breaking even. “It hurts… hurts to be… shot. Maybe if I’d known that, I’da shot… shot less people.” The ceiling was off-white. He wasn’t anyone’s prize. “Five hundred days, I said. Do the third row before the second tomorrow, that’s all.” His voice was thick and crumbly, strained.

“Who’s next?” says Karen as the last guy works his way back toward his friends, his lips a little purple with bruising.

“Ah, geez,” he says, and bends over the desk, already hard. Light from the city below travels up his body and over his face as the blinds rotate up leaving a thin oily film that he would feel as he crawled into his cold bed tonight with another half bottle of scotch inside him. First went the tall buildings, the new buildings, then the old, the sturdy buildings, graceless squat buildings, last the shacks and the shantys and the tents and the hoovervilles.

Xiksthan leans forward, kisses him over the many-legged remains of their meal. The kid went to the door with them and he was left alone with the couple. She laughed raggedly. They didn’t know Ed. Lightning flashed and the lights went out and Murphy screamed, high and shrill.

Skylos

I sing the arms and the man—well, no.

Afraid, she sent me, my holy mother, from out of the sea to live among these women. Unbound my hair and loose my loins; it was a quiet time. Spinning, weaving, the quiet of an afternoon with only the sound of the distant sea for company, the muffled sounds of conversation drifting from the men’s quarter. Peaceful, as I had never known peace. Here in this sunless land, the blood winedark and cooling upon my lips, it seems to me an endless summer, the breezes soft upon the down of my face, the nights ripe as an unplucked berry.

Even now, my fingers long for wool and spindle.

You came, canny, wild, and old, while I was hard at work helping weave a peplos for my foster mother. Not trusted yet—and rightly not!—to handle the shuttle myself, I could nevertheless stand and attend against the day when I might turn my own hand to the loom. A not unfamiliar discipline. How strange you seemed in the afternoon, how alien, even as you scattered well-known toys before us. I reached for the sword when the alarm was raised, and thus you knew me—I scorned the pins and daggers closer to hand, more sure and deadly. I have cursed you for your wiles, cursed myself, cursed the gods for their vanity, but long years and silence have worn me smooth as a river stone.

What a weaver I might have been!