She gasped and fell forward onto the sand. It was as though someone had leached all the colour from the world, along with every drop of warmth and hope. Like her insides had been scraped out and all that remained was an empty hollow.
Her hands flew to her throat, and her fingers met a collar of metal. She tugged at the ring, but it would not give.
The sodden hem of a dark cloak swayed into her line of sight. She looked up to see the ferryman standing over her.
Stretching an arm towards him, she reached for the power of her life-threads.
It did not come.
Panic exploded through her. She tried again and again but each time she searched for her threads, she felt nothing.
‘What have you done to me?’ she rasped.
The shade tilted his head.
‘Help me,’ she begged the voice.
It did not answer. Her mind echoed with silence.
Then the ferryman struck her, and darkness fell.
7. A Burning Promise
Hermes, Messenger of the Gods, stood before the moving mosaic sprawled across the wall in the megaron corridor. The precious stones scattered into a flowing rainbow, swirling into the same scene that was triggered each time he passed.
An infant Hermes sat upon a grassy knoll, surrounded by a peach sky sliced through with golden rays. In his tiny hands he held a lyre, fashioned from a hollow tortoise shell. Amongst mortals it was believed that he had created the first version of the instrument on the day of his birth, a lie fed through his priestesses for generations until the myth became truth. The other Olympians all had scenes celebrating real achievements, but Hermes had no cities named after him, no wars had been fought in his honour, and, unlike his father and uncles, he had battled no Titans. When constructing the mosaic, his half-brother, Hephaestus, had said he wanted to commemorate the one thing that gave Hermes joy: his music. It was a gesture born of kindness, something he would never see from his other siblings, but to Hermes it only highlighted his lacking.
He turned away and paced towards the megaron. Better not keep his father waiting.
As he paused before the great doors, inlaid with mother-of-pearl clouds, his thoughts returned to the harpy. The unnatural angles of its bleeding, shattered body as it lay twitching on the stadium arena only hours earlier. He shuddered at the thought of what kind of creature could have wrought such destruction on one of his father’s pets.
The groan of the megaron doors opening wrenched him from the memory, and he hurried into the throne room.
The sightless marble eyes of his family stared down at him from the empty thrones encircling the curving wall. Zeus alone sat at the feet of his statue, so still he too might have been cast from stone. Hermes flinched as the doors closed behind him, the guards leaving him to a private audience with his father.
He swallowed, then walked forward to stand on the yellow mosaic of the sun in the centre of the floor. Dropping to his knees, he bowed his head, the clatter of his armour echoing around the vast room.
‘Come here.’
Hermes rose, willing himself not to tremble as he approached the steps that led up to the thrones. Once level with his father, he prostrated himself and stared at Zeus’ feet. He racked his brain, trying to recall what he might have done to incur individual attention from the King of the Gods. The last time he had been summoned alone to the megaron was because he’d stolen his brother Apollo’s prize cattle and hidden them in a cave in the Peloponnese. He could still remember the agony of his lip splitting under his father’s gauntlet. But surely Zeus did not blame him for the death of the harpy?
‘Look at me.’
Hermes sat up. Meeting Zeus’ gaze was like staring into the sun: his father’s eyes were so swollen with life-threads his cerulean irises burned gold.
‘Do you remember the day I made you a god?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Hermes would never forget it. He had just seen fourteen summers, living with his mortal mother, Maia, in a village on the slope of Mount Cyllene. When the shades came for him,she told him he must be brave, although her own cheeks shone with tears. That was two hundred years ago. He never saw her again.
Hermes had never truly believed he was the son of the King of Heaven until the moment he was brought to this very room. The divine family had been seated on their statue thrones, and there, at the end of the semi-circle, waited a giant likeness of Hermes carved in marble. It had felt like a dream, walking amongst the living, breathing gods of Olympus. They all seemed so much larger than him. So much older. There must be a mistake, he had thought, but then Zeus himself descended from his throne and bade Hermes kneel in the centre of the sun mosaic, as he had done with all Hermes’ siblings before him, and produced a wrinkled, golden apple.
He had never seen a fruit like it, shining with a strange glow and soft with decay as though it had been left on its branch far too long. Zeus had bade Hermes take a bite. Reluctant as he’d been, as soon as he sank his teeth into the puckered golden flesh it was as though he had spent his whole existence in a dark cave and was only now emerging into the light. He’d felt the power of his life force pulsating through him and suddenly seen the glowing strands of energy rushing around the bodies of the gods. His new family. His father had placed a hand on his head and said, ‘By my power, Hermes, blood of Zeus, you are now divine.’ And he had wept without shame, for surely this state was what mortals called paradise.
Hermes flinched at the sound of his father’s voice, his focus returning to the present.
‘Do you know why I chose to make you divine?’
