I returned to camp with the dripping head of the drakonis, dragging it through the dirt with both hands. By then more people in the camp of hangers-on were awake, drowsily tending cooking fires. A cheer rose from them when I appeared. People I had never met before slapped me on the back and handedme cloths to wipe the blood from my face and arms. Someone pulled out a skin of unwatered wine, heedless of the early hour, and I took a swig so large that I had a headache for the rest of the day. We danced and drank and feasted on the drakonis’s meat, which tasted somewhat like fish.
Atalanta came to me during the celebration. Her face, normally hard and expressionless, had broken into the most radiant expression of joy I had ever seen. She pulled me into a fierce embrace.
‘You were the first student I ever took on, and you will be the last,’ she told me. ‘I will return to my forests, for I have nothing left to teach you. And don’t cry!’
Her image shattered into a thousand fragments as tears filled my eyes.
The people of the camp escorted me in triumph back to the city of Tiryns, bearing the head and hide of the drakonis. Another celebration awaited me there in the gentle glow of my parents’ radiant pride. When I walked through the Lion’s Gate in my armour, a victor at the height of my triumph, I could hear people comparing me to manifold goddesses: Artemis for my skill, Athena for my cunning, Aphrodite for my beauty.
Of all these, it was only Aphrodite who took issue with the comparison. She never could tolerate competition.
6
Eros
One day in an endless string of days, a letter arrived at my seaside house, bearing the stink of hidden places. The cold of a lightless realm crept up my arms as I unfolded it. I knew who had sent it, and I knew at once that I would agree to her terms no matter what they were.
The request came from Persephone, queen of the dead. She wanted me to bring her the love of some mortal, a hapless hunter named Adonis who had recently been a favourite of Aphrodite herself. The two had a long-standing rivalry over some forgotten insult, and Persephone never missed the chance to slight the goddess of love.
I read the terms with interest. Though I rarely granted any favours to the gods, Persephone had the ability to fulfill my fervent wish to taste death.
I knew the rumours about her. The Underworld was barred to all the gods save Hades and his bride – and Hermes when he deigned to do his duty as psychopomp, guiding the souls of the dead – but rumours circulated nonetheless. Persephone had arrived in the Underworld shivering and alone in the back of her uncle Hades’s chariot, kidnapped while picking flowers in a meadow. But even lost and terrified, she was canny.Within a week, Persephone had all the servants of Hades’s palace answering to her; within a month, she had the fealty of its magistrates. In a seamless coup, Persephone took command of the bureaucracy of hell as her ineffectual husband watched. It was said that even the three-headed dog Cerberus, guardian of the Underworld, rolled belly-up at the rustle of her skirts. Hades was relegated to the shadows of his own castle.
When her mother, Demeter, demanded her return, Persephone sat at the table with her downcast husband as the messenger delivered the news. Unruffled, the goddess pulled a pomegranate from the bowl on the table and ripped it open with her bare hands, juice dribbling like blood over her fingers. In defiance of the messenger, she ate six of the jewel-like seeds that had never seen the light of the sun, binding herself to the Underworld forever. Eventually, Persephone went back to her mother, bringing a reluctant springtime in her steps. But every autumn when she returned to the kingdom of the dead, she did so with a smile.
A favour from her would be priceless beyond compare.
And so I found myself in an Anatolian forest suffused with the light of early spring, following a man named Adonis as he stalked through the underbrush. Adonis was good-looking enough for a mortal, and I could see why he had drawn the attention of not one but two goddesses. He did not look like a particularly complex man, but then again, Aphrodite did not seek complexity in her lovers. She’d adored oafish Ares, who didn’t have two thoughts in his head to rub together. I knew less about Persephone’s preferences, but I was sure that she preferred to keep her men securely under her heel. A dimwitted man was easier to rule than an intelligent one.
I unslung my bow and nocked an arrow, aiming carefully at the distant back. Then a sudden gust of wind nearly dislodgedme from my perch, sending my arrow careening off into the treetops.
It was Zephyrus, his sky-blue eyes made luminous by tears. ‘Eros! At last, I’ve found you. He’s dead, my dear sweet Hyacinthos is dead, and I need your help.’
By the time I looked back, Adonis had disappeared in the underbrush. I was forced to hop to another branch to catch sight of him again. Luckily, the mortal man’s attention was entirely focused on something along the forest floor – tracks of some kind, it seemed.
Zephyrus followed me, persistent as a flea. ‘Didn’t you hear me? Hyacinthos is dead!’ he wailed again, raking his nails over the tender skin of his face and neck, leaving long red welts that soon vanished. No god bore wounds of the flesh for very long, but injuries of the heart were another matter.
‘That bastard Apollo killed him,’ Zephyrus continued, tears carving twin tracks down his cheeks. ‘He was obsessed with Hyacinthos, and he couldn’t stand the fact that Hyacinthos chose me. “If I can’t have him, no one can, certainly not Zephyrus.” That’s what Apollo said, one of his own nymphs told me so! He shone the sun in my sweet Hyacinthos’s eyes in the middle of a game, and the lad missed a throw. The discus cracked his skull like an egg.’ This was followed by a fresh gale of weeping.
I recognized Hyacinthos as the name of Zephyrus’s most recent lover, a handsome mortal youth. Zephyrus never stopped chattering about him during visits to my seaside house. ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ I told my friend. ‘But you must have known what you were getting yourself into when you fell in love with a mortal. I don’t know what you expect me to do about your situation.’
‘You’re the only one who can fix it!’ he cried. ‘Now that my beautiful boy is dead, all the love I had for him is nothing buta burden. I beg you to undo your work. Pull your arrow from my heart,’ Zephyrus finished, pulling aside his tunic to bare his hairless chest.
‘I never shot you,’ I said flatly. ‘You know that.’
Zephyrus’s love was one of those that had occurred without my active intervention. There had been more and more such cases: love springing up where I had planted no seeds, aimed no arrows. There were now so many mortals and gods in the world that I could not possibly strike them all myself, and yet they continued to fall headfirst into desire. It unnerved me, that even as I retreated from the world, my curse had taken root and continued to flourish. Despite this, of course, mortals and gods alike continued to blame me for their ill-favoured love affairs.
Zephyrus gazed at me helplessly, his lower lip trembling.
‘There’s nothing I can do to help you,’ I said. ‘What gave you the impression, over our many years of friendship, that I have the ability to heal hearts?’
‘Youmustbe able to do something. You’re the god of desire.’
‘And what I desire right now is for youto be quiet.’ I turned back to follow Adonis’s progress through the undergrowth. Fortunately, something else continued to draw his attention away from the caterwauling in the treetops.
I fitted another arrow into my bow and took aim. At least I could still concentrate my will when it suited me, aiming arrows that would have a sure result. I saw that the mortal hunter had taken his own weapon in hand – a stout spear with a long cross-guard – and his attention was focused on something in the brush. A boar! I could see its beady black eyes through the leaves. It let out a squeal of alarm when it noticed its pursuer and shifted its bulk, pawing the ground.
Now was my chance. I let fly, my arrow piercing Adonis’s back and dissolving at once into the ether. A strange, wistfulexpression crossed his face, as though he had drunk too much wine. He must be thinking of Persephone – how beautiful she was, how much he longed for her, although he had never seen her face.
