I wished that they would come. I wanted to see those goggle eyes of theirs as I walked among the dens of wolves, swam in the sea where the sharks fed. I could change a fish to a bird, I could wrestle with my lion, then lie across her belly, my hair loose around me. I wanted to hear them squeal and gasp, breath-struck. Oh, she looked at me! Now I will be a frog!
Had I truly feared such creatures? Had I really spent ten thousand years ducking like a mouse? I understood now Ae?tes’ boldness, how he had stood before our father like a towering peak. When I did my magics, I felt that same span and heft. I tracked my father’s burning chariot across the sky. Well? What do you have to say to me? You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.
No answer came, and none from my aunt Moon either, those cowards. My skin was glowing, my teeth set. My lioness lashed her tail.
Does no one have the courage? Will no one dare to face me?
So you see, in my way, I was eager for what came.
Chapter Eight
IT WAS SUNSET, MY father’s face already dipped beneath the trees. I was working in my garden, staking the leggy vines, planting rosemary and aconite. I was singing too, some aimless air. The lion lay in the grass, her mouth bloodied from the wood-grouse she had flushed.
“I admit,” the voice said, “I am surprised to see you so plain after such boasting. A flower garden and braids. You might be any country girl.”
The young man was leaning against my house, watching me. His hair was loose and tousled, his face bright as a jewel. Though there was no light to catch them, his golden sandals gleamed.
I knew who he was, of course I knew. The power shone from his face, unmistakable, keen as an unsheathed blade. An Olympian, the son of Zeus and his chosen messenger. That laughing gadfly of the gods, Hermes.
I felt myself tremble, but I would not let him see it. Great gods smell fear like sharks smell blood, and they will devour you for it just the same.
I stood. “What did you expect?”
“Oh, you know.” A slim wand twirled idly in his fingers. “Something more lurid. Dragonish. A troupe of dancing sphinxes. Blood dripping from the sky.”
I was used to my thick-shouldered uncles with their white beards, not such perfect, careless beauty. When sculptors shape their stone, they shape it after him.
“Is that what they say of me?”
“Of course. Zeus is sure you’re brewing poisons against us all, you and your brother both. You know how he frets.” He smiled, easy, conspiratorial. As if the anger of Zeus were only a light jest.
“So you come as Zeus’ spy then?”
“I prefer the word envoy. But no, in this matter, my father can do his own work. I’m here because my brother is angry with me.”
“Your brother,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I think you’ve heard of him?”
From his cloak he drew a lyre, inlaid with gold and ivory, glowing like the dawn.
“I’m afraid I’ve stolen this,” he said. “And I need a place to shelter till the storm passes. I was hoping you might take pity upon me? Somehow I don’t think he’ll look here.”
The hairs stood on the back of my neck. All who were wise feared the god Apollo’s wrath, silent as sunlight, deadly as plague. I had the impulse to look over my shoulder, to make sure he was not striding across the sky already, his gilded arrow pointed at my heart. But there was something in me that was sick of fear and awe, of gazing at the heavens and wondering what someone would allow me.
“Come in,” I said, and led him through my door.
I had grown up hearing the stories of Hermes’ daring: how as an infant he had risen from his cradle and made off with Apollo’s cattle, how he had slain the monstrous guardian Argos after coaxing each of his thousand eyes to sleep, how he could pry secrets out of a stone and charm even rival gods to do his will.
It was all of it true. He could draw you in as if he were winding up a thread. He could spin you out upon a conceit until you were choking with laughter. I had scarcely known true intelligence—I had spoken to Prometheus for only a moment, and in all the rest of Oceanos’ halls most of what passed as cleverness was only archness and spite. Hermes’ mind was a thousand times sharper and more swift. It shone like light upon the waves, dazzling to blindness. That night he entertained me with tale after tale of the great gods and their foolishness. Lecherous Zeus turning into a bull to lure a pretty maiden. Ares, god of war, bested by two giants, who kept him crammed in a jar for a year. Hephaestus laying a trap for his wife Aphrodite, hoisting her in a golden net, still naked with her lover Ares, for all the gods to see. On and on he went, through the absurd vices, drunken brawls, and petty slapping squabbles, all told in that same slippery, grinning voice. I felt myself flushed and dizzied, as if I had taken my own draughts.
“Will you not be punished for coming here and breaking my exile?”
He smiled. “Father knows I do what I like. And anyway, I break nothing. It is only you who are confined. The rest of the world may come and go as we please.”
I was surprised. “But I thought—is it not the greater punishment to force me to be alone?”
“That depends on who visits you, doesn’t it? But exile is exile. Zeus wanted you contained, and so you are. They didn’t really think about it further.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I was there. Watching Zeus and Helios negotiate is always good entertainment. Like two volcanoes trying to decide if they should blow.”
He had fought in the great war, I remembered. He had seen the sky burn, and slain a giant whose head brushed the clouds. For all his lightness, I found I could imagine it.
“Tell me,” I said, “can you play that instrument? Or only steal it?”
He touched his fingers to the strings. The notes leapt out into the air, bright and silver-sweet. He gathered them into a melody as effortlessly as if he were a god of music himself, so that the whole room seemed to live inside the sound.
He looked up, the fire caught in his face. “Do you sing?”
That was another thing about him. He made you want to spill your secrets.
“Only for myself,” I said. “My voice is not pleasing to others. I am told it sounds like a gull crying.”
“Is that what they said? You are no gull. You sound like a mortal.”
The confusion must have been plain on my face, for he laughed.
“Most gods have voices of thunder and rocks. We must speak soft to human ears, or they are broken to pieces. To us, mortals sound faint and thin.”
I remembered how gentle Glaucos’ words had sounded when he had first spoken to me. I had taken it for a sign.
“It is not common,” he said, “but sometimes lesser nymphs are born with human voices. Such a one are you.”
“Why did no one tell me? And how could it be? There is no mortal in me, I am Titan only.”
He shrugged. “Who can ever explain how divine bloodlines work? As for why no one said, I suspect they didn’t know. I spend more time with mortals than most gods and have grown accustomed to their sounds. To me it is only another flavor, like season in food. But if you are ever among men, you’ll notice it: they won’t fear you as they fear the rest of us.”
In a minute he had unraveled one of the great mysteries of my life. I raised my fingers to my throat as if I could touch the strangeness that lay there. A god with a mortal’s voice. It was a shock, and yet there was part of me that felt something almost like recognition.
“Play,” I said. I began to sing, and the lyre followed my voice effortlessly, its timbre rising to sweeten my every phrase. When I finished, the flames were down to their coals and the moon veiled. His eyes shone like dark gems held to light. They were black, one of the marks of deep-running power, from the line of the oldest gods. For the first time it struck me how strange it was that we divide Titans from Olympians, when of course Zeus was born from Titan parents, and Hermes’ own grandfather was the Titan Atlas. The same blood runs in all our veins.
“Do you know the name of this island?” I said.
“I would be a poor god of travelers if I did not know all the places in the world.”
“And will you tell me?”
“It is called Aiaia,” he said.
“Aiaia.” I tasted the sounds. They were soft, folding quietly as wings in the darkened air.