Stone Blind(11)

Amphitrite nodded sympathetically and made the soothing sounds that had caught his interest so long ago: the waves of the sea breaking gently on soft sand. Of course he wanted a temple. Of course he must persuade them. Of course, of course, of course.

And as she teased her fingers through his damp, salty hair and agreed with his every wish, she wondered if she should warn the Gorgons of the danger their sister was in.





Athene


‘Use the axe,’ Zeus said again. ‘Do it now.’

Hephaestus stepped to one side, transferred his weight to his back foot, and tested the axe in his hand. Everything was right. He swung the blade and then dropped it as a deafening voice bellowed at him to stop. Suddenly the halls were full of noise: every Olympian god had returned at once. It was the god of war, he thought afterwards, who had shouted. But as he looked around him, he saw a wall of faces judging him.

‘I asked him to do it,’ said Zeus. ‘Don’t interrupt him again.’ He squinted a look of pure loathing at Ares.

‘You asked him?’ Apollo said. ‘Have you lost your mind? Has he lost his mind?’ he asked Hera.

She was standing behind Zeus, and she replied with a shrug.

‘I must have lost it,’ Zeus said. ‘To give any credit at all to your half-horse friends and their half-cooked potions. How many poisonous draughts have you sent me? I have drunk the lot and the agony in my head has not eased at all. Now, here is a god who is actually trying to help me, and you all decide to interfere?’

‘If you had said you wanted someone to split your skull with an axe,’ Ares remarked, ‘I could easily have done that for you months ago.’

‘But you didn’t,’ Zeus said. ‘You disappeared, all of you. Skulking in your temples, avoiding Olympus, avoiding me. You cowards. He,’ he waved at Hephaestus, who was standing awkwardly, his axe limp in his strong hands, ‘he stayed behind and offered to help. Now let him do what I ask.’

‘Very well,’ said Apollo, turning to Hephaestus. ‘As you were.’

Again, Hephaestus raised his axe and shifted his weight back. And this time when he swung it down, no one intervened. There was a blinding flash of light and a crashing sound of metal on metal. Every god closed their eyes and covered their ears. Even Hephaestus was paralysed: bent forward, resting his weight on the handle of his axe, his force spent.

And before them all stood a goddess. Fully formed, fully armed, a bright golden helmet glinting in the mountain sun, a long slender spear in her right hand.

‘Thank you,’ she said, more irritated than grateful. ‘I thought no one was ever coming to let me out.’

There was a pause.

‘I can’t pretend I was expecting that to happen,’ Artemis murmured to Apollo.

‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘And I know centaurs.’

Their eyes – like those of every god around them – were trained on their newest addition, who looked back at them without enthusiasm. Her skin was almost translucently pale, so long had she been in the darkness. She had strong, slender limbs (though she wasn’t tall – the helmet added to her height), and deft hands. Her expression was that of someone lacking patience but trying to hide it. Ares shifted from one foot to the other, uneasy at the sight of this warrior goddess. Artemis wondered if she knew how to use that spear. Hera said nothing, her face a mask.

It was Hephaestus – so accustomed to seeing a dazzling creation before him – who looked behind the new goddess to see what had happened to Zeus. The king of the gods was gazing at his new creation in wonder and rubbing his forehead with relief. There was no trace of a mark to show where Hephaestus had struck.

‘Daughter!’ he said, grandly.

The new goddess turned and looked at him appraisingly. ‘Is that right?’ she said.





Medusa


Euryale liked humans. She knew Sthenno preferred to avoid them, finding their fragility strange and unpleasant. But even before Medusa came to them, Euryale used to fly inland and watch them. She liked the way they were so prone to anxiety and haste. She liked the houses they made for themselves to sleep inside. She liked the huge temples they managed to build. She would return to the coast to tell Sthenno of all she had seen, but she knew her sister was only listening because she was kind.

But Medusa was different. She asked for the stories over and over again, correcting Euryale if she changed any detail. She pestered both sisters to be allowed to see people whenever she could. She loved seeing children, just as she loved it when their horned sheep produced lambs. And as she had grown older, her love for mortals only increased. ‘They don’t even have wings,’ Sthenno said, one morning when Medusa was pleading for the three of them to go and see the new temple, which had been built a little way along the coast. The Gorgons could see it from the top of their own rocky heights, though it was on a loftier promontory. ‘I wonder how they got the columns up so high.’

‘We could ask them if we went to look,’ Medusa said. ‘Please.’

‘Not today,’ Sthenno said. ‘There are things I need to do today.’

‘But—’

‘Another day,’ Euryale said. The sheep needed milking and she had a feeling one of them was sickening with something. She had penned the little creature away from the others, on the far side of the shore.