by James Welsh
Like all celebrations, that feast was grand, but it was nothing more than a burst. When all of the food had been eaten, and all of the ambrosia had been drunk, the good feeling soon evaporated. As the palace calmed down, the other gods and goddesses began to absorb the impact of what had occurred. And so they began to ask questions, not so much to Zeus or even Athena, but amongst themselves, because gossip has no time for the truth. They wondered what could have caused Zeus to give birth from his mind – they had never heard of such a thing before. And the whispers began that Athena wasn’t Hera’s but instead Metis’.
The fact that Athena’s mother was Metis – and not the fact that Athena’s mother wasn’t Hera – struck a breathless panic amongst the gods. The Olympians didn’t care about the infidelity. The accusations of adultery were between Zeus and Hera – if the other gods had condemned Zeus, then it would be the guilty punishing the guilty. However, the Olympians had long since banished from Mount Olympus the Titans – their hated foes, the old torchbearers meant to be extinguished. Yet here, one of their children, this Athena, was walking amongst them. Zeus vouched for her, but even that wasn’t enough. While Zeus had dropped his paranoia over Athena, the others gladly picked up that fear. They liked to boast that they were better than the Titans, but they knew that, just as easily as they had overthrown them, the Titans could lead a coup as well. And this Athena, with half of her blood Olympian, the other half Titan, she could possibly ruin them all if she wanted.
It reached the point where, if Athena wasn’t going to overthrow Zeus, the other gods would. Zeus heard the mutiny rising up against him, though, and he quickly reversed his decision. Athena could walk around the palace whenever she wanted, but she was no longer welcomed in the sense that a guest would be. Instead, she was an intruder – the other gods greeted her not with words, but with narrowed eyes, with bared teeth, with alert ears.
And so, just months after Zeus first welcomed Athena into the palace, he had to watch her leave. He stood on the steps of the palace, his hand coupled with a pregnant Hera’s, the other hand waving, grasping out to Athena, begging her not to leave. Athena was from Zeus, so she was Zeus – as the King God watched her leave, he felt as if his own arm was cut off. But Hera gently pushed his arm down, as if to say, “There is nothing that even you can do now.”
Hera did that with a sort of knowing smile – for once, after all of the years that they had been married, she finally had her own power, and she loved it, as much as Zeus hated it. When Athena had been born from Zeus’ ear – yet did not kill him like the prophecy said – Zeus made another mistake, and he told Hera the truth. When Hera found out that Zeus had never slept with her over a prophecy, she was at first angry, but then she realized something. With the prophecy gone, Zeus had no choice but to sleep with her, and so seed the future. And so it did not take long before Hera’s stomach was fertile and swollen, and a perpetual mother’s grin showed in her face. The night before, she had woken up, feeling a kick from inside of her. She suddenly realized that it was the child’s kick that made her a mother – she had not truly been a woman until that moment. And Hera felt brilliant because she had been realized – and Zeus felt terrified because his wife had trapped him in a cage of family.
And so that was the scene – Athena thought it would be the last time she would ever see the palace in all of its glory – as wrong as that was – and so, with a heavy heart, she began the long trip down the side of the mountain, towards humanity. The trip took her three days, and she soon found a village to live in for the time being, until she understood her new world.
The village itself was half-deserted. Years before, the village had the good fortune of being near an important dirt road that impaled Greece. Traders from the ports would take the road to bring goods to the inland, and so the village grew strong, its heartbeat the pattering of the horses’ hooves, its breath the shouts of the traders. Like death is in life, though, the village found its ruin in its success. The traders realized that there was a vast market deep in Greece, far richer than they ever knew. And so more roads were laid, and more routes made a spider’s web through the land. As the traders took to other roads, the vibrant marketplace in the village dwindled. The merchants knew when an opportunity was lost, and so they left the hub that they once called home. Those they left behind were the drunks and the farmers who plowed the rocky fields, people too poor to know anything better. The village was not so much misery as it was decay, like an old man enjoying the sunset in his final days. And so Athena found her godly perfection in the malnourished roads of the town.
Athena discovered an abandoned house on the outskirts of the town. It was not so much a house as it was a hut, dilapidated, its hair gray with cobwebs, its bones creaking in the floorboards. There was a hearth off to the side – what was surely once a soaring fire was now a pile of ash, as sad as a pile of fallen feathers. It took Athena a minute – not even a minute actually – to breathe life back into the house. The warmth of her magic blasted away all of the webs and moss, and her breath was a bellows that brought the hearth back to life. And so the house glowed brighter than it ever had before. Athena did all of this, proud that she could do something on her own like the other mortals had to, not knowing that humans did not have her advantages.
The morning after, she woke up to find a deep pot bubbling atop of the hearth. Curious, Athena took a spoon and ladled out the murmuring liquid. It was ambrosia, warming and stirring. Curious, Athena looked around, wanting to know who it was that brought her the drink. It was a recipe known only to the gods, and for good reason – whoever drank the juices stayed immortal for just a bit longer. Athena herself could go for days without drinking the slightest, but in another week, she could die as easily as any mortal.
Athena felt she knew who the charitable soul was. There was no sign of forced entry in the house, but when she walked outside, she spotted a trail of hoof prints leading to and from the nearby forest. The prints were wide and deep enough alone that Athena knew who it was. She glanced up at the distant summit of Mount Olympus, clouded, and she smiled a little.
“Thank you, father.”
And so this went on for awhile: every other morning, she found a pot full of ambrosia atop the hearth. Some afternoons, she paid a visit to the town, disguised a bit like a general’s beautiful wife she saw once before. And so, while she left her house with her deep brown hair, she showed up at the village with hair that was rusty red – her lips were thinner, yes, but her bosom was much fuller. Of course, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t transform the color of her eyes, which always stayed silver. She changed herself because Zeus had taught her well: the gods simply couldn’t walk amongst the mortals without attracting attention. If the mortals found out the Olympians’ true identities, they would crowd the poor gods with favors or scorn. Still, Athena wanted attention from someone, and who could blame her? And so Athena kept herself cloaked as a beautiful mortal.
One morning, a disguised Athena was walking around the town’s bustling center. The well in the center was what gave the town life, and the women who came to draw water, they gave the center life in return. Athena got an indescribable thrill when she walked through the center – she knew that all of the women had noticed her because they suddenly stopped talking for a few moments. When the hush crackled and the whispers came back, Athena smiled to herself, because she knew they were talking about her – they didn’t know that she was actually a goddess, but they knew that something was different about her.
She was so focused on hearing and understanding what the women were whispering, Athena didn’t hear the voice from her other side. She felt a rude tap on her shoulder and she turned.
“What do we have here? I haven’t seen you around here before.”
It was a student, his voice much deeper than Athena expected. His voice was rich and soothing, but his hands were bony and clutched like death at the front of his robes, right over where his hear
t would beat. He was young, but he was already balding, his forehead crawling further and further up his head.
Amused at the unjustified confidence, Athena said, “What’s your name, student?”
His hands gripping at his robes until his knuckles turned white, the scholar said, “Callimachus, my lady. And yours?”
“Why should I tell you my name?” Athena asked, sincerely.
Callimachus paused, his face blank, unsure what to say. Athena spoke for him: “If you know my name, then you’ll look for me. You’ll ask every person you meet about me, and you’ll find me, eventually. So why should I bother?”
Callimachus blushed. His voice now limp, he said, “It’s just a name.”
Athena smiled in her usual way. “Come now, Callimachus, walk with me.”
And so they walked, Callimachus struggling to keep pace with Athena’s long strides. The disguised goddess said, “You, as a scholar, should know the power of a name.”
“I do?”
Athena nodded. “Don’t you suppose the gods regret giving out their names in the first place? Once mortals found out their names, they peppered the gods and goddesses with questions and prayers. I imagine some nights, those gods wouldn’t even be able to sleep, their heads filled with so many shouts of prayers from here.”
Callimachus scoffed. “The gods don’t sleep.”
Athena knew that Callimachus was wrong, but she didn’t say so.
Callimachus, again: “Why am I even bothering myself with you, then? If you won’t even tell me your name?”
Again, Athena was silent, although she once more had the answer. It was the mystery, the taste of the unfamiliar, which propelled everything. Just like the ocean’s tides broke against the shores of the desert, trying to find a way in, so too did men squirm over the mystery of women. And it was a mystery that Athena wouldn’t let him solve. There was a reason why no mere mortal could walk amongst the gods on Mount Olympus. Familiarity bred.
But Callimachus didn’t share Athena’s thoughts. Instead, he scowled. “You women, you’ll be the death of me just like you were the life of me.”
“I’ll be the death of you?”
“Yes, you with your pale skin and your pale eyes. You look like a spirit that has risen simply to haunt me.”
And with that said, a frustrated Callimachus left, the shadow of his ego trailing behind him. He left behind a dumfounded Athena and a nearby crowd of women, who were already whispering about what looked like a scandal.
A bit embarrassed, and still not sure what had just happened, Athena kept walking, out of the town and towards her home in the countryside. As she kept to the path, lost in her thoughts, she heard a loud hooting above her. She looked up and saw an owl floating high above her. The owl was so perfect it looked almost crafted. With the perfection in its feathers, and the fact that an owl in daylight was a rare sight, the owl gave itself away. Almost immediately, Athena knew who, rather than what, it was.
“I don’t understand my people, and I don’t understand these people, mother,” Athena whispered up to the soaring owl, which caught every soft word with its focused ears. “What can I do?”
Metis the owl could do nothing but hoot in response, cursed never to speak with a human tongue again. Instead, it flapped ahead of Athena and out of sight into the thick soup of clouds. As Athena watched her mother fly away, she caught sight of Mount Olympus, saddled in the distance. She saw how looming it was, both in terms of the mountain itself, as well as the legends that surrounded it. Every mortal that Athena met spoke of the mountain with hushed tones, as if Olympus could crack at a word. But Athena had lived on top of that mountain just long enough to know that even that infinite palace felt ordinary.
But for all that Athena knew about her once-home, there was one thing she never learned. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, perhaps even millions of years before, Mount Olympus wasn’t even a mountain – it was barely even a hill. Everything was equal, a prairie that never rose or fell. In the years upon years since that moment, though, the hills and mountains began to grow, and the valleys and canyons began to cave in. But even with all of those changes, though, Olympus never really shot up into the sky until humans came into the world. Only then was it necessary for the gods to raise up their throne.
Book 4
