The men stood for a moment in surprise, then lifted their spears and cried out their lust.
The doe vanished into the trees and the men took after her. Callisto held the bundle of Artemis’ belongings to her face and inhaled her scent. There came a crashing in the trees and the nymphs called Callisto to them. She hesitated, then ran to them. They gathered her in their arms and crouched down as the white doe came leaping back into the clearing.
The men rushed after her, spears high and wavering. They stabbed the air as the deer pranced from one end of the meadow to the other, so quick she was little more than a blur of white. Once, soft fur caressed Callisto’s face, but then it was gone and the doe was on the opposite side of the clearing.
She ran circles around Ephialtes and Otis, bobbing between them, forcing them to move in awkward loops, their spears swooping. She’d pause, only to rear back at the last moment and run another lap around the clearing. Her nymphs cheered for her, but Callisto was too nervous to partake. She had faith her goddess could defeat any man, but she did not like to see weapons raised at her, and she liked even less the threat of one of them winning. She clutched the clothes to her face and watched between squinting eyes.
She was thankful the chase did not go on longer. It ended, in fact, rather abruptly. And precisely the way Artemis intended.
The doe stopped between the brothers. A breath, two breaths, three. She waited for the brothers to lift their spears, to aim them, to throw them. And then she was gone, leaping out of the way at the very last moment. Ephialtes’ spear went straight through Otis’ head. Otis’ spear went straight through Ephialtes’ chest. The brothers gasped and fell and died. Their blood pooled dark, reflecting Artemis’ image as she stood above them, naked and triumphant.
“Now they must lay with each other,” she announced.
Callisto ran to her, crashing the tunic and boots between them as she wrapped her arms around Artemis’ waist. “What would you have done if they had caught you?” she asked. Her eyes were damp where they pressed against Artemis’ skin.
“I would not have needed to do anything,” Artemis said, smoothing her hand over Callisto’s hair. “You would have protected me, wouldn’t you, little huntress?”
“Yes!” she agreed, finally able to smile when Artemis tipped her head back to look at her. “I would have proven my arrows are quicker than any spear.”
“You would have caught me before they had the chance?” she asked. She bent her head and nuzzled her nose against Callisto’s.
“Yes, yes. I would have stolen their prize from under their clumsy hands.”
Artemis whistled, calling the nymphs from the trees. As they surrounded their goddess, and the two bodies lying bloody at their feet, Artemis placed a quick kiss on Callisto’s cheek. Then a lingering one on her mouth. Callisto sighed. She did not press further into the kiss, just accepted what she was given. Artemis’ lips were sweet and warm and gone too soon. She gazed up at her. The moon was high above her head, competing for beauty and failing.
“I think I love Orion most,” Artemis whispered, “because his death led me to you, Callisto.”
Callisto swooned and Artemis laughed. When she released her and called for wine while they disposed properly of the brother corpses, Callisto had to sit, clinging to the saffron tunic and hunting boots. She watched, mesmerized, as Artemis bloodied her hands lifting Otis beneath the arms, still naked as a cloudless sky.
She kissed the nymphs often, as they were needy and doting, and she had even kissed Callisto before, the night she’d become her companion. But this kiss had felt different. It was blood-stirring and intimate. It was all Callisto could think about. She touched her fingers to her lips and wondered if she’d imagined it. If not for the blood that stained Artemis’ bare body, none of it would have felt real.
A man came for Artemis one night unintentionally. His punishment was as bad as his luck.
Callisto wasn’t supposed to be there, should not have witnessed what happened to Actaeon. Again, the world was moonlit, and Artemis had slipped away from the others to bathe. They often bathed together, the goddess and her companions, frolicking in cool mountain springs, but other times, she preferred to be alone. A look would cross her face that brought concern to Callisto’s heart, and then Artemis would excuse herself, sling her bow across her back, and leave the meadow.
The night she met Actaeon, Callisto had decided to follow her.
She stepped lightly; she had learned much of hunting during their time together and could traverse the forest without disturbing the twigs and rocks. She moved as silently as Artemis, and very far back, only close enough to make out her figure, flashes of night-muted saffron and a long dark braid. She tracked her far from the meadow, past the pool of their usual baths.
Callisto was careful as she approached, not wishing to be found out. By the time she crept to a nearby tree and poked her head around, Artemis was stripped bare and stepping into a sparkling spring. A gentle babbling came from the smallest of waterfalls, pouring fresh water from the mountain, but mostly it was quiet, only the sounds of the night and the flow of water around Artemis’ body as she waded in to her waist.
At first, Callisto turned her head away. If Artemis had wished to be seen, she would not have set out alone. Callisto was intruding. If discovered, she would be in trouble. But she had come all this way to know her lady better, and it was not long before she was watching. She ached to see her as she truly was, with no audience of sixty nymphs and no arrow nocked in a heated chase. She ached to see Artemis, simple and honest, and there she was: washing off the dirt of the day, the tip of her braid flinging water as she flipped it over her shoulder. Her brows were slightly furrowed, as if heavy thoughts weighed them down. Callisto wanted to smooth the worried line between them and help her scrub away the stubborn streak of dirt between her shoulder blades. How she’d obtained it was anyone’s guess. Callisto used to think a goddess could never be anything but immaculately clean, but she had seen Artemis bloody and muddy and covered in grass stains. She loved the dirty Artemis as much as she loved the clean one. But she loved the fierce, ruthless one the best, and that was the Artemis she saw emerge a moment later.
Because Callisto was not the only one watching the goddess bathe.
“Come out from there,” demanded Artemis, covering her breasts with her hands.
It was lucky Callisto was frozen with fright for a moment, or she might have revealed herself too soon. On the other side of the spring, a young man emerged from behind his own tree. He kept his head down, his eyes averted. After the shock of seeing him wore off, Callisto noticed the hunting gear he wore, and heard the nearby baying of hounds. She should have heard them before, but she’d been too distracted watching Artemis. The man was clearly in the midst of a hunt. He had not come solely to watch the goddess, as Callisto had.
“You were hiding there,” Artemis accused. “Did you think it might be enjoyable, to watch me at my bath?”
“No. No, of course not. I was only passing through with my dogs, and I stumbled upon you. I hid because I did not want to embarrass you.” The man’s voice was shaky with fear. Callisto did not blame him. Artemis had risen from the spring to approach him. Her naked body glistened with water. He did his best not to look, but he was still a man, and she was beautiful.
“Did you think you might tell your friends you saw Artemis naked?” she asked. She turned for him slowly. “Is it everything you imagined?”
“Yes. I mean no,” he stammered.
“No?”
“I am sorry.” He backed away only to slam into the tree he’d used to hide behind. “I meant no disrespect.”
“A man watching a woman bathe without her consent is disrespectful,” Artemis rasped. “Because you came by it mistakenly does not mean you came by it honestly.”
“I will not tell a soul what I have seen,” he promised.
“And I should believe you because you are so truthful, lur
king behind trees?”
“I was hunting.”
“And yet your hounds sound half a mile away,” Artemis hissed. “Shall we call them closer?” She whistled and the baying was instantly louder, the dogs running to answer her call. “Callisto, come here,” she said suddenly.
Callisto’s heart may have stopped, but her body never did anything but obey her love. She left the shadow of her tree and walked to Artemis’ side. Actaeon’s eyes watched her in amazement. He’d had no idea she was there.
Artemis held out her hand and Callisto took it. “Callisto,” she said. Unlike Actaeon, she looked unsurprised to see her. She had probably known that she followed since the meadow. “This man has watched me bathe and has seen me naked. But so have you. Tell me, would you go back to your friends and tell them stories about my backside, the size of my breasts, the songs I hum as I scrub?”
“No, Artemis,” Callisto answered. She looked past the goddess to Actaeon. “But I am not a man.”
Artemis smiled, but it was only for Callisto. Actaeon received a pitiless glare. “Just because I spend more time in the forests than I do on Mount Olympus does not mean I am a weak woman to be trifled with and ogled by mortal boys. Let us see if you have better manners as the creature your beasts seek.”
She touched his chest and he changed beneath her hands, from man to stag.
He snorted in outrage and stamped his cloven feet. He reared back, would have hit Callisto if not for Artemis pulling her back in time to shield her.
“How quickly the animal comes out in them, with only the smallest of encouragement.”
Though Callisto would hardly call becoming a stag a small encouragement, she agreed with the sentiment and followed Artemis to the other side of the spring, putting necessary distance between them and the rutting Actaeon.
“What will you do with him now?” she asked as she helped Artemis step back into her tunic. Her knuckles brushed against her bare hip. Her heart stuttered.
“I will do nothing,” Artemis replied coolly. “We will let beasts do as beasts do.”
At that moment, the hounds burst into the clearing. Callisto was not afraid of them. Her father had a pack of hounds for hunting and she’d long ago grown used to the wolves and dogs and other animals that followed Artemis around. But Actaeon the Stag was afraid, and the hounds smelled his fear and not their master.
“Let us not watch,” Artemis said softly. “Unlike Acteon, I do not enjoy spying on another’s intimate moment, and there are few things more intimate than a person’s death.”
Callisto saw only the first of the hounds sink its teeth unknowingly into its master’s flank, and then Artemis was dragging her away. The sound of the mauling could be heard for a mile. Only when it subsided did Artemis stop and turn to her.
“You were watching me,” she said.
Callisto did not do her goddess the disgrace of denying it. She nodded and braced herself for punishment.
“Next time,” Artemis said, “you should join me.” She smiled. “There is a place between my shoulder blades I can never quite reach.” Her braid was still damp, and it made the front of her tunic damp, too. She rubbed at the wet spot absently. Sometimes she seemed so normal, so mortal. She was just a woman, same as Callisto. “You are skilled at finding those parts of me.”
“I see you, Artemis,” Callisto replied, her voice as soft as the murmur of wind through the trees. “It’s why I can’t stop watching.”
“No one told you to stop.” Artemis ran her fingertips up Callisto’s arm until they both shivered from the touch. “My most devoted companion,” she whispered, and then she kissed Callisto’s neck, her collarbone, her shoulder. “I see you, too.”
But the hour was late and a man had just been torn apart by hounds, and so they did not meander any longer in the forest. They went home to the meadow, where Artemis told the tale of Actaeon and passed the wine around. As always, she saved a place for Callisto at her side, and when their hands were not holding wine, they were holding each other.
But life with Artemis was not all about the hunt, nor about being hunted. The incidents including her unfortunate suitors were few and far between. Most days were spent untroubled, lounging with the nymphs in the meadow, or traipsing through the forest to play with the animals. Artemis was not always moved to chase. As protectress, she would sometimes seek out small animals, set her hand upon them, and make them healthy. It seemed every time she left on one of these excursions, she came back with two or three newly devoted creatures. Everyone and everything wanted to be near her, to be in her orbit, and sometimes it made Callisto unfairly jealous. But she needn’t be.
Because she was the only one of Artemis’ companions who was ever brought to Mount Olympus.
Artemis claimed she didn’t like to go, but she had to visit every day, usually in the early evening, as the sun was setting. Her father, Zeus, required all of the Olympians to join him for drinks and discussion. So she went. Always alone and always with a sour expression on her face.
“I won’t be too long,” she’d promise.
But one day, she said, “We won’t be too long,” and grabbed Callisto’s arm, hauling her into her chariot, which was only used for these daily visits to Olympus. The back was stacked with hides, Artemis having saved the nicest ones as gifts for her family.
She made sure Callisto was secure, then whistled at her horses and away they went, lifting straight out of the meadow and into the sky. The nymphs called out goodbyes far below, and off they flew. To be so far from the ground should have been daunting, but Callisto didn’t feel afraid, not with Artemis’ arm wrapped around her waist.
Their journey wasn’t long. The chariot was swift and the horses swifter. They cut up into the clouds. Callisto closed her eyes against the white, her breath catching. When she opened them again, the acropolis of the gods was looming white and sparkling. There were marble columns and golden paths, everything surrounded by lush, vibrant gardens.
Artemis steered the chariot down to a large structure that must have been the Olympian stables, for Callisto glimpsed several marvelous horses sticking their heads curiously out of their stall windows.
A man stood waiting for them, and when they landed, he greeted Artemis with a firm shake of hands and a wide, white-toothed grin.
“Artemis!” he said, not offering to assist the goddess from the chariot. It seemed as if he’d learned that lesson from previous occasions. Instead, he went straight to the back of the chariot and began unpacking the pile of animal hides. Callisto watched as he stacked them on his arm, which was bulging with muscles.
“Heracles, this is Callisto,” Artemis said as she helped Callisto out of the chariot.
Her legs were shaky with adrenaline, not only at their flight, but because of their destination. She tried her best to keep the shakiness from her voice as she greeted the famed hero. “Hello.”
Heracles beamed at her, and the arm that wasn’t holding up the weight of animal skins shot out to take Callisto’s hand in greeting. “Callisto,” he said. “Welcome. The others will be . . . intrigued to meet you, I believe. But first, an important matter.” He arched an eyebrow at Artemis. “You must start hunting more boar, my friend. What are these?” He released Callisto’s hand to run it over the skinned hide of a buck. “More deer skin. It’s the boar you want. And enough rabbits. Rabbits don’t skewer mortals with their soft little rabbit ears.”
Artemis sighed, but she looked more amused than annoyed. “Please,” she said, “tell me more about hunting. Perhaps later you can show me how to hold a bow again? It troubles me so.”
Heracles laughed. “The day you are troubled by a bow is the day Hera is happy to see me.”
Artemis slapped his obscenely immense bicep. “You have only been the porter here a short time,” she said with an unusual serving of sweetness. “She’ll grow used to seeing that face every day yet.”
“Do you think so?”
“Well,
no. But she’ll at least grow tired of scowling at you.”
They laughed together until Heracles remembered he had a task. He repositioned the pile of hides over his shoulder and bid them farewell, then turned and jogged away, to put Artemis’ gifts wherever it was they belonged.
“He seems nice.” Callisto cautioned. Artemis did not speak often of her time spent on Olympus, nor of the other gods.
“He is not unbearable,” Artemis answered. Then, raising her voice, she added, “Unlike some.”
Callisto heard a fluttering behind her and scarcely had time to turn before a set of hands gripped her shoulders. She saw only a slender, golden chest draped in a cloud-white chiton at first. When she remembered how to move her head, she titled it up to see a lovely face framed by honey hair.
“Hermes, unhand her,” Artemis scathed.
Hermes’ fluttering sandals silenced as his feet touched the gold pathway. He grinned roguishly at Callisto, squeezed her shoulders a moment, and then let go to embrace his sister, though she batted him away with irritated huffs.
“What have you brought me?” Hermes asked.
“I’ll bring my foot to your backside if you keep leering at my companion,” countered Artemis. She locked elbows with Callisto. “I’ve only come to say a quick hello and bring the hides. We cannot stay long.”
“So she’s your way of an early escape this evening,” Hermes surmised, sounding as if he approved. “I am sure Zeus will be enchanted to meet her.”
Callisto was beside herself to be on Mount Olympus at all, but the idea of meeting any more gods, especially Zeus, had her palms sweating. She felt faint, and feared she may do just that. She turned to Artemis. The goddess quickly read the panic in her eyes.
“My Callisto,” she soothed, winding one of Callisto’s curls around her finger. “I have overwhelmed you.”
Callisto swallowed hard, shaking her head, but her goddess could not be fooled. Artemis' smile was sympathetic as she grabbed Hermes by the short hem of his chiton and dragged him closer.
Ganymede and Other Romantic Short Stories from Greek Mythology Page 16
