Olympus Bound

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  “Why are you selling Mary’s statue here?” she asked.

  “Because this is her home.”

  Selene rested her hands on the table and leaned toward the man threateningly. “Is the word Artemision so hard for you to translate?”

  The man reached hurriedly for a pamphlet on his table. “Here, see? The House of the Virgin Mary. It’s only twenty minutes away.”

  Selene snatched the pamphlet before Theo could. The cover photo showed a small brick chapel surrounded by olive trees. Walking quickly toward the road with Theo beside her, she read aloud: “Ephesus is considered to be the last home of the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of Jesus Christ.”

  Theo leaned closer, reading over her shoulder. The pamphlet explained how Mary had supposedly left Jerusalem after Christ’s crucifixion and lived out her days in Asia Minor even before Saint Paul made the journey.

  Theo, annoyingly reading faster than she did, pointed to the end of the first page. “The Council of Ephesus, in 431 AD.” He sounded awestruck. “It took place right inside your city.”

  “So?”

  “That’s when the leaders of the Church officially declared that Mary was the Mother of God, and therefore not just a woman or even a saint—but actually divine herself.” He laughed shortly. “Catholicism has been bending the knee to the Holy Virgin ever since, all because the people of Ephesus so loved their goddess that they decided Christianity wasn’t complete without her.”

  “I see,” sneered Selene. “They’re monotheists, but god is three in one and one in three and has a mother who’s basically a goddess. Sounds like a whole damn pantheon to me. They even made their statue of Mary look like their statue of Artemis.”

  “You know, if you’d stuck around Turkey after the Diaspora, you might have retained some power.”

  Selene rolled her eyes.

  “Listen to this part,” Theo went on. “‘The Orthodox villagers, the descendants of the ancient Christians of Ephesus, passed from generation to generation the belief that the Assumption of Mary occurred in this place.’”

  “What’s the Assumption?”

  “It’s when Mary dies and gets sucked up into heaven in a beam of light to take her place next to God and Jesus.”

  The rest of the pamphlet included a long list of scriptural and historical justifications for why the little brick house in the middle of nowhere might actually be the final home of Mary. Selene snorted. “Their obsession with presenting the evidence only proves the Christians know it sounds far-fetched.”

  The last paragraph seemed the most absurd of all, describing how a nineteenth-century nun who’d never left Germany received detailed visions of the hills of Ephesus and the house of the Blessed Virgin. When a scientific expedition journeyed to Turkey, they found the brick house, miraculously identical to the one in the German nun’s visions.

  “I’d bet my whole damn quiver that this is why Athena’s here in the first place,” Selene grumbled. “She couldn’t stay in her own city of Athens—our father specifically prohibited it when he sent us out of Olympus. So she stole my city instead. She could never be a Mistress of Beasts, so she took Ephesus by setting herself up as the Virgin Mary: a protector of mortals, a holy virgin, an intercessor on behalf of the cities of men—all the things the Gray-Eyed Goddess embodied in the old days.”

  “That’s awfully conniving.” Theo looked more impressed than dismayed.

  “Styx. She might even have been Mary in the first place. Maybe not the one in Jerusalem who gave birth to Jesus, but the one who showed up on this mountainside in Asia Minor claiming to be Jesus’s mom.”

  “You think she’s been here that long?”

  “Why not? For all I know, even before the Diaspora, she was sneaking off to set up a nice little retirement plan, just like Saturn. She convinces the local Christians of her ‘assumption’ and enjoys their reverence for a while. Holy Roman Emperor Theodosius prohibits worship of the Olympians in the 390s—that’s when we all left Greece and Rome to wander the world as mortals.

  “But it only takes my sister another forty years to get herself deified—again—at this Council of Ephesus. She’s sitting pretty for another thousand years, at least, hanging out as the local saint. Then finally, when the rest of us are really starting to lose our powers, she sends a vision to that nun in Germany, or poses as the nun herself, or maybe just shows up in a bedsheet in the middle of the night at the foot of her cot and pretends to be an angel. Then wham, just like that, her little house in Turkey becomes a site of international pilgrimage.”

  She stepped into the road and hailed a passing taxi. When the driver pulled over, she slapped the pamphlet against his window.

  “Take us here. Now.”

  Chapter 36

  GRAY-EYED

  Let’s just hope Selene doesn’t burn the whole place down before we find Athena, Theo prayed as they followed the shuffling crowd toward the House of the Virgin Mary, waiting their turn to enter. Selene’s face bore one of those sneers that could morph from implicit disdain to explicit violence with startling alacrity.

  He rested a hand on her elbow, just for an instant, resenting the little jolt of electricity he felt every time he touched her skin. “Hey, try to stay cool, okay?” he muttered as they entered the chapel. “We don’t want to get dragged out by security guards.”

  “Don’t worry,” she hissed back. “The only way I’m leaving is with Athena over my shoulder.”

  That is not comforting, Theo thought with a sigh. Still, he’d known what he signed up for when he agreed to come to Turkey: stubbornness, fury, and an uncanny ability to piss off everyone around her. But he had to admit that he’d also gotten a good dose of mystery solving, adventure, and first-person accounts of ancient history. He’d even managed to shunt aside the worst of his bitterness, ignore the continuous throbbing of the arrow wound in his arm, and focus on the task at hand. So far, at least.

  The tiny sanctuary had room for only a few wooden stools and a small altar table. In a niche at the front of the chapel stood a small bronze statue of Mary facing forward with her feet together. While it was clear she’d once held her palms outward in a gesture of peace and welcome, now they ended in hollow stumps just below the elbow, just like the little statue of Ephesian Artemis he’d bought from the souvenir vendor.

  The pilgrims stood in reverent silence before the shrine, some crossing themselves, others moving their lips in prayer. Theo scanned the room for signs of Athena, but saw only Greek Orthodox icons and photos of visiting Catholic popes.

  After a few moments, they filed out again to stand on the terrace, grateful for the shade beneath a row of trees. Olive trees, he noted, looking at them more closely. Might be a sign that Athena is here somewhere—or just that Turks like olives as much as Greeks do.

  They walked farther down the terrace, past trays of flickering votive candles and a prayer wall thickly carpeted with fluttering paper petitions. He sat heavily on a stone railing. The prophecy pointed to this as the right place, and yet they’d found no evidence that Athena actually lived here.

  Two sunburnt women with bright-pink lips to match stood before the prayer wall. One scribbled something on a scrap of toilet paper.

  “You really think Mary’s going to answer your prayer if you write it on TP?” asked her friend in a broad Cockney accent.

  “Shut up, Dottie. I’m not writing it for Mary, I’m writing it for the woman on the hill. They say she cures people just by touching them.”

  “Oh come on. You believe that rubbish? There’s really a woman up here who’s some sort of miracle worker? You’re not even Catholic!”

  “Never hurts to cover your bases.” The two women continued bickering, but Theo had stopped listening. Selene met his eyes, clearly thinking the same thing.

  Silently, she pointed to a small gate marked NO ENTRY. Beyond it, a narrow path continued into the woods. She raised her eyebrows at him meaningfully, and he nodded in agreement. While none of the security guards were look
ing, Selene hopped the three-foot-tall fence in one quick jump then helped Theo clamber more awkwardly over it.

  They avoided the path and pushed up through the undergrowth toward a small complex of buildings. Houses for the priests and caretakers, he decided. And—let’s hope—one former Greek goddess.

  Selene leaned close to whisper in his ear. “When we find this miracle worker, you need to talk to her.”

  “Me?”

  “She’s the Protectress of Cities, remember? Friend to Makaritai. She’ll listen to you more than she would to me. And I trust that you can talk your way in to see her.”

  Theo nodded, feigning confidence. In truth, his heart was racing. Not with fear—Athena wasn’t known for irrational anger, unlike Artemis—but with anticipation.

  Selene dropped to a crouch and scuttled silently around the side of a building, peering in each window. Theo followed, keenly aware of the loud crunch of dried pine needles beneath his sneakers.

  He tried to imagine what Athena would look like when they found her. After so many centuries—millennia even—of stealing worship meant for the Virgin Mary, she must have remained impossibly strong. Would she still be able to speak to the owls? To wield her spear as deftly as any warrior? He knew by now that the gods were never what one expected, but he’d dreamed of this moment since he was a little kid hiding under his blanket with a flashlight, rereading myths about his favorite goddess’s legendary wisdom and bravery. Athena was, in many ways, his first love.

  His most recent—and possibly current—love stood on her tiptoes to peer into a small window set high in a wall. She dropped back down, eyes wide, mouthing, I found her.

  He put his hands on the sill and leaned over to look, knowing it was crazy and yet still expecting Athena to be standing inside with a golden helm and bronze shield.

  He hadn’t expected her to be a nun.

  Theo spent the next twelve hours at the feet of a saint. Or at least that’s what the priests would’ve said. He felt like he’d spent twelve hours sitting with a madwoman. Sister Maryam, they called her, and so far, that was the only name she’d answer to.

  “Your father needs you on Mount Olympus,” he’d said to her when the priests ushered him into the small, cell-like workroom. It had taken all his powers of persuasion—not to mention his credentials as a Columbia professor—to convince the Church officials to let him see Sister Maryam in the first place. He’d made up a very impressive-sounding treatise on the correlation between modern miracles and biblical references to the Virgin Mary written in the original Greek.

  “The university dean thinks I’m a gullible fool,” he’d claimed. “You know these bastions of liberalism—no respect for the sacred. But I heard about the Sister’s miracles, and I want to prove they’re authentic.” He knew Catholics could never resist a scholarly exegesis that just happened to “scientifically” validate their dogma. They’d granted him a single day’s audience.

  Sitting in a thin sunbeam streaming through the window, Sister Maryam had smiled faintly, barely glancing up from her worktable when Theo entered. Piles of ruddy clay and wooden sculpting tools covered the surface before her.

  Over the black arms of her nun’s habit, she wore white sleeve garters streaked with dried smears of red clay like bloodstains on a priestess’s robes. She plucked a fistful of clay and began to mold it between hands stained equally crimson. “The Lord sends many to me in their time of need.” Her voice was low and warm, but so soft he had to lean forward to hear. She spoke in unaccented American English, and he suspected it was only one of a dozen languages she’d mastered.

  “Yes, the Lord …” Theo looked out the open door, making sure no priests were standing outside in the hallway. “The Lord of the Sky.”

  The nun nodded, her eyes flicking to the small painting sitting in a frame on her windowsill: a pastel-hued Mary with baby Jesus on her lap. “He is the Lord of all.”

  She began to shape the clay with a thin wooden tool. She flipped it in her fingers, using first the spatula end and then the point, smoothing then sculpting, trimming then incising, back and forth, back and forth, nearly too fast for his eyes to follow. It reminded him of how Selene wielded a javelin.

  “I’m not sure we’re talking about the same Lord,” Theo pressed.

  “There is only one Lord.” She sliced the bottom of the figure flat and placed it on a tray, barely looking at it before grabbing another ball of clay and beginning the process over again.

  “Right,” Theo said slowly, looking at the tiny sculpture. The Virgin Mary. Her bent arms broken just after the elbow, her feet together. A modest veil covered her hair rather than an ornate crown. A simple face, merely the suggestion of a mouth and eyes, a slash of nose, but carved with such skill that it expressed both tranquility and mercy. He sat in silence, watching her make another identical figurine. He’d seen a whole row of them in the gift shop down by the brick chapel. For only sixty lira you, too, could own a sacred relic handmade by the former Goddess of Crafts.

  Sister Maryam didn’t ask him why he’d come. The priests had made it clear that supplicants often came to receive a blessing from the holy sister and to ask for her prayers on their behalf. Many miracles had occurred, they said in hushed tones. When the sister passed on, she would no doubt become a saint.

  But from what Theo could tell, Sister Maryam wouldn’t pass on anytime soon. Her face was that of a young woman. Her bold jaw resembled Selene’s, but her blade of a nose was larger, her brow firmer, giving her a slightly masculine appearance. Yet her lips were full and soft, the ends curving into a maddening Mona Lisa smile that Selene would’ve found unbearably simpering. Whatever hair she had was tucked tight beneath a black wimple. Her hands alone looked old, but only because of the clay that stained every crease. She wore a simple gold band on her left ring finger, a symbol of her marriage to Christ.

  Yet Theo never doubted for a second that this was Athena before him, even if she wouldn’t admit it. “Gray-eyed” didn’t do her justice: She looked at the world through lightning-lit thunderclouds, brilliant silver and dark iron, more like layered agate than simple granite.

  He tried one more time. “Zeus needs you,” he said. “Your father’s dying, and you may be the only one who can save him.”

  Any other nun would surely have reacted with shock—or at least confusion—at the mention of the god’s name. Sister Maryam didn’t even look up. That’s how Theo knew she understood.

  He tried a different tack. “How about a blessing? Maybe a little laying on of hands?” He didn’t mean to sound sarcastic, but his patience for her false piety was running thin.

  “Do you mean to heal your arm?” she asked calmly.

  “How did you …” The sleeve of his shirt hid the wound from Selene’s black-fletched arrow completely.

  “Come, my child.” She put aside her clay.

  Awkwardly, Theo knelt at her feet, unsure if he should pray or chant or just look penitent. Maryam laid a hand on his arm. He felt a tingle of warmth—or perhaps he just imagined it. When she moved away, he noticed the wound had stopped throbbing. Amazed, he pulled up his sleeve. The gash was still there beneath its bandage—it just didn’t hurt. “So you can do miracles. Sort of.”

  The words of the oracle came back to him: To akos to akontion. The cure is the spear. Maybe he and Selene were both right: Athena’s healing powers could cure Zeus while her spear could defend them from the giants when they opened Tartarus to imprison Saturn. The message was metaphorical and literal at the same time, just like any good prophecy.

  Maryam went right back to her sculpting. “God works through me. I do nothing.”

  “Oh, come on. Stop pretending! If you can help me, you can save your father!”

  She didn’t take the bait. She just bent closer to her little Mary and added a tiny beatific smile to its clay face.

  By the early evening, he resorted to playing the Makarites card. “If I’m a Blessed One, aren’t you duty-bound to help me on my quest?”r />
  Sister Maryam merely fingered her crucifix and said, “Only God can help you.” He was ready to rip the clay from her hands and throw it out the window. Selene, he knew, still crouched beneath the sill, no doubt listening to every word. She’d probably catch the clay and throw it right back at him, furious at his failure.

  He glanced over at the row of Mary statues. Time for a miracle, he thought, and I don’t care what faith it comes from. What do you say, Mother Mary? Want to help a guy out?

  Whether through divine inspiration or not, an idea blossomed. He reached for the pile of clay. Sister Maryam’s eyes followed the gesture. As she sculpted the arms on yet another statue, Theo rolled his clay into a flat pancake, then added a nose, eyes, and mouth. It looks like a third-grader sculpted this, he thought ruefully, nudging the nose into something slightly less Wicked Witch of the West. But he’d seen clay votive offerings the ancients had left at their gods’ shrines; they’d been crude, too, and the gods never seemed to mind.

  He plucked off some more clay and rolled out seven long snakes, poking holes for the eyes. He attached the snakes to his clay face, coiling them like hair. Then he sat back and admired his handiwork. A Medusa.

  He moved his sculpture into Maryam’s line of sight.

  “Ovid tells us that Medusa was a priestess of Athena,” he began, as if speaking more to himself than to the woman across the table. “A beautiful maiden serving at a temple on a cliff above the wine-dark sea. A sacred virgin with beautiful black hair that fell past her waist in oiled curls. Beauty wasted on a maiden pledged to chastity—or so blue-haired Poseidon thought as he gazed up through the watery depths. The one they call Earth Shaker, Horse Breaker, Lord of the Sea, burst inside Athena’s temple on a wave of foam and took Medusa there beneath the Virgin’s statue of gold and ivory.”

  From the corner of his eye, Theo noticed Sister Maryam had finally stopped sculpting. A statue lay half finished in her hands, the clay on her fingers drying to a burnt orange crust. He kept talking quietly.