Thrice Born

by Jon Jacks

  ‘…I plunged in darkness, I whirl the wheel for you… You I implore, Maid, by your stranger beams…

  ‘Try another charm,’ Phoebe nonchalantly suggested, ‘I am here already for you, after all,’

  ‘I invoke thee, Great Mistress of the Heaven, Earth and Sea, by your mysteries of Night and Day–’

  ‘That’s the one! That should work!’

  ‘By the Light of the Moon, and the Shadow of the Sun…’

  Cybela hesitated, almost drawing her spell completely to an end.

  There was no sun here, of course.

  And yet, of course, there was; Phoebe possessed no light of her own. It was the reflected glow of her brother, Helios.

  Despite her glorious brightness when she graced the night sky, Phoebe was in truth entirely dark. There is no ‘dark side’ of the moon; the true Moon is darkness itself.

  Only briefly faltering, Cybela continued the charm.

  ‘I invoke thee, Mistress of Life, Death and Rebirth, emerge now from the shadow realm to feed my soul and enlighten my mind…’

  ‘In your fury, had you forgotten your search for your sister?’

  ‘My sister? Why, well…yes, yes – I suppose I had,’ Cybela admitted remorsefully, blushing saffron at the shame of it all.

  ‘She’s here; she’s been here all along, hiding away in the darkness.’

  Cybela peered curiously into the dimmer edges of the glow arising from Phoebe’s illumination of the waters.

  ‘I can’t see her…’ she admitted edgily.

  ‘Naturally!’ Phoebe admonished her. ‘Even if you’re nor prepared to pay close attention to my words, I would expect you to listen carefully to your very own!’

  Cybela’s eyes narrowed as she considered the truth of this.

  ‘Hiding away in the darkness,’ you said.

  She looked now beyond the light, peering instead into the surrounding darkness itself.

  ‘And me? What did I say? Ah, yes; of course!’

  She turned around, away from the light. She stared intently into the darkness that had lain unseen behind her, but now was in full view to her.

  ‘Emerge now from the shadow.’

  The only light now was that passing dimly around her, throwing a shadowed likeness of her upon the ground.

  The shadow shivered.

  It moved.

  It spouted up from the ground, as if it were some dark, exotic bloom. At first, it was pure head and torso, with no limbs to speak off.

  But then it began to burgeon, an upward growth of pure darkness that could have been the complete reversal of the writhing, the withering, of the pitiful Zemele as she had succumbed to the blinding heavenly fire.

  She rose up to warmly embrace her sister Cybela; and Cybela returned the gesture, fully embracing this resurrected Zemele, and taking her wholly in.

  *

  ‘Sister!’ they both cried out happily together, as one.

  ‘Then you’re trapped here too?’ Cybela asked her sister fearfully.

  Persephone shook her head, even laughed lightly at such a strange suggestion.

  ‘No, of course not!’ she replied. ‘I rule here now; this is my realm!’

  ‘Then why have I never seen you?’ Cybela protested. ‘Surely any ruler is allowed to leave her own realm? Did you…did you sit within the Chairs of Forgetfulness?’

  Persephone shook her head once more.

  ‘I have seen for myself how the stone of the chairs envelope and intertwine with the naked flesh of any one foolish enough to sit upon them.’

  ‘Then…have you eaten here?’

  Anyone who ate the food of the underworld was fated to remain there.

  Persephone blushed as red as the pomegranate.

  ‘When my husband saw you were here to rescue me, he secretly put the sweet seed of Rhoa in my mouth and forced me to eat!’

  ‘A pomegranate seed?’ Cybela excitedly took her distraught sister’s hands in hers. ‘But the Egyptians buried their dead with pomegranates in the hope of rebirth: surely that’s a sign that you won’t have to stay here for ever!’

  Her rush of bubbling enthusiasm came to an abrupt halt.

  ‘What am I saying?” she mumbled bitterly. ‘We’re both trapped here!’

  Now it was Persephone who took on the role of reassuring sister.

  ‘No, no; not you! You haven’t eaten anything here. And I hold the Key to The Darkness of Lower Earth! I can give it to you; it will lead you to safety!’

  ‘I can’t leave you here!’ Cybela insisted.

  ‘Yes you can!’ Persephone insisted even more forcefully. ‘You must! Only then can you plead with the gods to grant me some respite, so that I can once again see the upper world!’

  Cybela realised that there was something important she needed to tell her sister before they parted once more.

  ‘Your child Dionysus–’

  ‘Yes yes: I saw!’ She elatedly took Cybela’s hand in hers once more. ‘He’s reborn again, through you!’

  ‘Through me?’ Cybela asked, mystified.

  ‘The twins: the Child of All That Flows Beneath The Moon,’ Persephone replied, surprised that her sister didn’t realise what had happened to her. ‘It was Lyaeus’ gift of wine that made you…’

  The rest of the words were either left unsaid, or unheard.

  Cybela no longer recognised her darker sister. Persephone was rapidly vanishing once more back into the shadows; for she was, of course, of the shadows.

  ‘The Key!’ Cybela cried out anxiously. ‘You didn’t leave me the–’

  But now there were no shadows, only darkness.

  Phoebe had left too.

  ‘The bond of all necessity will be sundered,’ Cybela nervously whispered, fearfully recounting yet more of the incantation, ‘and Helios will hide your light…’

  *

  Chapter 17

  The darkness enveloping her was so complete it felt as heavy as any physical presence.

  She no longer even had the torches to light her way.

  The multiple rivers that veined the land no longer glimmered as they had in the flame light, not even slightly.

  Cybela fumbled nervously in this thickly dark veil.

  In the darkness she heard the baying of a bitch.

  She could only hope it was Kyohn, who hunts for the beautiful souls nearing deification.

  She couldn’t even see where to place her feet. As she looked down towards the ground, hoping to edgily work her way forward, she realised that one of her gold sandals had changed; it was now slightly different in its form, completely different in its material – for it was of brass.

  It could only have come, somehow, from her sister.

  Cybela was mystified by this strange gift until she remembered the words of another incantation.

  ‘I say, O Maid, ruler of Tartaros….Then I speak the sign to you: bronze sandal of her who rules Tartaros, her fillet, key, wand, iron wheel, black dog, her thrice locked door, her burning hearth, her shadow.’

  All of these were symbols of her power: of Aôroboros, devourer of the prematurely dead.

  Ahead of her now, she caught glimpses of the silvery sheens of two snaking rivers stretching out before her.

  The darkness wasn’t as complete as she had at first supposed.

  Everywhere else, it remained universally black.

  But running between the two rivers, she saw a weaving line of footprints, each step glowing as if a sandal of bronze had previously passed by there.

  *

  Would the steps lead her all the way out of here?

  How would that be possible, if Persephone herself had never completely left her realm, as she claimed?

  Marbled with its multiple rivers, the land could have been the most elaborate of mazes. Yet as Cybela walked on she realised that these waterways were little more than rivulets feeding a greater monster, the hundred-mouthed streams of a barbarous river that was rapidly bourgeoning and overflowing its low banks. r />
  The waters thundered in their growing anger, in their increasing sense of being an unstoppable power.

  ‘…and the primordial waters will overflow the world which you inhabit; all quaking, heaven disturbed…’

  And with a sudden massive surge, a towering torrent of water was suddenly rushing towards her, a looming tsunami threatening to wipe away everything within this dark world.

  *

  Chapter 18

  What had now become a heavily rolling sea voiced its incredible anger, its pitching waves roaring as they gradually yet remorselessly tore through the darkness, splitting even that aside.

  Cybela would once have naturally presumed that she wasn’t immune to the immense power of these pummelling waves; like any other pitiful animal, she would have expected to be lifted off her feet by the swiftly rising waters, and callously tossed around by them.

  Even so, she might have drowned had she not spotted amongst the darkness of her mind the glow of spluttering memories of half recalled incantations.

  ‘Come, you of the Three Ways, you who with your fire-breathing phantoms oversee the dreaded paths and harsh enchantments; you who hold power over the seven waters and the earth, summoner of the great Serpent Akrourobore, devourer of the tip of your tail.’

  As the waters hurtled towards her, causing even the mercilessly pounded air itself to shriek out in a mingling of agony and ecstasy, Cybela yelled out the magic words (words everyone knows, yet so blithely utter without realising what they risk invoking) so loudly that even the great primordial sea might have been stilled had that been the intention of the charm.

  ‘Akrourobore Kodêre!’

  The wave surged on, now unstoppable. It crashed around Cybela, taking her up in its dark embrace, hissing in heartfelt joy.

  Cybela didn’t resist.

  She rode up on the wave.

  She was the wave.

  She was its very Kore.

  *

  On its journey through darkness, the serpentine current tore away at everything lying in its path.

  As it rapidly wove along, it also slowly rose, moving from the lower realms into the higher, from darkness into light. And Cybela, of course, was borne safely along with it.

  By the time it was passing through lands graced with golden fleeced sheep, it was no longer the irresistible wave but, rather, the snaking River Ladon.

  And here the waters swiftly coiled towards two babes, male youths garbed in the skin of fawns, whom Cybela couldn’t fail to recognise.

  Far from being devoured by the lions, as Cybela had intended, a Leopard nursed them with far more understanding than their mother had felt for them within her own breast.

  Yet even now Cybela raged at the sight of these two innocently unwitting reminders of her shame. Of her succumbing to the trickery of Lyaeus.

  Lyaeus.

  Isn’t that what Persephone had said, had implied with her words?

  That these were the spawn of Lyaeus.

  As if at last awoken by the disturbing words, seeing with horror and a darkening understanding that left her feeling entirely naked, the trembling girl brought up her now massive frame like a huge bow, strung herself up across the bank: and swallowed whole one poor boy even as he protested his love for her.

  *

  Chapter 19

  It was an uncontrollable, senseless darkness that had completely overcome her once more, sweeping her along in its irresistible force and sending her falling back into a madness that caused her to devour her own child.

  Yet like even the wildest Bull, there is a time for calm and reason.

  As she prepared to swallow the second child, she saw that he was swaddled there like a helpless fawn: like the innocent freshly born kid that she herself, like the Birth Goddess Eileithyia, had brought safely through so many potential dangers.

  The kid born to Zemele of The Nourishing Earth.

  The girl nursed by Ino of The Calming Waters.

  The soul nurtured on honey from Autonoë of The Heavenly Sky.

  Cybela tore herself apart as her worst and better natures waged war against each other, the worst seeking only vengeance, the better part terrified by this heartless mother.

  Cybela spoke in this changed voice, chastising herself, taking on once more this role of Eileithyia (for Great Nature's Key belongs to no divinity but her) as she fought to spare the life of this helpless new-born babe.

  Eileithyia’s Key is the greatest of all: for it is the key of constant regeneration, connecting the Heavens and Earth as it draws down souls to be born.

  So what is one more soul to Eileithyia?

  As one soul leaves, she can restore another.

  The swallowed child was not beyond hope; not as long as someone else was prepared to grant him her soul.

  *

  The body of the poor, lifeless child tumbled helplessly amongst the dark, devouring waters, as callously tossed around by them as any pitiful animal might be.

  Deeper in the water, where it was darker, colder, the snaking current was harder, more insistent. The caressing was urgent, full of longing, and increasingly desperate, the encroaching of a serpentine darkness that pummelled at his flesh.

  The suffering child might have been submerged completely amongst the dark waters – had he not been spotted amongst the darkness by playful dolphins, calling out to him from the sole surviving branch of what been a vast tree of rivers.

  And so rather than being wholly carried off down the full length of the ravenous Ladon, the child’s body clung to life as he floated relatively safely on top of the darkly frothing waves of an offshoot, the River Ismenus.

  He was kept aloft by becoming a part of the waves rather than fruitlessly fighting against them.

  He flowed with them, rolled along with them, as much a constituent of their darkly foaming froth as any sea horse might be.

  Nevertheless, as he turned to head to the shore, he felt the dragging hands of the waters upon his legs, the grasping waters tugging so hard that the naked, struggling child had to finally accept that he wasn’t strong enough to resist their almost irresistible pull.

  Even his flesh was completely torn away from him.

  He let his body go, letting it go free amongst the massed, darkened bodies of the waters.

  Then with a swift kick of powerful hooves, the reborn child rose up from the dark waves, taking on for himself the form of a horse: one of a dark stallion called Arion.

  *

  Once we have accepted that we have suffered the madness of horses, we can at last free ourselves of it.

  As the dark horse Arion proudly strode free of the darkly grasping waters, for Cybela it was an experience more akin to falling into milk. Now she only partially retained the darkness she had descended into, a sliver of taint running down one side of her body.

  But the rest of her was now, thankfully, of a calmer fawn shade, such that her name would no longer be Dark-Minded Melinoe, but Melinoe as in mēlon for a kid, or meli for honey. Some would even call her Melitodes or Melissa, as if she were the bee itself, with powers over the transference of souls.

  She took the Child of All That Flows Beneath The Moon into her lap.

  She would nurse this boy as if she were now the Child Nurturing Kourotrophos, the milk that had also been intended for the lost child now for him alone.

  For now, he would simply be called Kouros (although to others he would later be ‘The Third One”, or even the ‘Saviour’, for they believed the whole of the dead would be raised with him).

  From what had been her cloak of black, Cybela took out a magical salve she had formed from poppies she had gathered in the gloom of night, the picking of each causing the earth to rumble; and Prometheus to groan in the aguish of his soul. Even when lightly smeared on the child, it would protect him from pain.

  And wherever Cybela spilt the salve, the earth began to bloom with flowers and grain once more.

  *

  Chapter 20

  Iakkhos
: an apt name for many an excitable boy, as it means ‘to shout’.

  The whole of the earth seemed eager to nurse him to manhood.

  The soil with its offerings of burgeoning crops, of fruit.

  The forests, with their gifts of game, including the deer, the boar, the birds.

  The rivers, providing for him fish, eels and crayfish, as well as quenching his thirst.

  This, naturally, is the way of the world, the way things happen. Each lonely beast in the valley, every fish in the sea, even the single plant, obeys the fixed order of the world, the Way of Nature, without any recourse to morals or sense of guilt.

  And so the Moon too, of course, was also Iakkhos’ nurse.

  Once again, she marked the seasons of sowing and ploughing, and the time for the ripening of crops.

  She marked the time of harvesting, of the time when all must die once more, in readiness to be reborn in the new year.

  Naturally, she also once again quickened the minds of young lovers, so that soon there were many other children for the earth to nurse.

  It could have been a whole new Golden Age, at least within that particular region: of if not that, perhaps the beginnings of a new Silver Age.

  As men do as they gather together in this way, they formulated their own rules for living, the laws they deemed appropriate to live peacefully and contentedly by. Unfortunately, as men do, they also foolishly believed that nature herself could be constrained in such a way, and bent to their will.

  Unwittingly caught up within the seemingly endless, pointless whirlings of the world they live in, they vainly seek to understand, to come to terms with their ultimately uncontrollable condition, the apparently arbitrary judgements of this cruel life.

  So the children of men form stories from what little knowledge they possess.

  Some contain germs of truth. Others are seeded only with lies.

  And no one can tell one apart from the other.

  So the children of men resort once again to the dogmas and rituals faithfully and blindly handed down from earlier generations, hoping their offerings to their gods, their dutiful subservience to supposedly heavenly rules, will result in just rewards.