The Immortals

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  “I kissed you before, don’t you remember?”

  “Doesn’t count. I was almost dead, so I couldn’t really enjoy it.”

  Her hands were shaking. “I’ve been lying to you all this time.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have believed the truth, so I can’t blame you.”

  “I don’t even know what the truth is anymore. I’m not a goddess. I’m not quite human. I’ve lived forever and sometimes still feel like a child.”

  “I know enough. I know you’d do anything to help a friend. I know you’re brave and wild and lovely, and that you saw things in me I didn’t know were there.”

  “Don’t you see how dangerous I am?” She gestured to the cave. “Look what happened to the last man I was with.”

  “I think I can learn from his mistakes. You know… don’t become a serial killer. Don’t piss off your twin brother. Don’t try to become immortal. I’m a quick study.”

  Selene started laughing. That beautiful, embarrassing honk, mixed with equal parts tears.

  “Hey, Relentless One, you haven’t answered my question.”

  She turned and gazed at him. Her silver eyes could still strike him speechless. Taking his face in her hands, she ran a thumb across his lips. Then she kissed him very lightly. “How’s that for an answer?”

  “Almost perfect.”

  “Almost?” She frowned.

  He wrapped her in his arms and drew her close, ignoring the dull ache of the wound in his chest, and kissed her with all the passion and relief of a hero finally returned home.

  Epilogos

  THE GOOD MAIDEN

  Day Ten. Plemochoai. Libations.

  Sunset gilded the cross streets. New York glowed pink and orange, the buildings bathed in light. A crisp autumn wind stirred the trash into graceful pirouettes above the sidewalks. Passersby lifted their noses to sniff at the smoky air, dreaming of Halloween and Thanksgiving, then turned their faces back to the traffic and the crowds and barreled forth into the gloaming.

  On the corner of West Ninety-seventh Street and Riverside Drive, the Delian twins stood side by side, watching the sun go down and the moon arise.

  Under one arm, Selene carried a small white box. Paul held a bottle of wine. If it weren’t for the solemnity of their expressions, you might have thought they planned on a picnic.

  “You sure you want him here for this?” asked Paul. “He didn’t even know her.”

  “But she would’ve wanted to know him.”

  Theo appeared across the street, Hippo nearly dragging him up the sidewalk. He finally let her run unhindered to her mistress, whom she greeted with a series of slobbering licks and bruising tail thwacks.

  “Did she give you too much trouble?” Selene asked.

  “Nope. We’re old friends, right, girl?” Hippo looked at him balefully then returned to licking Selene’s hand. “How was the funeral home? Everything go okay?” Selene raised the white box in answer. He turned to the other twin. “Hey… Paul. Good to see you again.”

  The Bright One hesitated for a moment, then shook Theo’s proffered hand.

  Dusk had already settled beneath the trees of Riverside Park. Selene led the way past the playgrounds and park benches, down the sloping path to the Hudson waterfront. They stopped at the boulders, not far from where she’d found Helen’s body. Hippo splashed in happily. “No, girl, come on out. Not tonight.” Panting, the dog scrambled back onto the rocks and shook a fountain of water and hair into the breeze. It took a moment for them all to regain the proper degree of gravity. But finally, Selene took a deep breath to steady herself and stepped forward to the water’s edge.

  She turned to her twin. “Come on, Sunbeam,” she urged softly.

  Paul uncorked the bottle. In a flashing ruby arc, the wine tumbled into the river. “Sponde Letoi,” the Bright One sang in the ancient tongue. A libation for Leto. “A libation for the mildest goddess. For the gentle Titan. For the mother of twins.”

  Selene took up the chant. “Sponde Letoi. For the goddess of Delos. For the consort of mighty Zeus. For the daughter of Phoibe, who lends her light to the stars and moon.”

  Then it was Theo’s turn.

  “Sponde Letoi.” His Ancient Greek was as flawless as it had been the first time she’d heard him speak, on this very shore, at another memorial for another loved one lost. “For the mother of Paul and Selene. For the Titan who birthed two gods to shed light on the world, but who died as happily as any mortal mother might, in the arms of the children she loved.”

  Selene opened the box and tipped it toward the water. She’d changed her mind about bringing the ashes to Delos. Leto would want to be here, where her children lived and laughed and loved. A plume of ash swirled forth, curling and dancing on Zephyrus’s breath. It flew high above their heads, falling and rising as gracefully as Leto’s veil had floated on the breeze. Then, with a puff of wind, the ash dispersed, scattered to the water, to the trees, to the earth, to the sky.

  Theo slipped his hand into Selene’s and she slipped hers into Paul’s. The three mourners stood in silence for a long time. Even Hippo sat quietly, her eyes fixed on the water, as the last of Leto disappeared from view.

  I have never been so sad, Selene prayed to her mother. Or so happy.

  Theo picked up Hippo’s leash. “I’ll let you two be alone, okay? I’ll be under the trees near the exit whenever you’re ready to go.”

  Selene watched him walk off down the path, Hippo trotting gamely at his side, until he was swallowed by the shadows of the woods.

  “He’s good to you,” Paul said suddenly.

  “He’s good for me.”

  She reached for the bottle and poured the last of the wine into the river. “Sponde Orioni. A libation for Orion, the Hunter,” she murmured. “Tortured by love, tortured by hate. May he rest now among the stars, finally at peace. And may he forgive me once more.”

  “Are you sorry he’s gone?” Paul asked softly.

  She shook her head. “I don’t need a god.” Handing the bottle back to Paul, she smiled ruefully. “I’ve got someone better waiting for me.”

  Her brother nodded. “You know, don’t you, that this isn’t the end of it. Dash is the Messenger, after all. Word of the Mystery’s power will get out. Rumors will spread. Soon all the fading Athanatoi will be clamoring for a chance at rebirth. And most will have no qualms about massacring mortals to get what they want.”

  “Then they’ll have me to deal with.”

  “Protector of the Innocent, huh?”

  “Always.”

  “Then you’re going to have quite a fight ahead of you.”

  “And will you be there beside me?”

  “Always.”

  Selene found Theo sitting on the grass beneath a towering elm, right on the border between the city and the park. Beside him, Hippo kept her eyes glued on a flock of geese, ready to pounce.

  She slipped off her backpack and settled next to him on the ground. For once, Theo didn’t speak, only took her hand in his.

  Selene looked west, where the faintest traces of purple and orange still streamed above the horizon. The lights on the Jersey shoreline flickered like constellations across the river. Above her, the moon, a waxing crescent, began its ascent through a deep blue sky. Then she looked east, toward her city. Dog walkers and late commuters strolled the twilit sidewalks, heading home after a long day. Across the street, Selene could see the illuminated windows of apartment buildings. Inside, friends and families gathered to eat. Children played with their parents. Lovers flew to each other’s arms.

  “After I met you, I dreamt of lying with you in a moonbeam,” Theo finally murmured.

  Selene’s insides clenched—pleasant and painful all at once—as he went on. “I didn’t know it was you at the time. You were just a faceless dream woman. But sitting here with you, it’s like déjà vu.” His thumb brushed gentle circles across her palm. He laughed lightly before her embarrassment could make her pull away. “Sorry. I know you don’t
have a lot of time for sitting in moonbeams. You’ve got to get back on the streets and find another crime to solve, another woman to protect, right?”

  “Captain Hansen said I should be a cop again. For the third time.”

  “The third time?”

  “Long story.”

  Theo just laughed. All day, she’d been saying the same thing. Some stories he’d demanded to hear right away. Others he’d consented to wait for. “Well, forget the badge. I like you better as a vigilante. It’ll be easier for us to fight crime if we play by our own rules.”

  “Us? You want to help?”

  “Just try to stop me.”

  “You realize I’m going to be confronting more bloodthirsty immortals in the future?”

  “I’m a Makarites, remember? I’ve got a special connection to the gods. Might come in handy. Trust me, this is a dream come true.”

  “Is it?” Selene pulled her hand from his and turned to face him. “Am I just a dream to you?”

  A dimple appeared on one cheek. “Moon Goddess. Huntress. Far Shooter. They’re the dreams. I know my mythology. If I were to see you in all your glory, I’d be consumed by flame, left a charred husk of a man, blown to ashes by the wind. When you started glowing in the cave, I thought I was a goner for sure.” He covered her hand with his own, his gaze suddenly serious. “I don’t want the dream. I want Selene. With all her warmth and laughter.” He threaded his fingers through hers. “And her ice and anger, too.”

  She settled back against the tree, her shoulder brushing his. With a sigh, Hippo rolled over to rest her head on Selene’s lap.

  “Did you really dream of lying with me in a moonbeam?” she asked finally.

  Theo paused a moment. “Actually, I dreamt of making love to you in a moonbeam.”

  “Oh.”

  She could feel the heat of his skin through her shirt where their shoulders met. Finally, she answered his unspoken question with a kiss. Long and slow and full of hunger.

  “Fierce.” He smiled breathlessly. “I always said the Moon was fierce.”

  “Fierce and lonely. That’s what you said.” She kissed him again, softer this time. Theo’s hands tangled in her hair as he pulled her closer.

  “Not so lonely anymore,” he said quietly when they finally drew apart.

  “Come, Theodore.” She stood and held out a hand to haul him to his feet. “I’ve been waiting for you for almost three thousand years. Would you ask me to wait any longer?”

  “I wouldn’t dare. You might get angry and turn me into a stag.”

  She took a step back, alarmed. Only then did she realize he was teasing her.

  “You? More like a mockingbird. You’ve certainly got the tongue for it.”

  Theo chuckled briefly, but then cast her a nervous glance. “Wait… you’re not serious, are you?”

  Selene laughed, so loudly the passersby shot her worried looks. She didn’t care. “Don’t worry. I rather like you as a human.” With a sly grin, she raised Theo’s hand to her lips and pressed a kiss on his knuckles. “At least for now.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most important religious ritual in ancient Athens and the surrounding area for almost two thousand years, until the Holy Roman Emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan rites in the fourth century AD. The veil of secrecy around the rites has led both to an absence of any definitive historical records of the events’ details and to a surfeit of fragmentary allusions to the Mysteries in a variety of sources. Thus, our knowledge of exactly what transpired is hazy at best. Theo’s understanding of the ritual’s components is a loose conflation of many scholars’ hypotheses, most prominently those featured in Jon D. Mikalson’s Ancient Greek Religion, Mara Lynn Keller’s article “The Ritual Path of Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries” in the Rosicrucian Digest, and The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, edited by Marvin W. Meyer. My apologies to these and the many other classicists who would no doubt find the version of the Mysteries presented in this book hopelessly simplistic.

  The nature of the epiphany at the rite’s climax is unknown and still a point of great scholarly debate. The presence in the kykeon of a hallucinogen not unlike LSD has been proposed in R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hoffman, and Carl A. P. Ruck’s The Road to Eleusis and would seem to explain the Greeks’ powerful reaction to the ritual. That human sacrifice played a role is my own invention. The Oxyrhynchus Project has yet to discover any mention of such atrocities in its trove of Hellenic papyri (see Oxford’s Ancient Lives project at www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk if you want a chance to do some decoding of your own). However, the Eleusinian Mysteries stretch back in time before the rise of Athens, to an earlier age in which, many have proposed, earth-goddess worship may have required a bloodier form of ritual than that practiced by the sophisticated citizens of the Golden Age.

  While the details of the Mysteries are in large part hypothetical, the stories of New York City’s past are all real. Alexander Hamilton’s death, the formation of the Policewomen’s Bureau in the 1920s, and the crime wave of the 1970s are all grounded in fact. So, too, are the majority of the locations in this book. The waterfall in Central Park’s Ravine is easily visited. Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential railroad car still sits on its abandoned platform beneath the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where, indeed, a paupers’ cemetery once lay. You can see pictures of it in an informative article by Jen Carlson at gothamist.com. The hidden Liberty Theater exists, and was at one time inaccessible, although a recent renovation has transformed it into a not-so-hidden restaurant. Seeing the abandoned City Hall subway station is a cinch—just ride the downtown Number 6 line past the last stop and look out the windows as the train loops around before heading uptown. To visit Montayne’s Fonteyn (barely a trickle these days) or the old Indian Cave (still walled up, unfortunately), follow the directions in Christopher Gray’s excellent article “Scenes from a Wild Youth” in the New York Times. The Pneumatic Transit waiting room has, sadly, been lost to us, but it must have been a remarkable sight. Joseph Brennan describes it in great detail in his article “Beach Pneumatic” on columbia.edu.

  Into these very real locations I’ve placed characters from myth that have only ever existed in the collective imagination of mankind. The tale of Orion and Artemis has no single definitive version—only fragments and allusions remain to us. In some, the two are chaste lovers. In others, he tries to rape her or one of her nymphs. In still others, he is a lascivious braggart, brought down by her rage. He dies when Apollo tricks Artemis into shooting him or, alternatively, when the angry goddess sends a scorpion to kill him. No matter the version, however, the story of the Huntress and the Hunter has always fascinated, perhaps because Artemis has always been one of the most paradoxical and intriguing figures in classic myth. For many, myself included, she has been a feminist icon: a woman warrior unhindered by societal norms, fiercer, swifter, and deadlier than any man. And yet, she is also a product of her time—consigned to virginity by a society that sees sex, love, and motherhood as incompatible with the fiercer aspects of her personality. As demonstrated by the plethora of epithets ascribed to her, Artemis is complicated and contradictory, beloved and feared. Wandering the dusty, sunbaked streets of Delos, past the ruins of her temple, you can easily feel the goddess and her twin beside you. It seems a short leap to imagine her walking through the streets of Manhattan as well. In some ways, she is immortal indeed.

  Jordanna Max Brodsky

  New York, NY

  April 2015

  APPENDICES

  Olympians, Heroes, and Other Immortals

  A note on spelling:

  For the more ancient gods such as the Titans and primeval divinities, I’ve used the transliterated Greek spellings (Ouranos rather than Uranus). For the Olympians and others, I’ve used the more familiar Latinized spellings (Hephaestus rather than Hephaistos).

  Aphrodite: Goddess of Erotic Love and Beauty. One of the Twelve Olympians. Born of sea foam after Kronos castrates hi
s father, Ouranos, and throws his genitals in the ocean. Wife of Hephaestus and lover of Ares. Attributes: dove, scallop shell, mirror.

  Apollo: God of Light, Music, Healing, Prophecy, Poetry, Archery, Civilization, Plague, and the Sun. One of the Twelve Olympians. Leader of the Muses. Twin brother of Artemis. Son of Leto and Zeus. Father of Asclepius. Born on the island of Delos. Called Phoebus (Bright One). Attributes: silver bow, laurel wreath, lyre. Modern alias: Paul Solson.

  Ares: God of War. One of the Twelve Olympians. Son of Zeus and Hera. Lover of Aphrodite. Attributes: armor, spear, poisonous serpent.

  Artemis: Goddess of the Wilderness, the Hunt, Virginity, Wild Animals, Hounds, Young Children, and the Moon. One of the Twelve Olympians. Twin sister of Apollo. Daughter of Leto and Zeus. Born on the island of Delos. Called Phoebe, Cynthia, Diana. Has more epithets than any other god, including Far Shooter, Huntress, Relentless One, Protector of the Innocent, and more. Attributes: golden bow, hounds. Modern aliases: Phoebe Hautman, Dianne Delia, Melissa Dubois, Cynthia Forrester, Selene DiSilva.

  Asclepius: Hero-God of Medicine. Half-mortal son of Apollo. Worshiped in the Eleusinian Mysteries and many other cults. Attribute: a snake-twined staff.

  Athena: Goddess of Wisdom, Crafts, and Justified War. One of the Twelve Olympians. Virgin. Attributes: helmet, shield, owl.

  Boreas: God and embodiment of the north wind.

  Cerberus: Three-headed guard dog of the Underworld.

  Demeter: Goddess of Grain and Agriculture. One of the Twelve Olympians. Daughter of Kronos and Rhea. Sister of Zeus. Mother of Persephone. Patron goddess of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which retell the story of her quest for Persephone after the girl was abducted by Hades. Called Bountiful, Bringer of Seasons. Attributes: wheat sheaves, torch. Modern alias: Gwenith.

  Dionysus: God of Wine, Wild Plants, Festivity, Theater. One of the Twelve Olympians. Son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal. One of the gods worshiped in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Usually accompanied by maenads (female devotees) and satyrs (male devotees, sometimes with cloven hooves). Called Bacchus, Phallic, He Who Unties, He of the Wild Revels. Attributes: grape vine, thyrsus (a pinecone-tipped staff), ivy, leopard. Modern alias: Dennis Boivin.