by Nancy Madore
“What of that?” asked Poseidon.
“The conquests of the Olympians belong to all Olympians.”
Poseidon’s head jerked back around to face his brother. Zeus’ goat-like eyes glanced in the direction of the other gods, who were still languidly watching the carnage from the gathering clouds. “This is a game to them,” Zeus told him. “They do not care about the outcome. Either way, the gods will still be here to compete for the prizes.”
Poseidon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “If what you say is true, why have they not come to Atlantis and challenged me already?”
“Because I forbade it!” exclaimed Zeus. He glanced at Poseidon before resting his gaze once more on the gods. “It seemed harmless enough that you should go off on your own. But now this! There is nothing for them if you take Olympia!”
“I cannot help what will be,” said Poseidon. “I must do as I must do.”
“Then you are no different from those other gods that you despise,” charged Zeus. “Wagering our very existence for the approval of mortals—the most fickle of all creatures!”
This, more than anything that Zeus could’ve said, struck a nerve. Poseidon’s aspirations suddenly seemed petty and small, and a wave of shame washed over him. But the shame was almost immediately replaced with anger. How dare Zeus make him feel this way! He turned his face from his brother and gazed down at the battle below. It was indeed a ghastly scene, and the shame returned. How many mortals lay dead and dying?
But no; Poseidon could not turn back now. To do so would be to admit that he was not a worthy god. Right or wrong, he must see this through to the end.
If only Athena had not interfered, calling forth armies from distant lands, this war might have been over by now. She was always interfering in his plans—always forcing him to do things he might not otherwise do. He nursed his hatred for her while the mortals’ blood continued to flow.
The gathering of the Olympian armies made for a much fairer playing field. It was difficult to tell who had the advantage in the bloody sea of struggling bodies. The arrows had pretty much been abandoned for swords and hatchets now that all of the soldiers were on land. The battle cries rose to a deafening roar. There was murder and mayhem as far as the eye could see. Poseidon watched anxiously, hour after agonizing hour, until he could no longer deny that Atlantis was losing. The realization—once acknowledged—struck Poseidon like a physical blow. The world seemed to slow, and the noise of the battle to fade, as Poseidon absorbed the blow. In those first few moments he felt nothing. It was as if he was unconscious of the world around him. But soon enough there followed a flood of emotions. There was disbelief, horror, fear—and, above all, rage. His defeat seemed absolute; his humiliation insurmountable.
Suddenly he was aware of the other gods, watching him. He could feel them watching, though he could not bring himself to turn his face in their direction. He could hardly endure their presence.
It was like reliving the worst moment of his life all over again when Poseidon plunged himself into the sea. Zeus’s words came back to him.
The conquests of the Olympians belong to all Olympians.
All this time, Poseidon had thought that he was building an empire, when all he was really doing was expanding the Olympian kingdom. Soon the gods would infiltrate his land and take all of his worshippers away. Tears streamed down his cheeks unnoticed as he charged toward Atlantis from beneath the sea.
Atlantis!
What would he say to his people? How could he ever face them again? Poseidon trembled in horror at the thought of the Olympians invading his paradise island.
What of Cleito? What news could he bring her of their sons?
The disbelief had passed over to horror, which was quickly being replaced with dark, blinding rage.
The Olympian gods could not be permitted to corrupt his island paradise. By the time he reached Atlantis, Poseidon had decided this. Weeping openly now, he imagined Cleito—his Cleito—choosing another god over him, and he aimed his trident.
The island of Atlantis began to tremble. Something—some uncertainty or warning—attempted to penetrate his consciousness but Poseidon brushed it away with a loud roar. He fueled his anger with notions of his people’s inevitable betrayal. As his rage grew, so did the trident’s power. The entire sea seemed to rise and shudder as the island of Atlantis struggled to absorb the tremendous amount of energy that was being leveled at it. A clatter arose over the sound of the quake, as trees and buildings began to collapse all over the island. This drove Poseidon on, even as it broke his heart. He wanted it to be over. He let out another roar as he forced an even greater surge of power through his trident.
It seemed, at first, as if the island would withstand the quake, but then, almost as a second thought, it started to implode. The rumbling racket rose to a deafening boom as the island crumbled into the sea.
Poseidon followed it down, oblivious to the enormous waves that were rising up high above sea level.
What have I done?
He searched for signs of life—though it was clear there would be none. But still he searched, and he continued searching through the night. He felt that if he could find just one thing he recognized from his island paradise he would forgive himself. But he could not.
The island of Atlantis was now an enormous reef in the middle of the Great Sea. It stood out like a warning, rendering that part of the sea impassable.
Poseidon was not prepared for the grief. It appeared to be assailing him from every direction. He felt desperate and desolate. He could not seem to tear himself away from the murky ruin. He tried to comfort himself by insisting that it was better this way. It would have been much more painful to watch his paradise slowly being corrupted.
Zeus should not have put him in this position. Atlantis was his! It belonged to him. If he couldn’t have it, no one could.
But this left him with nothing.
Poseidon didn’t know how long he remained at the bottom of the sea with his lost island. Perhaps it was years—or maybe it was only a few days. One thought kept returning as he mourned. It was something Uranus had said.
Only one of you is destined to rule.
Had Uranus been mocking him?
Poseidon returned to the little island where it all began. Originally, he had intended to find Uranus, but when he got there, he found himself drawn to the volcano instead. What would happen, he wondered, if he destroyed it? Would that destroy them all?
Poseidon decided to find out. He rose up out of the water and kept rising until he was high above the clouds. Then he slowly aimed his trident. His only thought was of retribution for his lost paradise. He had to avenge Atlantis and his sons—and his beloved Cleito.
The ocean floor began to shake as Poseidon leveled his trident at the volcano’s center. There was a low rumbling, and then a loud explosion, as the volcano erupted into bright, fiery blasts of hot lava. The lava was almost immediately transformed into enormous, billowing clouds of fierce white heat as it was absorbed by the water. Encouraged, Poseidon kept urging the volcano on. The floor of the sea rumbled and shook as the volcano erupted again and again.
Uranus’ little island was quaking violently—so violently that a small corner of it dissolved into the sea. But Poseidon hardly noticed. Uranus’ island did not concern him. All of his attention was directed at the volcano. He intended to destroy it and everything that belonged to it. He kept feeding more of the noxious energy into the trembling, cracking, sputtering mountain beneath the sea.
It seemed as if the volcano would surely collapse under each new series of bursts, which created tremendous flashes of bright light, and sent enormous rocks whizzing through the murky water as if they were soaring through thin air. Meanwhile, the hot, roiling vapors kept bursting through the churning sea, heating it, and causing it to rise up to impossible levels that made it seem as if it intended to swallow the rest of the world. Poseidon glared down at it from above the clouds, willing it to do just
that.
“Stop!”
Poseidon barely heard the cry above the din, though it was as loud as a thunderclap. He whirled around to find Zeus beside him, his white hair blowing in the wind. Poseidon noticed that Zeus had hold of his arm that held the trident.
Poseidon threw off his brother’s hand and turned back toward the volcano. He had intended to resume his attack on the volcano—which was still erupting violently—but something stopped him. He tried again—and then again—but he could not move his arm. He whirled back around and faced Zeus indignantly.
“What have you done to me?” he demanded.
“I cannot allow you to destroy this earth!” exclaimed Zeus.
“I cannot…move my arm!” roared Poseidon. But he kept trying, nevertheless.
The volcano, meanwhile, seemed to have a mind of its own. The eruption was continuing without him.
“Yes!” he cried, staring down at it. “Yes, yes, yes, yes….”
Something was happening. It was as if Poseidon’s words were being lifted away by the storm, which was now rotating around them in the darkening sky. And Poseidon was being lifted too. Everything appeared to be drawn into the winds of a hurricane. Only Poseidon was not actually being drawn anywhere, he suddenly realized. He was disintegrating. His words, his sensations—his soul—everything was disappearing into nothingness.
He tried to speak, but he could not. He tried to find Zeus, but there was…nothing. There was no storm, no clouds, no sky. There was no world. There was no Poseidon.
It had all disappeared in the blink of an eye. There was nothing left.
And yet, there was something; some sense of life somewhere. An idea of it remained with him, a kind of impression of its existence, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. But it was just beyond his reach. His awareness of it tortured him, and he would spend an eternity going back and forth between searching for life and wondering if it had ever existed at all.
Chapter 42
Long Island, New York
A formidable sense of despair had settled over Nadia like a heavy, woolen blanket. She could feel the familiar tightening in her chest, and didn’t seem to be getting enough air into her lungs. She felt afraid. She’d always held out hope (if never quite believed) that there was a benevolent being out there somewhere, watching over the world. But suddenly the very concept of god seemed an ugly thing—the prerogative of ego maniacs. Perhaps this conclusion was unfair, since it was based almost entirely on the behavior of what could only be considered ‘false’ gods. Poseidon and his lot were alien creatures that used their superior abilities to lord it over the people of earth. And yet, were the gods of the Bible or the Koran any different? Like Poseidon, didn’t they favor total annihilation over sharing the glory with anyone else? Of course, these, too, could be misrepresentations of the God of creation (should he exist), but then where was one to turn for answers?
Was it possible that this world was created by a being—or group of beings—that did not require recognition from its inhabitants? Maybe this need to dominate here on earth was, in and of itself, the sign of a ‘false’ god.
But if that were the case, where did this leave mankind? Nadia certainly wasn’t one of those religious zealots who expected God to rush to her aid in each and every crisis—she was not as absurdly self-important as that. But it was starting to appear as if life here on earth might actually be in jeopardy. If there was a creator, wouldn’t He take some interest in this?
But on some level, Nadia knew that this was all just wishful thinking. Like all of the other ‘worker bees’ (as her father termed the mortal masses), Nadia was looking for a queen to follow. She wanted someone else to step in and save her. But she was beginning to think that no one would. This was the essence of the despair that had settled over her. It was the overly heavy blanket that threatened to cut off her air supply and bring about another panic attack.
Only this time, the affirmations, ‘I am peace,’ and ‘I am calm’ weren’t going to cut it. Neither did Nadia want to turn off her brain with a pill. Ignoring the problem wasn’t going to help. But what else could she do?
Nadia suddenly had the peculiar sensation of standing on the edge of a very high precipice. One wrong move and it would all be over. It occurred to her that she had approached a turning point in her life.
“You’re awfully quiet,” observed Gordon. He had been busily researching ‘Atlantis’ on his laptop while Clive pretended to sleep on the couch.
“I was just thinking,” said Nadia.
“Here we go,” said Clive. “Better fasten your seatbelts, Gordon. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
“What were you thinking about?” Gordon asked her.
Nadia wasn’t ready to answer Gordon’s question, so she said the first thing that popped into her head. “I was just thinking that Zeus was definitely the one controlling Poseidon and the other gods.”
“You’re just figuring that out now?” asked Clive. He sat up. “That reminds me of a joke,” he said. When Nadia and Gordon just looked at him expectantly he continued. “A blonde, a redhead, and a brunette are lost in the desert, about to die of thirst, when they come across a magic lamp. They rub it, and out pops a genie, who grants each of them one wish. The brunette wishes to be sent home. Poof! The genie sends her home. The Redhead wishes she was in Tahiti with her boyfriend. Poof! The genie sends her to Tahiti. Feeling lonely there in the desert all by herself, the blonde says; ‘I wish my friends were here.’”
Nadia gave Clive a look. “Really?” she said. “Blonde jokes?”
Clive shrugged. “Something made me think of it,” he said innocently.
“I see Nadia’s point, though,” said Gordon. “All these years, Poseidon believed he was the one who made everything disappear when he caused that volcano to erupt. We now know that it was Zeus that made Poseidon disappear. I think it stands to reason that Zeus is responsible for the disappearance of all the gods.”
“How do you figure that?’” asked Clive.
“It fits with the historical record,” said Gordon. “Poseidon’s depiction of the events leading up to that last encounter with Zeus coincides with historical events leading up to the Thera eruption, which was a volcanic eruption that caused part of that small island to fall into the Mediterranean Sea. Most archaeologists agree that the Thera eruption occurred sometime in the sixteenth century BC—nearly sixteen centuries before the purported existence of Christ. That would be around the same time the gods disappeared.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Clive. He was in rare form after hearing this firsthand account of the mythical Atlantis from Poseidon. It was obvious that they had all been affected. There was a kind of energy in the room, like an electric current, that was wreaking havoc on Nadia’s nerves. It was almost as if she could feel it pushing her even closer to that precipice that she seemed to be teetering on.
“How about the myths about Atlantis?” Clive asked. “Do they fit?”
Gordon frowned. “Not quite as neatly as I would like,” he admitted. “The rumors of Atlantis were recorded by a famous poet named Solon, who had heard about it from Egyptian priests. The priests described the island of Atlantis in much the same way that Poseidon did, but Solon dated it at about ninety-five centuries before Christ.”
“That’s back in the stone ages!” said Clive.
“Exactly,” said Gordon. “But if you look at the details in Solon’s writings about Atlantis, he speaks of ships and war weapons that didn’t exist until much later in our development. It’s obvious that he could not have been referring to the ninety-fifth century BC. One theory is that Solon simply used the wrong numeric symbol in his writings. Instead of nine hundred, he wrote nine thousand. If this is the case, it would put the mythical island of Atlantis on the map during the sixteenth century, BC.”
“Sounds like the only logical explanation,” said Clive.
Gordon nodded. “Solon also wrote about how the armies of Atlantis conquered other lands in other c
ontinents—reaching as far as Egypt in their quest to take over the world. Which leads me to my next point. There are ancient records of invasions to the northern regions of Egypt around the sixteenth century, BC. The Egyptians called the invaders Hyksos, which simply meant ‘rulers of foreign countries.’ That could be anyone. But get this—these Hyksos honored the horse, even in death, and they worshiped a ‘storm’ god.”
“Shit yeah!” exclaimed Clive. “I love it when the pieces fall together.”
“Each of these pieces was recorded independently of the others,” said Gordon. “No one has ever connected them before. And yet, they’re all related.”
“Okay, so what does this have to do with Zeus making all the gods disappear?” asked Clive.
“Well…I can’t help wondering if Zeus didn’t trap all the gods when he trapped Poseidon,” said Gordon. “Poseidon said Zeus was growing concerned with the behavior of the gods. Maybe he got fed up.”
“Did you find anything in the historical records that might confirm this?” asked Nadia.
Gordon shook his head. “Not directly. But the story of Poseidon’s attack on Athens represents the last tangible action that was taken by the gods,” he said. “From that point forward, the gods become passive. They still have their power, supposedly, but it’s just kind of there, in the background. The mortals still believe that the gods are affecting their lives, but suddenly they have the ability to affect the outcome. Now it’s the mortals who are the heroes and heroines. The story of Troy is a good example of this, and it is purported to have happened after the Thera eruption. We now know that Poseidon was gone by that time. Yet he’s blamed for every disaster that befalls Odysseys—just as Zeus and Athena are credited with helping him. But Odysseys is the real hero of that story. Do you see? The power of the gods was so ingrained in the people that it remained with them long after the gods were gone, but suddenly they were able to believe that they could change their own fate—because suddenly they could!”