Winter of the Gods

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  The helm seemed almost to suck the light from the brighter objects around it, a hulking, evil thing, crouched in a pool of shadow. For a moment, the Hyaena wondered if that’s what she’d become—a destructive darkness, erasing the beauty from the world. Then she brushed aside the thought. I do only what has been fated.

  The Pretenders must die. Will die. Then, and only then, can we restore the one true God to the world.

  Chapter 21

  DEATHLESS ONES

  Selene’s patience wore thin five minutes after Paul disappeared into Castle Williams. She couldn’t just hide behind a building doing nothing while her twin ventured into danger.

  “I’ll keep watch on our flanks,” she told the others. Then, with the gold and silver bows slung across her back, Paul’s quiver on one hip, and her own three divine arrows on the other, she sprinted silently back to the higher ground surrounding Fort Jay. Crawling on her elbows to a low hummock, she could see not only the small library that concealed Flint and the others but also Castle Williams, the surrounding buildings, and the harbor itself.

  She was supposed to be looking for additional patrols, but she found herself staring at her fellow Athanatoi instead. She could’ve seen them even without her night vision—the screens of their devices illuminated their faces with an eerie blue glow. They were a motley bunch: the hunched Smith, his face bent over his tablet; the Messenger bouncing on his toes in impatience, trying to peer over his stepbrother’s shoulder; the God of Love crouching in the shelter of the wall with an unlit cigarette between his teeth, immersed in his cell phone. She wasn’t sure she liked any of them—but she was starting to respect them. We were never truly omnipotent—not like the Hebrew version of God, she thought. Each of us only presided over our little slice of the world—is it any surprise that we’re stronger together?

  These last few days had represented the closest thing to a Gathering of the Gods that had occurred since her father, Zeus, summoned them all to Mount Olympus to announce the Diaspora. The day was a clear memory, a true memory—untold and unclouded by the poets—but one she rarely relived. Yet as she looked down on her kin, a vision of the past suddenly rushed upon her.

  Dust coats my sandaled feet and the musk of boar still clings to my tunic as I climb the slopes of Olympus. I don’t want to leave the hunt, but I must obey the Sky God’s summons.

  Selene shook her head as if to knock the memory away. This was no time for daydreams. Yet the motion only rooted the vision more firmly in her mind. A great weight constricted her chest, black shadows clouded her eyes, and she felt herself drawn inexorably into the past. For a fleeting moment, while she was still Selene, she wondered if this was how mortals had felt when a deity sent them a vision in days of old. Like a woman drowning in the mind of a god. And then she stopped fighting—and was Artemis once more.

  At the pronaos of the feast hall stands Hephaestus, one sooty hand on a crutch, the other resting on a towering column of porphyry. I think he won’t speak to me—he rarely does—but he raises his eyes at my approach.

  “Zeus commands I make certain the hall will stand for the Gathering,” he says, tracing a wide, branching fissure down the column’s flute with his thick finger.

  “And?” I am more comfortable outdoors than in buildings, especially ones that are about to collapse.

  “A few days more. Then all is dust.” His thick beard hides whatever grimace or frown might touch his lips, but his eyes are liquid brown and full of pain. He limps heavily into the hall, and I have no choice but to follow.

  Inside, my gaze traces a long gash in the gilded concrete up to the oculus in the center of the domed roof. No longer does a thick column of smoke pour forth from the brazier in the middle of the chamber as men on earth burn offerings of bulls and blood, grain and wine to honor the Athanatoi. Now only the merest trickle of smoke curls from the fire.

  Hestia, the Hearth Goddess, sits on her low wooden stool, tending the coals with vacant eyes, veil pulled tight. The paucity of offerings, which has left all the gods weakened, has hit her the hardest. I can’t bear to look at her. Yet Hephaestus lays a hand briefly on her shoulder.

  I take my seat, and Hermes skips over to sit beside me. He’s shaved his beard, and the slanting line of his narrow jaw mirrors the sweep of the wings on his cap. I wonder if it still works. I suspect it doesn’t. He holds his snake-twined caduceus loose in his hand, slapping it distractedly against his leg. “You see who comes among us?” he asks slyly.

  “Everyone.” Wise Athena with her owl upon her wrist, beautiful Aphrodite and her son, Eros, Dionysus with curling vines twined in his hair and wine staining his lips, Mars the Man-Slayer gleaming in golden armor with a mighty spear. My father and his wife have yet to make an appearance, but all the rest of the Olympians, as well as most of the lesser gods, are present.

  Hermes points his staff to the far corner. “And him.”

  To my surprise, my grandfather Kronos is here. He looks quite dignified with his curled white beard and midnight blue robes. The other Athanatoi ignore him, and he ignores them right back.

  “Father allowed him to come?” I ask, surprised.

  “Who dares keep him away? You know his strength remains, even as ours flees falcon-swift.”

  “You speak true? I pay little heed to such things.” My mother bears my love, my father my respect, and my twin my fury. The other Athanatoi mean little to me.

  “Have you not seen Saturn’s glorious temple within the Forum of Rome?”

  I remember the columned edifice dimly, but I rarely pass through Rome’s city walls. “So? Kronos is not Saturn.”

  Hermes laughs, the sound jarring amid the tense murmurs in the hall. “So you are Diana and I Mercury, but our grandfather must content himself with one name alone? Have you always been so selfish, sister? The people of Rome joined their harvest god to our grandfather after his release from Tartarus. So Kronos is Saturn now, and he answers to that name only—as Ares now is Mars. The Romans honor him as a god like to Jupiter himself.”

  “You mean they used to honor him. Surely they forget him now. No one can escape that fate.”

  Hermes only nods, and for the first time, I notice the tension in his narrow shoulders. Even my most carefree brother is scared. He does not speak again.

  Finally, my father arrives. Zeus’s beard is still dark, his shoulders broad beneath his blue robe, but his eyes, usually as wide and clear as a summer sky, are stormy gray, the skin around them dark and slack. Hera strides next to him, her inky hair elaborately coiffed, her arms as white and round as always but her eyes swollen.

  “Hark, Athanatoi, to my words,” Zeus begins. “First came Gaia and Ouranos, Mother Earth and Father Sky, parents to us all.” The old recitation of lineage that begins all our gatherings. A reminder of the debt we all owe the Father of the Gods. “From them sprang the Age of Titans, among them wily Kronos, who swallowed whole his children so he might rule unrivaled.”

  All eyes turn to Saturn, whose gaze remains on the oculus overhead. A faint smile hovers on his lips. My father continues his litany. “With my mighty fist, I split Kronos’s gullet and freed my sisters and brothers to rule at my side. Thus began the Age of the Olympians. Until the fall of Troy, we lived in the Age of Heroes. Until today, for more than fifteen hundred years, the Age of Iron reigned, and mankind paid us homage still.” He pauses. I wish I were hunting, dancing, anywhere but listening to a story whose end I cannot bear to hear. “Today we gather to determine what the next Age will be.”

  “There is no choice to make,” says blue-haired Poseidon, rising from his seat with his whalebone trident held high. “The Age of Man. Already it draws nigh. Like wave upon stone, their indifference erodes our strength. Soon, we will be washed away entirely. No more does my trident shake the earth. Like a pitchfork it sleeps in my grasp, and all the roaring of my waves cannot awaken it!” A murmur of assent sweeps through the chamber.

  My twin brother stands bare chested and beautiful, a laurel wreath u
pon his brows. Apollo’s pose is confident, but he does not meet my eyes. Ours is an old fight—our wounds remain unhealed. Yet the others turn to him like flowers to the light. “Once I could drive the newborn Sun across the sky. With a touch I could heal the wounds of men. No longer.”

  A chill runs through me. My shot is still true, my feet still swift, but I too have lost much.

  Aphrodite moans that men no longer allow her naked body to haunt their dreams. Her son Eros begins to cry and wail. Other gods join the chorus, reciting litanies of their diminishments, their voices growing louder and more desperate.

  “I have no hearth to tend.” With her whisper, Hestia silences us all.

  I follow her gaze to the last puff of fragrant smoke as it drifts slowly toward the oculus. Then, with a collective gasp, we watch it dissolve completely in a breath of wind. The brazier has gone cold.

  After a long moment, Father speaks again. “Isis, Serapis, Mithras, the Magna Mater. Always, such new gods twined their own worship with ours, strengthening the weave with colors bold and patterns intricate. Then, a man appeared in Jerusalem to rip that cloth to shreds. To tear us from the hearts and minds of all our followers.” He takes a deep breath, as if to prepare for his next words. Now, finally, we would come to the heart of the matter. “On this day, the Roman Emperor Theodosius outlaws all worship of the Olympians.”

  He holds up his hand for silence as a cry of despair fills our throats. There is worse yet to come.

  “He will imprison those who tell our stories or send us their prayers. Without our worshipers, we diminish. No longer may I wield the thunderbolt. No longer may I set men into the stars. No longer may I be bull or swan or rain shower. This is my skin now.” Even as he speaks, some of the radiance leaves his eyes.

  I blink back tears. Others weep openly. Hestia, eyes dry and lifeless, rises from her stool. Carefully, she places her staff upon the brazier and walks slowly from the chamber. No one speaks. No one tries to stop her. No one thinks they will see her again.

  “We shall do as Hestia does,” my father pronounces when his sister’s figure has disappeared beyond the boundaries of Olympus. “We shall leave behind this land that rejects us.”

  “Rome knows me still,” Mars insists. He does not look distraught. Perhaps he is too obtuse to understand what’s happening. “Its legions spread my name across the world. They forget me not!”

  “No, son.” Father’s voice bristles with impatience. “You must not aid those who refuse to pay homage. Athens and Rome have abandoned us, and so we abandon them, never to return.” With that, his strength leaves him. My mighty father can only whisper his last words. “Hope flees like an eagle on the wing. And so must we.”

  The roar of a boat’s engine offshore finally wrenched Selene from the memory’s grip. She allowed the snowy, moonlit buildings of Governors Island to replace the sun-drenched marble of Olympus’s halls. Yet the dread, the despair, were harder to banish. She laid her fingertips on the fletching of her new gold arrows and looked down at her hands, noticing the faint lines that crisscrossed her skin as they never had when she’d been Artemis. Why do I still pretend to be a goddess? she wondered. She glanced down at her brothers, hiding behind the library. Why do any of us? Even Saturn, who’d seemed so confident at the Gathering, had disappeared long ago like so many others, remembered as little more than a name for a faraway planet more distant and unknowable than the god himself had ever been.

  The boat’s engine revved again, closer now, and she finally turned toward the sound, though part of her cared little for the dangers of her present existence.

  Red and green running lights slowly materialized into a large motor yacht. It was still too far away to make out the driver—he was a silhouette in the darkness, nothing more. The engine stuttered to a stop. Suddenly, the wrongness of the image snapped her from her melancholy—no one took a pleasure ride in December. She felt her despair lift and wondered how she’d ever let a memory enervate her so. She slipped from her hiding place and rejoined the others behind the library.

  “I hope you’ve got a telescope in that bag of yours, because we’ve got a visitor.”

  Flint grunted, handed off the video feed to Dash, and reached for his duffel. Seconds later, Dash yelped as he stared at the screen. “Ouranos’s balls, what the hell happened to—”

  Selene snatched the tablet phone for herself, and for a moment she couldn’t make sense of what she saw. The feed from the front entrance of Castle Williams showed Mars’s two guards slumped in place, livid welts snaking around their throats. “When did that—” Then movement at the other side of the screen caught her attention. In the interior courtyard, one of the soldiers reached for his throat, where an invisible rope circled his windpipe, indenting the skin and turning his face blue. As he collapsed, the other soldier rushed toward him. But before he’d taken more than a step, a bright gash appeared on his own neck, his flesh split open as if from the lash of a whip. He raised one hand to his throat and waved the other about, searching in vain for his opponent. Then he too fell to the ground, his lifeblood gushing onto the snow.

  Selene took in a quick breath. “Hades’ Helm of Invisibility.”

  “But why would my father kill his own men?” asked Philippe.

  “He wouldn’t. Someone’s using the divine weapons against them—which means Mars isn’t the Pater.” She threw the tablet back to Flint and pulled a gold arrow from her belt. Just then, a piercing whistle that only she could hear almost brought her to her knees. “Paul!” she gasped.

  As one, the Athanatoi raised their weapons and rushed toward the castle.

  Then the earthquake began.

  Chapter 22

  EARTH SHAKER

  Only Selene stayed on her feet. The others tumbled to their knees with a cry, gripping the ground as it trembled beneath them. She turned to look back at the large yacht offshore. Four figures emerged from the cabin and headed toward the stern. They threw a rubber raft overboard and clambered inside. She was just about to call out to her brothers to get ready for an attack when another figure emerged in the prow, holding aloft a staff of some sort. Its three prongs shone like ivory in the moonlight.

  “Get up!” she hollered. “We’ve got to get Paul!”

  Philippe bounced to his feet and hauled his stepfather up beside him.

  Dash rose, feet spread like a surfer as the earth continued to shiver beneath him. “Look!” he cried, pointing toward the harbor.

  “He’s got Poseidon’s trident, I know—”

  “No, look!”

  The water, flat and calm a moment before, now receded quickly from the shoreline, as if the Earth Shaker himself had pulled a plug in the middle of the harbor. Selene knew they had only a few minutes before the water reversed course and flooded the entire island.

  A tsunami.

  “They know we’re here,” Philippe moaned. “They’ll either kill us with that wave or capture us with whatever other weapons they’ve got!”

  Selene watched the rubber raft speed toward shore, even as the harbor began to swirl and heave. Three men leaped into the water and waded toward land. All wore black body armor and SWAT helmets with reflective face shields, but no insignia.

  The armored men stopped for a moment onshore and looked directly at the gods’ hiding place behind the library.

  “They’ve seen us now,” Philippe said, his voice a panicked whisper. “If they’ve got the trident, they could have anything! Zeus’s thunderbolt!”

  Selene gestured sharply for silence and raised her own weapon. From here, she couldn’t tell if the men were Athanatoi or mortal, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She nocked a gold arrow to her bowstring.

  The armored men scrambled up a bank of loose boulders to reach the road. Behind them, the water swelled, climbing steadily up the shoreline. The men passed the two downed guards without a second look and entered Castle Williams.

  “See,” Selene said. “They’re not coming for us at all. Paul’s the one in
danger. Now come on!” She stepped toward the castle just as the first massive swell of water reached the road like a ripple from a giant’s skipping stone. She sent a futile prayer to Poseidon to make it stop, but it only came faster, a rushing, inexorable tide that swept her and all her family off their feet.

  The wall of water never crested—it merely crushed her to the ground. The frigid December ocean chased the blood from her limbs and stiffened every muscle, driving away what little breath she had left. She tumbled in a swirling mass of splintered branches and broken lumber that sliced at her flesh. The wave ripped the arrow from her hand—the gold shaft spun in the water, just out of reach, then streaked off into the blackness.

  Somehow, she managed to keep hold of her bow, slinging it over her body and leaving both her arms free to stroke for the surface. She gasped air, thinking the worst was over. But the water funneled her relentlessly down the road. She caught a brief glimpse of Philippe and Dash, both clinging to a lamppost, their faces wet and scared in the halo of light.

  She tried swimming toward them, but she might as well have fought the flow of time itself. She flailed anyway, unwilling to surrender. Bobbing and spinning like a cork, she looked desperately for something to grab on to before the water swept her off the island entirely. The bodies of the two guards floated past like logs in a flume. The water grew ever deeper, the wave more swollen.

  Now she floated well above the first floor of the solid brick buildings. Castle Williams itself, made to withstand the direct hit of a cannonball, also remained unmovable. But the wave ripped the derelict library off its foundations with a mighty crash of snapping wood and breaking glass. The building revolved, revealing Flint, his duffel bag over his shoulder, clutching at a windowsill with one hand and holding his crutches in the other. The building spun faster, and even his massive strength couldn’t resist the tsunami’s force. It threw his body like a discus into the churning water.