Hellenic Immortal

by Gene Doucette

  She sighed. “Oh, all right. The schism is simple enough. The majority of our people still believe Gordon, but he has perverted the Mysteries into something militant. I didn’t fully realize how bad it was—how insane he’d gotten—until recently. I tried to re-establish the Mysteries independently, and partly succeeded, which is why I have loyal satyrs here and in the city. But to really stop him, I knew I had to find the man he’s pretending to be.”

  “When did he take the kiste?”

  “Six months ago. He’s going to hold the ceremonies in America with it for the first time. And he’s introducing a new ceremony. Adam, you have to help us stop him.”

  “From corrupting the mysteries? I think it’s too late for that.”

  “The new ritual is my concern. And recovering the kiste, of course.”

  “This will be soon?”

  “Boedromion ends in two days. We have a flight leaving in the morning.”

  I stared into her dark eyes, not at all liking the sudden urgency in her request. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

  She sighed. “The new ceremony . . . Gordon thinks he is going to awaken a god.”

  “Which god are we talking about?”

  “A nymph.”

  “Really.” The nymph, as I understood it, was purely mythological. But I wasn’t going to be taking a chance on being wrong, not with an oracle predicting my death at the hand of a god. “I think I’ll stay in Athens. I like it here.”

  “I was afraid you might feel that way,” she admitted.

  “Look, it’s . . . I mean I didn’t even know the Mysteries were still active until . . .”

  “I understand. But you need to understand something. The prophecies foretold of this day. You have to be there, and you will be. That’s why Hippos and his men have orders to keep you in here until our flight. If you try and leave, they will do you harm.”

  “And who gave them those orders?”

  “I did.” Still very much naked as she rolled onto her back, uncovered from the waist up and almost daring me to be angry with her while looking so appealing.

  “I’m a prisoner?” I clarified.

  “You are,” she agreed, “but you have a chance to be an extremely satisfied prisoner. We have until morning.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “If you’re angry, you’re welcome to take it out on me in whatever way you deem appropriate.”

  I considered all the ways I could try and escape, but none of them seemed all that viable, especially since at minimum I’d have to get my pants on first. And sex now, for near-certain death later, was a trade-off I was not entirely unfamiliar with.

  So I got into the bed.

  * * *

  From The Tragedy of Silenus. Text corrected and translated by Ariadne

  THE FESTIVAL OF ELEUSIS HAS ENDED. SILENUS STANDS WITH THE HIEROPHANT.

  SILENUS:

  GRANT ME AUDIENCE, GREAT HIEROPHANT. AND QUICKLY.

  MY LORD APPROACHES.

  HIEROPHANT:

  YOU HAVE IT, SILENUS THE WANDERER. DO YOU QUESTION OUR CEREMONY?

  SILENUS:

  I DO NOT; IT WAS RARE AND BOLD. TWO GODS ANSWERED YOUR CALL.

  NO OTHER EVENT CAN BOAST SUCH A THING.

  HIEROPHANT:

  YOU LOOK FEARFUL. HOW CAN I UNBURDEN YOU?

  SILENUS:

  THE TWO GODS THAT GRACED YOUR FESTIVAL WERE GODS DIVIDED.

  HIEROPHANT:

  THIS IS SO.

  SILENUS:

  CAN I ASK YOU WHY?

  HIEROPHANT:

  THE GODS COME AND GO OF THEIR OWN INITIATIVE. IT IS NOT MY PLACE TO ASK.

  ONE LEAVES AND A SECOND ARRIVES AND IT IS SO BECAUSE IT IS SO.

  I HAVE NO COMMAND OVER EITHER.

  SILENUS:

  TRULY I UNDERSTAND THIS, FOR WHILE I CARRY THE WORDS OF DIONYSOS

  HIS SCHEDULE IS HIS ALONE.

  HIEROPHANT:

  THEN WHY DO YOU QUESTION SUCH A THING?

  SILENUS:

  WHEN I FIRST CAME TO ELEUSIS MANY YEARS PAST IT WAS SAID

  THE GODDESS HERSELF CAME AND STAYED FOR THE WHOLE OF THE FESTIVE MONTH.

  AND I CAME MYSELF AND SAW IT WAS TRUE, AND I MET HER AND ASKED FOR HER BLESSING.

  HIEROPHANT:

  AND DID SHE GIVE IT TO YOU?

  SILENUS:

  SHE DID, AND I WAS GREATLY ENRICHED. THIS IS NOT MY COMPLAINT.

  I NOW FIND SHE DEPARTS BEFORE THE FINAL NIGHT AND MORE

  BEFORE MY LORD ARRIVES. THUS, IS THE CEREMONY SPLIT.

  HIEROPHANT:

  IT WAS EVER SO. THE MYSTERIES CELEBRATE ALL LIFE CULTIVATED,

  AS TENDED BY DEMETER’S LOVING HAND.

  YOURS IS A LORD OF ANOTHER DOMAIN.

  HE HAS NO PLACE IN OUR FESTIVAL SAVE FOR THE CONCLUDING BACCHANAL.

  SILENUS:

  NO, HIEROPHANT, IT WAS NOT ALWAYS SO.

  HIEROPHANT:

  THEN YOU ARE TRULY OLDER THAN MY EYES CONTEND.

  SILENUS:

  INDEED I AM.

  ‘ERE DIONYSOS DID APPEAR, DEMETER SAW THE RITUAL’S END. THIS IS TRUTH.

  HIEROPHANT:

  IT MUST HAVE BEEN A VERY DIFFERENT CEREMONY.

  SILENUS:

  INDEED FOR DEMETER, WHILE RADIANT, IS NOT AS BOISTEROUS BY HALF AS MY LORD.

  HIEROPHANT:

  I AGREE.

  SILENUS:

  SINCE NO MATTER WHEN MY DIONYSOS ARRIVES

  DEMETER HASTILY EXITS, I ASK WHAT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS:

  WHY DOES SHE AVOID HIM?

  HIEROPHANT:

  I DO NOT KNOW THAT SHE DOES.

  DOES DIONYSOS SEND YOU TO ASK THIS QUESTION?

  SILENUS:

  IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING

  FOR IT WAS I THAT TOLD HIM TO SEEK HER OUT HERE.

  MANY YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE

  AND MANY ARE THE TIMES I HAVE GREETED HIM WITH,

  “MY LORD, YOU HAVE ONLY JUST MISSED HER.”

  I FEAR SHOULD I RESPOND IN THIS WAY ONCE MORE MY SUFFERING WILL BE GREAT.

  AND JUSTLY SO.

  HIEROPHANT:

  BUT I DO NOT KNOW THE ANSWER.

  COULD YOUR LORD PERHAPS ASK HER HIMSELF?

  SILENUS:

  YOU HAVE MISSED MY POINT.

  HIEROPHANT:

  BUT THERE IS DIONYSOS NOW!

  (DIONYSOS ENTERS)

  DIONYSOS:

  SILENUS, I WOULD SPEAK TO YOU.

  HIEROPHANT:

  GREETINGS, MIGHTY DIONYSOS.

  DIONYSOS:

  AND GREETINGS TO YOU, NOBLE HIEROPHANT.

  PLEASE DO NOT STAND BETWEEN MYSELF AND MY HERALD.

  THAT MAY BE THE MOST PERILOUS LOCATION FOR YOUR FEET

  IN THE WHOLE OF THE REALM.

  HIEROPHANT:

  THEN I MUST TAKE YOUR LEAVE.

  (HIEROPHANT EXITS)

  SILENUS:

  MY LORD, THE GODDESS WAS HERE.

  HAD YOU ONLY ARRIVED SOONER.

  DIONYSOS:

  HAD I ONLY ARRIVED SOONER SHE WOULD HAVE LEFT SOONER.

  NO, THIS IS NOT HAPPENSTANCE.

  IT IS NOT FATE. IT IS NOT THE WHIMSY OF GODS

  FOR WE ARE THE ONLY GODS IN CONTENTION AND I AM NOT FEELING WHIMSICAL,

  ALTHOUGH PERHAPS DEMETER IS.

  SILENUS:

  FORGIVE MY CAUSTIC TONE

  BUT IS IT POSSIBLE DEMETER DOES NOT LIKE YOU?

  DIONYSOS:

  YOU SPEAK AS IF WE WERE CHILDREN.

  SILENUS:

  CHILDREN MIMIC ADULTS IN PLAY. AND SOMETIMES THE OPPOSITE HOLDS.

  IT IS NO LESS TRUE WITH GODS, I’D WAGER.

  DIONYSOS:

  TRULY, SILENUS, YOUR WISDOM IS AS HARD TO PREDICT AS A STORM.

  BUT THIS IS NOT SUCH A SIMPLE DYNAMIC.

  I HAVE ENDURED MANY LIFETIMES, AND ALL AROUND ME HAS CHANGED.

  ALL BUT HER.

  BUT NEVER IN ALL OF THESE YEARS HAVE I SOUGHT HER OUT.

  I DID NOT NEED TO, FOR SHE WAS FOLLOWING ME.

 
SILENUS:

  AND YOU DID NOT LET HER CATCH YOU?

  DIONYSOS:

  SHE DID NOT WISH TO CATCH ME. ONLY TO WATCH.

  MANY WERE THE DAYS I WOULD TURN ABOUT

  AND MY EYES WOULD SETTLE ON HER VISAGE.

  ALWAYS FROM AFAR.

  I CAN NEVER CLOSE THE DISTANCE ‘ERE SHE DISAPPEARS AGAIN.

  SILENUS:

  SO, IT IS SHE THAT HAS SOUGHT YOU OUT.

  DIONYSOS:

  BUT ONLY AS A SAILOR LOOKING ON A DISTANT SHORE.

  TO YOUR POINT: IF SHE DOES NOT CARE FOR ME,

  DOES NOT WISH ME TO SPEAK TO HER OR SEEK HER OUT,

  WHY DOES SHE FOLLOW ME?

  YOU WILL FIND ME THIS ANSWER.

  SILENUS:

  HOW?

  IN ALL YOUR DAYS YOU HAVE NOT FOUND THIS ANSWER.

  DIONYSOS:

  BUT YOU ARE NOT I. YOU WILL FIND HER, AND ASK THESE QUESTIONS.

  AND YOU WILL RETURN TO ME WITH HER ANSWER.

  SILENUS:

  IF I CANNOT FIND HER? OR IF SHE IS FOUND BUT UNSWAYED?

  DIONYSOS:

  THEN DO NOT RETURN TO ME AT ALL.

  “I HAVE RETURNED FROM THE NORTHERN CLIMES,” THE GOD SAID TO SILENUS. “WHERE THE WOMEN ARE BEAUTEOUS AND PLENTIFUL.” BUT WHEN SILENUS LAUGHED AND ASKED WHY THE GOD DID NOT TAKE SILENUS WITH HIM TO SUCH A WONDROUS PLACE, THE GOD SHOOK HIS HEAD. “YOUR KIND HAS NEVER SEEN COLD SUCH AS THEY HAVE THERE. YOU THAT LIVE IN THE HEARTH OF THE WORLD SHOULD NOT VENTURE OUTSIDE IT.”

  From the archives of Silenus the Elder. Text corrected and translated by Ariadne

  We were standing twenty yards north of the road that had formerly been known as Route 20, but was now more properly recognized as merely another treeless flat space in an expanse of growing snowdrifts. I was leaning up against a tree and trying to accustom myself to the harsh surroundings and to the pair of boots I’d been handed an hour earlier. The boots didn’t fit. I give them credit for trying, but my feet are about a half-size smaller, and there wasn’t anything anybody could do about it now, given how far away we were from the nearest shoe store.

  Ariadne had probably been the one to assess my foot size. Of the four of them, she was the only one who’d met me prior to Athens. For the parka, the snow pants, the gloves, the hat, and the ski goggles, she’d been pretty much dead-on, just not the feet.

  I do enough hiking outdoors to know that it’s never a good idea to put on a brand-new pair of boots right before going on a long walk. One has to break them in first, or risk major blisters. Granted, most of my hiking days pre-date the advent of footwear, but when it came to rocky or snowy terrain, I was never one to shy away from innovation. And I always made sure the damn things fit.

  One might think I’d have other things to complain about. I was, after all, still a captive and heading to certain doom, if the last thing I heard from Cassandra Jones was in any way accurate. Worse, I hadn’t found time to have sex with Ariadne since we had left Athens.

  “We go northwest from here,” Hippos shouted, in Greek. He was holding a small GPS device, which I presumed worked in a similar fashion to the one in Mike’s car.

  Since we’d arrived in the States, Hippos had spoken English almost exclusively. Part of it was probably force of habit—he had been to the U.S. on more than one occasion—and part of it was to help Staphus and Dyanos, neither of whom were fluent and thus needed all the exposure they could get. The two of them were mainly there to guard me, so far as I could tell.

  The heading we were electing to follow took us on a path diagonal to the storm, which was blowing in from the northwest and carried with it a high velocity mixture of snowflakes and ice pellets. Something I picked up on long ago was that the bigger the flakes, the shorter the storm. These were tiny flakes, so we were in for a long day.

  With Hippos leading the way, Ariadne following close behind, and me flanked in front and back by my two satyr guards, we started marching uphill through the trees. We were making our own path rather than following one that had been established by the park, which made it slow-going and rife with various, and somewhat literal, pitfalls. That’s the problem with any forest floor; tree roots and water erosion combine to make for a consistently uneven walking surface.

  “Do you know how far we have to go?” I asked Dyanos—who was behind me—in Greek. He was wearing a parka with the hood up and pulled tightly against his face. The parka was nearly as ill fitting as my shoes, not quite covering his wrists. He actually looked sort of funny, and if I knew him a bit better, I’d have said so.

  “Half a day’s march,” he shouted, because you have to shout to be heard in a blizzard.

  “Half a day under what conditions?” I asked. “Was snow factored in?”

  He didn’t bother to respond.

  Self-evidently, the prophet had made no predictions regarding the weather, as the storm was a surprise to everyone concerned. I give them credit for the winter gear—it was September, in the North Cascades—but their plan clearly did not have enough time built into it. We were going to be hard-pressed to reach the ceremony before all the fun began. And that was fine with me.

  Another indication that this plan wasn’t working out was sitting in a snow bank on the road behind us. We were met at the airport—on the tarmac, as we never entered the terminal—by an Econoline van. It was the kind of vehicle you take if you’re following the Grateful Dead, and less than ideal in adverse weather conditions as opposed to, say, an SUV. With Hippos driving, we’d barreled along Interstate 5 in our van and directly into the teeth of the storm, which turned from rain to sleet to snow as we went. By the time we reached the turnoff for Route 20, we were the only vehicle on the road. And that is almost never a good sign.

  But a far more ominously bad sign came when we reached the entrance to the park proper, just past Marblemount. It was there that we discovered the rest of Route 20 was closed.

  The large signs posted on both sides of the roadway indicated that every season, usually sometime in November, the highway passage through the center of the North Cascades National Park is closed down. The normal seasonal weather here was bad enough to make the roadway entirely impassible for six months out of the year. Incidentally, this is how you know you’ve put a road in a bad place.

  It was not November, but obviously somebody in the park office had seen the weather report (which we, equally obviously, had not) and concluded that shutting down the road early would be prudent. A large metal rail had been pushed across the road, blocking the way.

  But Hippos would not be deterred. He and Staphus climbed out, and with a little work, managed to reopen the road by pushing the rail aside. I suppose it was foolish for the park rangers to not have a car out at the barrier, but conversely who would be stupid enough to ignore a warning like that? Other than us?

  We made it another ten miles or so before the predictable happened and Hippos lost control of the van. To his credit, he had been able to keep us on the road in very bad conditions for nearly three hours before this happened, and in a fairly judgmentally impaired state. (From Athens to Seattle, we’d been traveling for twenty-four hours and I don’t think he got any sleep at all. I had; I slept on the plane. But satyrs don’t need much sleep.) We skidded and fishtailed along the empty, snow-covered road before crashing softly into a snow bank on the northern side, which was good as the southern side consisted of a steep drop directly into the Skagit River. Equally good, he missed all the trees. But the van ended up stuck where it had come to rest.

  This had put Hippos in an even fouler mood, if such a thing were possible.

  * * *

  We got in a good hour of off-path hiking before hitting a real trail. This was a cause for celebration, and a chance to stop for a minute and get a second wind.

  Ariadne sat down in the snow against a tree and pulled back her hood to shake some of the sweat loose from her long, black hair. I sat down beside her.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Azure Lake,” she sai
d quietly. “It’s not far from the base of Mount Terror.”

  “Mount Terror? You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope.” She reached inside her voluminous parka and emerged with a bottle of water. It took an effort to get the cap off with her snow-covered gloves, but she managed it eventually. “Have you ever walked through a storm like this?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I replied. “Before the glaciers over Europe receded, I spent a lot of time hunting in these conditions. Not the sort of thing you do unless you really have to.”

  She stared at me. “You lived through an ice age?”

  “I was born at the tail end of one, yeah, but in central Africa. Much nicer weather there.”

  “If we both survive this, you’ll have to tell me about it.”

  I laughed. “This was your idea. You make it sound like we’re both captives.”

  “I’m trying to save something important,” she insisted. “If I could do that from a warm bed, I would.”

  Hippos, who had been looking at a trail map that was being slowly taken apart by the wind, stepped up and said, “We take this path for a ways, until it branches off here.” He tried showing this to Ariadne on the map, but it was impossible to hold it still.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” she said.

  “Are you ready to continue?” He and the other satyrs didn’t look at all winded. Forest travel for them was in their blood, although their people didn’t historically have to deal with conditions like this.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He pulled her to her feet. I had to stand up on my own, a matter that my thighs disapproved of. That’s where you feel it when you walk in the snow—the thighs. The pain comes from having to lift your whole leg up just to take another step forward. I also had wind burn on parts of my face, and I hadn’t felt my fingers for more than an hour. About the only thing that was working out was that I’d lost feeling in both feet, which made the blistering from the oversized shoes less painful.