by James Welsh
Even though it had been decades since Alexander died, his legend shone brighter than he ever did. Even though it had been decades since Alexander saw the palace that drove him mad, the palace was still blinding in silver.
The summit of Mount Olympus was so far from our world that it rested in the clouds like an island in the churning seas. Like angry waves, the clouds were a sharktooth white, breaking against the shores of the mountainside, drowning with gravity. And although the summit was above all of the clouds and moisture, there was still a jungle on the mountaintop, the canopy thick and wet with an impossible rain that tasted almost like wine yet somehow even better.
Still, even on the crowded mountaintop, there was enough room for civilization to sprout. On the eastern side of the summit – where you can see the sunrise before the rest of the world – a great palace stood. It was the finest architecture in history, with silver splashed thickly on the walls like paint. The walls themselves shot up into the darkness, stunning into modesty anyone who saw them. The doors themselves were almost as tall, but they could swing open easier than breathing – even easier than thinking. The lucky few who walked through that first gate found themselves in a vast courtyard, a yard that somehow seemed larger than the entire summit itself. The grass was neatly trimmed and modern yet still plumper than carpet, pushing you up with every step you took – the closest anyone came to walking on air.
And that was before the guest even saw the palace. The palace was built with massive bricks of silver, with pride as the mortar. No one except the builders knew how those heaving stones were cut and placed there in the first place. Anyone who walked through the entrance of the palace went up marble steps into a massive chamber, where everything seemed to be supported by columns. The columns themselves were not made of marble or any kind of stone for that matter – odd, given the masonry everywhere. Instead, each column was a tree trunk, glazed in silver.
The trees seemed different, though. They used to be oak – King Zeus’ favorite kind – but now they were made of the goddess Athena’s olive. While oak may seem confident and sturdy, the olive tree looks leprous and twisted. But cultures have risen and fallen by the allure of olive oil – oak may seem strong, but there’s always a stronger wood.
Even with the change in the guard, the columns held up the life in the palace. It was all still life, though. A look in the theatre showed no one, no actor nor audience. It was there, in the sprawling space, that Apollo would busy himself with constant productions – he hosted a lot of plays by Sophocles, but he did have a weakness for Euripides. But the silence in the stands was louder than any play had ever been. Never, in the thousands of years since that stage had been built, had there even been a lull. It was all a strange feeling and feeling even stranger by the moment.
If one walked through the rooms in the palace, they were met with the same sight in each: all abandoned, all silent, all dead. The kitchen was busy, though, with the scampering of servants as they prepared their meals. The scent of lamb and ambrosia filled the air. There were some stains of splattered pomegranates on the floor. All of the servants were in a rush, more so than usual, ignoring the pomegranates crushed underfoot, ignoring their stained sandals. All of them were hurried, their russet hair tossing as they turned. All of them had the same pale eyes. All of them had the same, whispery voices, dark and murmuring. None of them wore a smile – all of them had forgotten how.
The only one different was the girl with hair like wet sand, only darker. Her face was full, her lips redder than martyrs. Like her servants, Hebe was usually all shy smiles, but some days have to be different. Some days just had to be different – otherwise, her job would always be the same. She had been serving the gods and goddesses atop Mount Olympus for longer than she could remember. And that was why she was the only servant who could sip from the cups she served, testing for poison that was never there. Like the mortals had faith in the gods, the gods had faith in her as well.
But even with her eternal youth, she still looked as stern as a mother as she snapped at a servant, “What are you doing? Don’t put any pomegranates on Demeter’s plate.”
The servant asked, “Why’s that?”
Hebe slapped the servant-girl across the face. The girl collapsed to the ground, spilling her plate on the floor, spraying the food across the polished stone.
“You foolish girl! Don’t question me. You know pomegranates are why Demeter’s daughter is enslaved to Hades. Do you want to remind her of her daughter, especially on a day like this? Must I do these things myself?”
The servant, tears in her eyes, said softly, “My apologies, milady.”
The usual softness fluttered back immediately in Hebe’s eyes, but this time the kindness felt ironic, wrenched even as she stood over the girl and pitied her. Hebe sighed and turned. She saw the rest of the servants in the room looking on silently. They had never seen her angry, but they knew why she was. Hebe said curtly, “Well, come then, this food needs to be served.”
Grabbing a plate full of lamb and a cup full of ambrosia, Hebe stiffly left the room. As she walked into the corridor, her skirt trailing on the floor, she took a quick drink of the cup she was holding, but not to check for poison. The servants all followed her with the rest of the food and drink, some of the girls helping up the one who had fallen.
As the girls walked through the long and twisting hallways of the palace, one might have wondered how they knew the way. True, they had lived in the palace since it was built. But there were hundreds, thousands, millions of rooms in the palace. There may have been an infinity of rooms for all anyone knew – no one had ever bothered to count. Although most of the rooms had never been entered, all were still richly furnished, torches crackling. All of the rooms looked the same, and they all looked beautiful. It was impossible for any mortal to tell them apart, let alone choose the most inspiring room.
Hebe and her fellow servants had no trouble finding the way, though – they never did. As they walked through the dim corridors, a packed ball of light hovered in the air. It sparked and popped and never stopped shining. It softly guided the pack of women through the arteries, towards the throne room, the thudding heart of the palace. As the women walked, none of them said a word – the only sound was their footsteps and the ambrosia splashing around in the full cups they held. They walked for what was hours to some, minutes to others, until they reached a wide olive door. The women held back at a distance while Hebe knocked – the door was so thick and stout that Hebe had to slam her fist to be heard.
A pause, then the door swung open by itself, and Hebe led the women into the throne room. As they stepped in, the ball of light zoomed away into the recesses of the palace, having heard lost footsteps somewhere else. The door closed softly behind the servants as they began serving the drinks to those inside. There is, perhaps, no way to describe the magnificence of the throne room. After all, the palace itself was the jewel of Olympus, and what does a jewel admire besides a mirror? Although the room was square enough, it had no edges, no sharp pinches where the walls met the floor or ceiling. Everything seemed sloping and forever, like the world’s horizon.
This marvel in the architecture, though, was obscured. Running the height and width of each wall, perpetual cascades of water showered down, all in spite of the fact that no piping ran the water to the room. Just as mysteriously, when the water splashed on the floor below, it did not leave a trace, not a pool, not even a drop. It just sank into the floor, or maybe it vanished altogether – no one had ever checked where the water went. The water itself was not the crystal-clear or murky waters the mortals below were used to, though. No, even the colors in this water were different, with the water magically dyed with thousands upon thousands of colors, colors that not even a mortal artist could see. As the water fell, the dyed drops assembled themselves, painting frescoes of their own. This water alone was the most beautiful painter in the world, its recreations moving and al
most alive, almost. Each of the scenes you saw in the water was a famous piece of history, from the first time mortals planted crops in their fields to the war where the Olympians overthrew the Titans. The moving frescoes were gorgeous, but necessary. Even gods can forget things in their long lives, and they needed to be reminded of what had made them.
Until that day, though, no one had ever seen the water paint a failure – they only saw, or chose to see, triumphs in the frescoes. But for all of the pain, all of the sorrow, all of the punishment that the gods dropped on the mortals and other creatures, the gods had never felt pain worthy of a painting. There was a new fresco, though – this one showed a beautiful woman weeping over a fallen bull in the woods, near a mountain stream. The bull’s blood was as silvery as that mountain stream reflecting the moonlight. Those who looked closer at the fresco swore that the weeping woman was crying silver also. But even they thought the whole scene was impossible – in spite of being in a room with painting water, in spite of the palace with millions of rooms, in spite of the green flourishing atop the highest, coldest mountain the world had ever seen.
Not to mention the view that they were treated to every morning. Of all the luxuries the royalty enjoyed, this view was second only to their immortality. On the east side of the room, there was no wall – instead, there was a sweeping look over the courtyard outside, a yard that seemed to stretch for miles, until it suddenly dropped over the edge of the summit. There was no looming wall there – instead, there was a wall of light that fell down every morning. When the sun rose, the gods saw the light in all of its glory. There were no clouds where they lived, there was no rain, no atmosphere at all. There was nothing but the sun, in all her aging beauty – there was nothing but the stars above, as bright and brilliant and impossible to count as the specks of salt in the afternoon ocean. This, all of this, was why the gods hardly looked down at the world they ruled. They lived so far above that the planet seemed packed and cramped. There was nothing the world had for the gods to look at – it was an isolation fit only for royalty.
But even with such a beautiful view, the gods and goddesses assembled in the room were too distracted to look outside. Instead, they took their drinks and talked quietly amongst themselves. Almost all of the Olympians had gathered in the throne room, a rare feat, one not seen since the gods learned about their cousin Prometheus giving the mortals fire.
There was Aphrodite, the goddess of lust and beauty and their pleasures. She was the daughter of Zeus and Hera – or at least Aphrodite thought. She wore the same black dress she always wore, dark enough for any man to get lost in. She had tugged the dress down enough so that her cleavage showed. Even blacker than her dress was her panther-dark hair – she was more the night than a goddess – she was all of the joys that hide inside the nights. She kept her lips pursed, though, because she knew that if she spoke, her sneer might shine through. There was so much hatred in the goddess who loved everything.
There was Apollo, the god of sunlight and truth. He stood the way a hawk perched on the branch: noble chest inflated, eyes sharp and guarding. Apollo – with his golden hair, his squinting eyes – was the one whose chariot pulled up the morning sun every day. As son to Zeus, twin brother to Artemis, he knew too well the need for duty. Zeus had once shown him the space beyond the world, with the anarchy of stars and gases scattered. Zeus told him that he was the guardian against the sky falling down on their orderly world. And even before that, just after being born actually, his first thought was to turn and free Artemis, his twin sister, who was strangled by her umbilical cord. And so he became the silent guardian of his unwilling sister.
Artemis stood a few feet away – the goddess of the hunt and virginity – daughter to Hera – the protection of Apollo. Her arms were thin, but held more power than any mortal man. Men thought that her golden bow was impossibly rigid, that the thick bow needed to give to pull, but Artemis knew better. Her muddy hair always seemed to rustle, and that was because, wherever she walked, a cool breeze followed. It was a breeze that hid her footsteps in the forest, it was a wind that soothed the prey she hunted. She was always quiet like her brother, although silence is a virtue of the hunt.
Ares stood apart from the group, as he always did – Ares, the god of war and the slaughter. He was a tremendous man who wore his armor like you wear clothing, although his breastplate weighed more than a boulder. But for all of his strength, Ares was far from impressive – he could see it in the other gods’ eyes, how they hated him, how squeamish and soft they were whenever he talked of blood and gore. Those were reasons, yes, but not the only ones – he was a sloppy god, one who never washed the spilt blood off his tunic, who never shaved his face, who never washed his hair. He never saw himself as being too feral – he saw the others as being too civilized. He couldn’t help but feel slighted just by looking at them. And so he distrusted them, just as much as they distrusted him.
Demeter – goddess of harvest and grain and seasons and change – stood away from the group, but for different reasons. Demeter, her dress greener than emeralds, her hair fiery with ruby, her tears all shades of sapphire, was weeping, but not just for the reason they all were there. A lady as aged and beautiful as a statue, Demeter wept because her daughter Persephone had vanished earlier. No one knew where Persephone went, but Demeter had a few ideas, each terrible than the thought before.
Hermes – god of traveling, as well as of thieves, invention, coins, and speeches – hovered a few feet above everyone else. With his winged sandals, he made sure to be taller than Ares, a poke of jest in spite of the occasion, in spite of his sadness. Sometimes, the floating sandals saved Hermes from angry hands. Hermes was always getting into trouble, the guilt usually showing through his grinning eyes and subtle smirk. The smile was gone now, and Hermes looked clouded like a funeral shroud. He tried distracting himself with his cane, twirling it slowly in his hands, the snakes wrapped around it hissing softly from being awoken.
And there was Hera, the beautiful goddess of women and marriage. She stood with her marble arms folded, her face still, her sunny hair shaded. She would have looked more gorgeous – she was once the most beautiful woman in the world – but her leprosy of jealousy over the years had left her face twisted with angst. That day actually was the first in awhile where she had felt a calmness calling. Strange how it took a tragedy to put her mind at ease – perhaps it was because she had found all of her answers, even the ones she was looking for.
The only ones not there were Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. All three were brothers, but in name only. It was rare when they saw each other, even rarer when they spoke with one another. The absence was expected of Poseidon, a dripping god with barnacles for a beard, a king who hadn’t stepped out from his ocean in years. Hades was forever busy with his duties as King of the Underworld, where he ruled over the dead. But Zeus, King of Everything, should have been there, but he simply wasn’t – and that was the chaos.
All of those gods and goddesses were assembled in that great throne room, all because they were the same. True, each of them was different in their own way – some had bad tempers, others were childish, others silent. Some were brunet, others blond, even red-haired. But all of them had that one feature that was their rope, their pull. All of them had the same eye color, that same silvery shade, pale, almost invisible. It was this glint of silver that proved their heritage – even when they were down in the mortal world, disguised as either human or wildlife, they still had those same, silvery eyes. Thankfully, none of the mortals knew this. The gods were afraid that, if the humans found out, they would be checking eye colors, to see who was a god or not.
But just like the humans were curious about their gods, the gods were curious about themselves as well. Sure, they could look at themselves easily enough in a mirror or the water’s reflection. Still, none of them knew what was inside of them. None of them knew because none of them had ever bled their ich
or, their god’s blood. Not once, not in their long lives of warfare and falls and fights, had any of them been cut or bruised. They were gods, they weren’t meant to bleed – if they did, then they were just like the humans they ruled over. All they knew was what they had been taught by their elders many milieus before: the same gray ichor in their eyes was the same that their hearts pumped. That was their knowledge of their own biology, yet none of them were sure if that was true or not.
Well, none of them except for Ares himself. Late one night, many years before, while Ares tossed and turned and tried to sleep on a cliff overlooking a rusty battlefield, he pressed his sword’s blade against the shoulder, curious as to what would happen. The day before, he had seen thousands of men being slashed and gouged open. As gruesome as their deaths were, they were still glorious. This made Ares jealous, and it sickened him that he was jealous of those mortals. Still, he needed to know if he could bleed like them. He needed to know if it was possible to become glorious too. And so he pressed the blade hard against his skin, pushing down until he felt the sudden sting. He yelped and the sword thudded in the soil at his feet. He massaged his shoulder with his fingers before examining them by his fire. His fingertips were drenched in liquid silver, the god’s ichor, the gray to the red that man bled. He had never seen ichor before, but still he immediately knew what it was. Ares had never told anyone that before – the old curiosity gave way to shame. What would the other gods say if they saw Ares with a cut? Would they look at him oddly? Would they jeer? Would they even cast him from Olympus – make him live with all of the mortals who bled also? What if Ares was more mortal than what he was told? None of the thoughts comforted Ares, and so he told nobody. It was the first and only time that he had ever felt any fear – Ares, a veteran of thousands of battles.
All of these gods and goddesses drank their ambrosia with a funeral silence, looking down, troubled. Some of them shot quick glances at the throne in the center of the room, facing the courtyard and the universe beyond. Once, there was a king who sat in that throne – a god with the beginnings of a beard – a god with thick, snowy hair – a god with that familiar jesting smile, whose robes were always white. All of the gods were used to seeing Zeus sit on that jeweled throne, wearing a blinding crown, using his sword as his scepter. They were all used to the commands that Zeus gave in his booming, baritone voice that echoed off the walls, sounding like a demanding crowd. They were all used to this thunder.
But where the father once sat, there was now a woman on that throne. Dressed in her traditional dark blues, Athena sat with her back straight as always, her full lips pressed, her curly chocolate hair wrapped loosely in a bun. She was the goddess of genius and inspiration, the goddess of courage and justice, daughter to Zeus and the exile Metis. She was a princess yet never meant to be queen – it showed in her scared eyes and her quick breaths. She looked on at all of the gods assembled before her – she could easily see the bitterness in their faces – she could see that they blamed her for the revolution. And while she couldn’t blame them, she could not blame herself. She could have never done what they accused her of – she loved her father too much and she knew that she could never live up to even his shadow.
Still, the law was law and meant to be followed – not even gods were strong enough to break the back of justice, even if they wanted.
Hera silently walked to the far end of the room, where the walls opened up into the rustic outside. At her feet, there was a deep, bubbling fountain, enclosed in silver. Hera sighed as she leaned in, dipping her hands in the water, up past her elbows. Slowly, she lifted a crown and a sword from the waters – the symptoms of royalty. As Hera passed each of the gods, walking towards the seated Athena, the deities bowed their heads, graceful, respectful. Even if they couldn’t love the wearer of the crown, it was the emblem for which they stood. They knew that Olympus would crumble the day that crown broke, and crowns don’t break if they’re made well.
Hera climbed the steps towards the throne, taking her time as she did so, almost as if she was stalling, almost. Still, she handed the gleaming sword to Athena, who took it as she had to. Hera placed the beautiful crown on top of Athena’s head. The sunlight that made its way into the room caught in the crown, turning the room into twisted bridges of rainbows.
Hera stood frozen for a moment, looking at this new Athena curiously, not sure what to make of her. She stepped backwards down the steps and took her place amongst the other Olympians. She took a cup of ambrosia and lifted it up to Athena. She said:
“Athena, my queen, may you rule as brilliantly as we will serve you.”
The other gods repeated the pledge, a rare moment of harmony.
Athena did not say a single word. She did not even look down at the Olympians beneath her – instead, she stared blankly ahead, into the deep courtyard. Part of her wanted to cry, but she had been too charitable with her tears earlier, and now she felt dry the way a desert must.
Somewhere – Athena wasn’t sure if it came from inside the palace or out in the courtyard – somewhere an owl hooted. It was a long, strong vowel that filled the empty Athena, almost drowning her. For the first time in awhile, Athena actually felt as if she was made of something. The owl’s hoot animated her, loosening the veins in her still arms. Still, while the bird’s cry reminded her to keep brave, it made her miss the eagle’s call she was so used to hearing before.
Book 2