by James Welsh
In the months that followed, Zeus returned to Metis’ cave again and again. They spent hours talking, the fire between them, the perpetual evening sky above them. Metis asked most of the questions during their times together – she asked about what was happening to the east, to the west, to the north, to the south. After all, her owls could not fly very far and steal very much – and so all she had to read was Greek even though she knew most of the world’s languages. And so Zeus, who could see everything in the world from Mount Olympus, told her. Metis laughed at some of the things, at some of the scandals, at the gods who sometimes tripped even though they were gods, at the comedy of life.
Still, there were the moments when she turned silent. Once, when he was talking about a famine just to the east, one that was drying up entire villages, Zeus stopped talking. He heard Metis sigh softly. Although the fire was dying, there was still enough light to see her crying. Zeus asked, “What’s wrong, my love?”
“It’s all so sad.”
“Well, you’ve lived long enough. You should already know that is how things work.”
“I do, it’s just…perhaps I read too much.”
“Read what?”
“Well, I do read a lot of tragedies. And they all end so sadly – like they should – but when I put down the parchment, I feel lifted. But when you tell me these things about death and misery, I can’t free myself from it.”
Zeus shrugged. “Maybe you should write about it. Trap it in a manuscript and hide it on the shelf. You’ll forget about it then. I’ve seen it work for others.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
“But surely you must have feelings for these mortals? Surely you must feel their pain when they do?”
Zeus looked at her as if she was absurd. “By the time I know about a mortal’s pain, they’re already gone. Those mortals, from the farmer to the king, they all live for a few decades then they die. I’ve lost count of how old I am. Should man love a fly, even though the bug lives for only a few weeks? That’s asking for too much, I think. No, no, I don’t want something just to lose it.”
Metis looked at him longingly. “All this time, I’ve never had anything to lose. How could you say that, Zeus? The only thing more immortal than you or me is us.”
Zeus looked visibly awkward. He tried to change the subject. “Why do you love the mortals then?”
“I love them because they’re weak.”
Zeus snorted. “Who could love such a thing?”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Metis said quietly. “Everything breathing is weak. It’s just that those mortals, they’re the only ones who seem to know it. They’ve buried their lovers, they’ve slaughtered soldiers on the battlefield, and they’ve insulted one another. They’re merchants – they know the price for everything.”
“What about the immortals then?”
“What about us? We’ve never seen us bleed. For all we know, we don’t have any blood. If that’s true, then we’re no better than the statues in our temples. How do we know how much we’re worth if we have never paid the price?”
“That will never be our problem. Stop talking like their philosophers, else you’ll finally turn old and gray.”
Metis looked at him shrewdly. “Don’t you feel the least bit guilty because of what you had done to them? You could at least show them some sympathy.”
Zeus scoffed, not because he thought the question was ridiculous, but because he didn’t have an answer. Metis was right – Zeus had ruined the mortals enough. It began in the early years of his reign, and the mortal world was growing wild and feral. Zeus needed someone to burn down the overgrown fields and to slaughter the fattened animals, and so he made man. Zeus gave every man four arms and four legs and two heads, all so that they could do more at the same time. And at first the plan worked perfectly – the world became tamed for the first time ever, organized, almost predictable. But when the men were done with the work, they turned to the last of the chaos: Mount Olympus. They saw the rough edges of the mountain, the sooty rock, the indulgent palace that sat atop the summit – they knew they could clean that mountain from the bottom up. And so they did, clambering upwards, polishing the mountain clean with their rags for clothes. When Zeus saw the scouring hordes approach the summit, he panicked. He was afraid of what mankind would see: the beautiful palace, the blinding jewelry, the constant food and drink. And his infinite palace was just too small for those guests. And so he grabbed a lightning-bolt from his quiver, squeezed the electricity in his fist until it thundered, and Zeus tossed it down at his invaders. The strike worked through the entire crowd, slashing all of the men into two – they tossed and tumbled down to the earth, their blood painting the sides of the mountain that they had just cleaned. Those who had survived the plunge never really survived. The survivors looked down at themselves, and they saw they each had only two arms, two legs, and one head left apiece. They wandered around the base of the mountain for days, lost, trying to find their better half but never finding it. And their journeys grew as they tried to find their lost companions, until they too became lost in their travels. And that was how mankind as we know it came to be, and only the true lovers, once together, could become the climbers of mountains.
All Metis craved was what those mortals wanted: to conquer mountainsides. And Zeus was standing in her way, just as he had to the mortals. Because, for every time Zeus visited, Metis would sit closer and closer to him, hungry for the first time in centuries, a time so long that she almost forgot feeling. But Zeus noticed – he may have not said anything, but he noticed – each time, he would look out at the setting sun and announce, “It’s time for me to leave. Have a good evening. I’ll be back again – no worries.”
At first this bothered Metis: Does he think I’m not beautiful enough?
Then it depressed her: He doesn’t think I’m beautiful enough.
Then it angered her: How can he think that I’m not beautiful enough?
And so Metis began to devise a plan. The familiar thrill crept back into her as she schemed. She had no one to trick for so long – and what if she was able to outwit Zeus? She had never been able to trick the god, so she never thought of what would happen after. She didn’t stop to think if she would even still love him. After all, she could never love the things she already knew – that was why she sped through all of the books her owls brought her, eagerly reading through the pages before dumping the manuscripts in the corner.
It happened one night. It was a bitter night, with black raindrops falling out of the midnight sky. The wind drove the rain sideways into the cave, upsetting the fire in the hearth, nearly extinguishing the stubborn flames. Metis was huddled in the corner, wrapped in her blankets, drinking some wine, watching the lightning streaks outside. The jagged skies suddenly darkened – someone was standing in the entrance, their silhouette tall and striking. It was Zeus, who had come to see her once more. Even though he had traveled in the pelting rain, his robes and skin were completely dry. Zeus was warm enough that he had never felt water – the drops would simply wisp away into steam. But Zeus was no man dying of thirst in the desert – he had no desire to ever taste water, to wash himself with water, to cool himself with water. After all, if he could, then he would be just like any other mortal – and only the ordinary ever die. Metis, meanwhile, was shivering and splattered with rain – true, she was a goddess, but she was no true Olympian. Only Olympians, isolated on their summit so far above the world, had the privilege – or the curse.
When Zeus arrived, the fireplace went from dying to roaring again. By the light, Zeus saw Metis huddled. He asked, almost concerned, “Are you okay?”
“I’m cold.”
“Here,” Zeus said, offering a hand. “Let’s sit together then.”
Metis took Zeus’ hand and simply said, “Okay.”
They both sat down on the lounge, Zeus’ warmth overwhelming her, drying
up the soaked chair. Still, Metis said through clenched teeth, “We should drink. It’ll warm me up, at least.”
“I’m fine – I don’t need a drink.”
“Please, don’t let me drink alone,” Metis insisted.
Reluctantly, Zeus agreed. And so Metis poured both of them cups of wine. What Zeus didn’t know, though, was that Metis’ cup had holes dug into the bottom. And so her cup slowly drained into a shallow pool at her feet. But, with Zeus enjoying his own drink and the cave dim enough, he didn’t notice the deceit as it was happening. And Metis put up a convincing act, giggling and slurring her words as if drunk herself. If anything, she had never felt so sober, not in all of her life.
Zeus was certainly drinking, though. He was never an excitable drunk, though – instead, his eyelids were becoming heavy, and his words trailing away, drowsy. And then, between blinking his eyes once, just once, the night became morning. And Zeus was sprawled on the floor, blankets heaped on top of him. And next to him, a naked Metis was still sleeping, her milky back to him.
Startled, Zeus leapt up from the floor, his head throbbing. He tried to remember what happened the night before, but he couldn’t remember much. He could remember giggling – he could remember friction. And that was perhaps all he needed to remember.
As Zeus stumbled away, Metis woke up from the noise and looked quietly at the retreating god, smiling a little – she had finally tricked him, after all of that time. She controlled him now.
And it was true – Metis did control Zeus, but it was not in the way she thought. No, no, Zeus was scared for a reason larger than Metis, larger than him even. As he stood at the edge of the cave’s entrance, the cliff crumbling beneath his weight, him taking large gulps of seawater air to calm his nerves, Zeus thought back to a moment long before, when everything changed.
Zeus had made the mistake that countless souls – immortal or otherwise – have made before him, and will make after him. Once, as a much younger god, he was trampling through the forest early one morning, when the dawn’s light caught in the mist and everything glowed – when he heard a low, steady chanting. Curious, he took his sword and cut through the thick foliage of the forest, drawn to the music of voices. Suddenly, the branches disappeared and he entered a clearing. Across the sea of mist, he could see a trio of heads bobbing up and down, like drowning sailors. Even from that distance, even through the fog, Zeus saw that two of the mysterious people were swaying their heads from side to side, humming loudly and singing in a language he had never heard before. The third person was playing what looked like a pan flute, the musical puffs of air blasting across the clearing. As Zeus stepped forward, the one playing the pan flute stopped, having noticed him – the other two stopped their chant when the music ended.
Far from annoyed that someone had interrupted their chorus, the one who had been playing the pan flute said sweetly, “We have been expecting you, Zeus.”
When Zeus had heard the high, sweet voice, he thought that the person was an old woman, perhaps a priestess for some obscure religion, given their strange music and the heavy robes they wore. But, as Zeus edged closer, he thought that they were men instead – their arms were not slender, but built crudely like a man’s, and they even had beards, the long whiskers rustling in the wind, their beards grazing their exposed breasts. Zeus felt a rare moment of sickness claw up his throat – he couldn’t tell if those old women were actually old men. Their looks confused Zeus, made him nervous – he took a sudden step backwards.
“Oh, don’t be afraid of us now, Zeus,” one of the others said soothingly. “We’ve been kind enough to wait for you.”
Zeus, not understanding, said slowly, “You’ve been waiting for me? And how did you know my name? Who are you?”
Zeus said that before he realized the significance of those words. Those women, or men, or whatever they were, they knew that he was Zeus. There was a reason why, when he walked amongst the mortals in their world, he cloaked himself as one of them. Because if they knew that they were looking at an immortal like Zeus, even the knowledge of something so brilliant would be their end. Zeus had used that as a weapon only once before – when he was visiting a village disguised as an old man, some youths were taunting him, throwing rocks at him as he shuffled along. Angry, Zeus suddenly snatched one of the rocks in mid-air and crumbled it in his hands like a loaf of bread. When the youths saw the phenomenon, there was a bright flash – when the light vanished a moment earlier, the bullies were nothing more than a pile of dust, already vanishing in the thick wind. But these creatures here, they understood what he was, and they didn’t die – only an immortal could do that, yet Zeus had never seen that strange trio before.
“Why, we know everything, Zeus,” one of the creatures laughed. “Well, we know everything that will happen, anyway.”
Zeus was slow at understanding. But, he drew his breath when he realized what they meant. He asked quickly, “Are you the…”
“Fates? Yes, my dear, we are,” the trio said at once, as if they knew what to rehearse. “And we know that you have been looking for us, even if you haven’t been.”
He had only heard stories about the trio of Fates. They camouflaged so well into the world, that they only revealed themselves when they wanted. He knew enough that they decided the fates of every living thing in the world. They foresaw the future through the magical strings they wove, seeing triumph in the strands, disaster in the frays. And when someone had reached the end of their life, the Fates would pull that soul’s string tight, before cutting it with their jagged scissors. They were the weavers of every story, where a breath was a word, and a heartbeat was ink on the page. And the young Zeus was intrigued - after all, his meeting them was during the first year of his long reign as King of Everything. It was not long before, actually, that he had overthrown his father and his rotted elders, their decaying smell still burning like incense in the palace atop Mount Olympus. He wanted to know what the future held for him, if the years ahead would be as chaotic as the years before. That was why he took a deep breath and asked the question he would later regret:
“What will become of me?”
The Fates looked at each other, their smiles growing wider until they consumed themselves. The one, whom Zeus guessed was the eldest by the length of her beard, asked, “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes.”
The Fates said nothing else, but they began to circle Zeus slowly. While they walked leisurely, their arms began to jump and dance wildly, their heads began to swing at unnatural angles, their tongues hanging out of their mouths, panting. The circle began to close in around him, and Zeus’ heart, hidden miles inside of him, began to beat faster and louder until he could hear it, for the first time actually. The Fates began muttering a string of words. At first, Zeus had trouble understanding them, but as they got closer, Zeus realized that they were repeating the same verse, over and over again:
“Our Zeus, we know that you will die
like the thirsty man who drowns,
or the hungry man who bursts with feast.
You will have a child, a brilliant one, a generation
worthy of light – but be warned, your heir
will be the one who draws your final breath.
You will trade your throne for your own death.
Understand your fate, but never mourn,
because your birth was always your end,
and your end was always your birth.”
The Fates were close enough that Zeus could taste their breath: it tasted like worms and raw meat and a smear of blood. Zeus began to feel sick once again. They were close enough that Zeus could see their eyes glazed, their faces sticky with sweat, their brown stumps of teeth that barely glittered through their matted beards. Zeus closed his eyes, hoping that would be enough to block out the dead side of the world. It worked – when he opened his eyes a moment later, the Fates were gone, the mist was gone from the clearing
, and the morning sun had finished its rise in the sky.
But Zeus was still shaken from that morning. The words that the Fates said danced in his mind, even years later. He thought them over, again and again, until he realized what the Fates had prophesized: that his own child would overthrow and kill him. Zeus desperately thought of a way out of the doom, but there was nothing to do but isolate himself from love. And that was why, in the years that followed, he lost his intimacy with Hera. That was why he tried to find a replacement for his wife, searching amongst the most beautiful the world had to offer, but he still saw ugliness in every woman’s eyes. He knew their embrace would smother him, he knew their kiss would bite him, he knew their love would ruin him.
And, even worse, he was alone in his fears. There was no one he could go to for advice – no one would believe that he had actually met the Fates, no one would imagine that a god could possibly die. Even Zeus’ father Cronus did not die in the coup – Zeus had merely clasped his father’s hands in iron and thrown him into the Underworld in disgrace. To admit that he, a god, could die – did that mean he was no longer a god? Was he already ruined before he was defeated? Was he now at the mercy of anyone who knew the secret? And so he did not tell a soul, not even his own wife, whom he once trusted with everything. Instead, he took to the forest more and more, his hunts becoming obsessive, as he tried to find the Fates once more, to demand clarity. What could he do to reverse his destiny? Or was it too late? Had he already tripped, and was he now falling on his sword? But the Fates always hid from him, no matter how much Zeus begged as he trudged through the forests – although he could have sworn he heard their wicked laughter one night as he walked.
And what was he to do now? If he had actually conceived with Metis, his end was near. But that was when the fear began to slip and drain from Zeus, and the arrogance took hold once again. He turned slowly to face Metis, who was now sitting up on the cave floor, not bothering to cover herself with her blankets. As he stepped towards Metis, he smiled, but a dangerous idea had already gripped him.
There was one thing that can be done.
Zeus said calmly, “That was a night I’ll remember.”
“I hope so.”
“It’s a shame, though.”
Metis was confused. “Why’s that?”
“Because now the rest of the day will feel like a disappointment.”
Metis giggled. “Did you have plans?”
Zeus frowned as he thought. “Well…I was thinking that we could take a walk along this creek I know.”
Metis looked uneasy.
“Oh, don’t be frightened!” Zeus said, offering his hand to Metis. “It is not that far from here. And it’s too beautiful to miss.”
Metis did not take Zeus’ hand. “You know I can’t leave this cave. What if I fall?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll make sure you won’t,” Zeus said, although he already knew her answer to that.
“No, I can’t.”
Zeus sighed and tried his best to look disappointed. Then, his eyes lit up. “There is something.”
“What?” Metis asked.
“You can transform. Can you still change into a mosquito?”
Surprised, Metis said, “I didn’t know you knew about that.”
“I know a lot, my love.”
“Well then, you’ll know how dangerous that is. Just think of the winds along the cliffs! It’s enough to crush a bird against the rock, let alone a tiny mosquito. And what if a bird or some other creature eats me? Did you want that on your conscience?”
Zeus looked sad. “I remember you not being so afraid. What happened?”
Metis motioned to the starry ceiling, the atlas on the floor, and the curve of books around the cavern. “Sometimes, a cave is all the world you need.”
“No, it’s not,” Zeus insisted. “And you’ll be fine. You don’t need to worry.”
“Why? How can you guarantee it?”
Zeus thought a moment. “I’ll transform too. I’ll turn into my eagle – I’ll watch you – I’ll make sure no one or nothing hurts you.”
Metis looked at him for a long moment before sighing. “I guess I’ll have to believe you.”
Zeus smiled. “You guess?”
Metis was serious, though. “I have no one else to believe but you.”
As Metis began her quick transform – shrinking down towards the floor, her two legs splitting and withering into six thin limbs, her arms turning transparent and flattening into wings – Zeus watched, fascinated. He somehow felt wrong for watching her transformation, but the thrill kept him looking. And then, Metis was no more – where the beautiful goddess once sat, there was now only a buzzing mosquito, hovering around Zeus.
Zeus then began his own transformation, forming himself into his familiar eagle. He too began to shrink and deform, his arms twisting into wings, his face sharpening into a beak, feathers bursting out of his skin like hair. His transformation was quick as well – in a few moments, a proud eagle strutted along the cave floor, peering around, looking for its mosquito. The bug landed on the floor in front of Zeus the eagle, finally ready to leave after centuries inside of the cave.
And that was when the eagle suddenly leaned forward, plucked up the mosquito with its beak, and ate it, all in one blur.
Zeus could feel Metis writhing about inside of him, her sudden shock turning into an instinct for freedom. Still, Zeus forced her down his throat, all in the hope of ending the curse before it began. He suddenly shook as the mosquito got its chance for revenge, biting on the inside of his throat as it plummeted to the stomach. Zeus waited a few moments, then he began his transformation back to a man. And there he was, laying down, his naked body warm, even against the cold cave floor.
Still, Zeus shook as he gathered up his clothes and dressed himself. Metis was gone, but she had left her bite behind – Zeus could feel his throat swell and begin to pulse almost. He shook his head violently, as if that would cure the terrible itch. If anything, the itch seemed to writhe and rise – like a spider, it seemed to crawl up his spine, before burrowing itself into Zeus’ mind. Zeus suddenly felt a second, even sharper pain as the bite latched onto his brain. The headache was instant and overwhelming – it felt as if his head was expanding, ready to burst at any moment. Zeus had never felt such a headache before – even as a god, he had his moments of sickness. True, no earthly thing could slash him, make him draw blood, but a god could only stop hurt coming from outside of him. The pain inside of him was always ready.