Pale Eyes

by James Welsh

“It’s about time you showed up. You also have a feather in your hair,” Hermes said lazily.

  “I do?” Athena reached into her hair and pulled out an owl feather, left from the transformation. “Thank you for waiting for me.”

  Hermes shrugged. “It’s the least I could do. Besides, that servant didn’t…”

  “Hebe. Her name’s Hebe.”

  “Right, sorry. Well, Hebe didn’t tell me what this meeting was about. She just told me to meet you here. Suspense is a murder.”

  “I wanted it to be that way,” Athena sighed. “If she knew what was going on, then someone else can find out from here.”

  Hermes smirked. “Ah, so you don’t trust her then?”

  “Oh, I trust her. I just don’t trust other people. The less Hebe knows, the less danger she can get herself into.”

  They were on an islet just off coast of the mainland. Athena had seen the island many times in the past when she flew up and down the coastline on a warm spring day. When she landed on the gravely soil, though, she realized that the island looked much better from the air. The island was so pitifully small that, no matter where you went, you heard the sound of the surf rolling over the shore. The soil was rough and unforgiving, and few trees, or plants even, grew there. The island was little more than a sore on the beautiful face of the sea.

  Hermes, who was lounging against a boulder, pushed up his wide-brimmed hat so that he could see her better and asked, “So, what’s this all about? Why are we here?”

  Athena pointed behind her. “That’s why.”

  Hermes looked past Athena and simply said, “Oh.”

  The island they were sitting on wasn’t the only one off the coast. An archipelago of islands surrounded them, most of the islands even smaller than the one on which they were standing. Those tiny islands were little more than boulders jutting out of the sea, their sides bleached from the saltwater splashing against the rock. But there was one island, just a bit further out to sea, which towered over all of the other rocks in the water. The island grew up from the horizon like an angry cloud. There was a looming volcano in the center of the island – the volcano was so greedy, its slopes almost reached the isle’s shores. The volcano belched puffs of pitch, but the island seemed calm overall.

  Hermes knew why Athena was asking for his help – she knew that he had visited that island many times in the past. He visited that island because the crippled Hephaestus kept his workshop in the tunnels of that volcano.

  Hermes chuckled a little. “So you need my help in getting to Hephaestus?”

  “Something like that, yes. Listen, I know you carry messages to all of the gods. So you know how to get through that volcano to reach Hephaestus.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So how do I get to him?”

  Hermes smiled. “Very few people ask for directions these days. What you’re asking is very refreshing – it gives me hope.”

  “Just tell me,” Athena said, growing more impatient by the minute. She doubted that Hermes could understand her rush.

  “Okay, okay. First, you think you could fly down to his workshop. But you’d be wrong to think that.”

  “Why?”

  Hermes cleared his throat, and said, “Well, we all know what our brother Hephaestus is like. If there’s one thing that can be said about him, it’s that he loves his privacy. If someone wants to get to him, they’ll have to work for it, damn near risk their life for it.”

  Athena asked, “Well, what could be worse down there than magma?”

  “That’s it – there is nothing worse down there than the magma! Imagine flying over a river of it and having it explode in your face? What then? I’ve seen many mortals die horribly from volcanic eruptions. You and I, we would survive the heat, of course, but the magma is like quicksand. If it can latch onto you, it will drag you down. You might be able to pull yourself out of it, but it will eat through pretty much any armor. Best case, it’ll ruin your clothes. Worst case, you could be trapped in the stuff, forever.”

  “But I would be going down there as an owl, not in my human form,” Athena pointed out. Surely, it would be easier for her to fit through the narrow passageways as a bird, rather than a full-grown goddess.

  Hermes shook his head fervently. “No, no, that’ll be even worse. See, you might be immortal right now, in your goddess form. But when you become an owl, or any other animal for that matter, you sacrifice a bit of what makes you immortal. So, you may have not been hurt before as an owl, but I bet you, I bet you that all it will take is one burst of magma and you’ll be a fried bird.”

  Athena never thought of that before, how her animal form could be so weak. She wondered out loud, “Could I survive that?”

  “I don’t know – I’ve never heard of a god’s animal form dying. I’ve seen them injured before, though, so I know it’s possible. Who knows? Maybe a god could still break free from a dead animal. But say the owl dies and yet you still survive – I guarantee that by the time you begin your transformation back to your goddess form, you’ll be at the bottom of that magma bed, trapped.”

  “So how do I get to Hephaestus then? Or rather, how do you get to Hephaestus?”

  Hermes smiled broadly and pointed down at his winged sandals. “I’ve flown there in these sandals thousands of times, and they’ve never failed me.”

  “That’s good to know, because I need them.”

  Hermes’ smile vanished. “Why?”

  “Everything depends on me,” Athena sighed, “and I depend on those shoes.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  And so Athena did, as quickly as she could. When she finished, Hermes’ eyes widened. “You really think that our brother cracking your head open will bring back Zeus?”

  “It’s how I was born,” Athena said, “and so it’ll be how Zeus will be reborn.”