by Rick Riordan
Finally, there was sister number six: Rhea. Poor Rhea. She was the sweetest and most beautiful of the lady Titans, which of course meant she had the worst luck and the hardest life. Her name either means flow or ease. Both definitions fit. She always went with the flow, and she totally put people at ease. She would wander the valleys of the earth, visiting her brothers and sisters, talking to the nymphs and satyrs who had sprung from the blood of Ouranos. She loved animals, too. Her favorite was the lion. If you see pictures of Rhea, she almost always has a couple of lions with her, which made it very safe for her to walk around, even in the worst neighborhoods.
Rhea became the Titan of motherhood. She adored babies and always helped her sisters during their deliveries. Eventually she would earn the title the Great Mother when she had kids of her own. Unfortunately, she had to get married before any of that happened, which is how all the trouble started….
Oh, but everything was so great! What could possibly go wrong?
That’s what the Earth Mother Gaea thought. She was so pleased to see her kids in charge of the world, she decided to sink back down into the earth for a while and just be, well…the earth. She’d been through a lot. She’d had eighteen kids. She deserved a rest.
She was sure Kronos would take care of things and be a good king forever and ever. (Yeah, right.) So she lay down for a quick nap, which in geological terms meant a few millennia.
Meanwhile, the Titans started having kids of their own, who were second-generation Titans. Oceanus and Tethys, Mr. & Mrs. Water, had a daughter named Klymene, who became the Titan goddess of fame. I’m guessing she was into fame because she grew up at the bottom of the ocean where nothing ever happened. She was all about gossip and reading the tabloids and catching up on the latest Hollywood news…or she would’ve been, if Hollywood existed. Like a lot of folks who are obsessed with fame, she headed west. She ended up falling for the Titan of the west, Iapetus.
I know, he was technically her uncle. Disgusting. But like I said before, the Titans were different. My advice is not to think about it too much.
Anyway, Iapetus and Klymene had a son named Atlas, who turned out to be an excellent fighter, and also kind of a jerk. When he grew up, he became Kronos’s right-hand man and main enforcer.
Next, Iapetus and Klymene had a son named Prometheus, who was almost as clever as Kronos. According to some legends, Prometheus invented a minor life form you may have heard of—humans. One day he was just messing around at the riverbank, building stuff out of wet clay, when he sculpted a couple of funny-looking figures similar to Titans, only much smaller and easier to smash. Maybe some blood of Ouranos got into the clay, or maybe Prometheus breathed life into the figures on purpose—I don’t know. But the clay creatures came to life and became the first two humans.
Did Prometheus get a medal for that? Nah. The Titans looked on humans the way we might look on gerbils. Some Titans thought humans were kind of cute, though they died awfully quick and didn’t really serve any purpose. Other Titans thought they were repulsive rodents. Some Titans didn’t pay them any attention at all. As for the humans, they mostly just cowered in their caves and scurried around trying not to get stepped on.
The Titans kept having more baby Titans. I won’t mention all of them or we’ll be here for as long as Gaea napped, but Koios and Phoebe, the prophecy couple, had a girl named Leto, who decided she wanted to be the Titan protector of the young. She was the world’s first babysitter. All the dad and mom Titans were really happy to see her.
Hyperion and Theia, Mr. & Mrs. Shiny, had twins named Helios and Selene, who were in charge of the sun and the moon. Makes sense, right? You can’t get much shinier than the sun and the moon.
Helios would drive the chariot of the sun across the sky every day, even though it got terrible mileage. Helios thought he looked pretty hot, and he had an annoying habit of calling the sun his “chick magnet.”
Selene wasn’t quite so flashy. She drove her silver moon chariot across the sky at night and mostly kept to herself, though the one time she did fall in love, it was the saddest story ever. But that’s for later.
At any rate, one particular Titan wasn’t getting married or having kids…namely Kronos, the lord of the universe. He just sat on his throne in the palace of Mount Othrys and got very, very grumpy watching everyone else have a good time.
Remember that curse Ouranos warned him about—that someday Kronos’s own kids would overthrow him? Kronos couldn’t get that out of his head.
At first he told himself, Well, no biggie. I just won’t get married or have kids!
But it’s a pain to be on your own when everyone around you is settling down and starting families. Kronos had earned the throne fair and square, but that curse took all the fun out of chopping up his dad. Now he had to worry about getting overthrown while everyone else got to enjoy the good life. Uncool.
His relatives didn’t visit him much anymore. Once Gaea went back into the earth, they stopped coming by the palace for Sunday dinner. They said they were busy, but Kronos suspected that his brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews were simply scared of him. He did have his father’s temper and sense of cruelty. His scythe was intimidating. Plus, he had the slightly off-putting tendency to scream, “I’ll kill you all!” whenever someone made him mad. But was that his fault?
One morning he really snapped. He woke up to a Cyclops hammering on a piece of bronze right outside his bedroom window. Seven in the morning, on a weekend!
Kronos had promised his mom he would free the Elder Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Ones from Tartarus, but he was getting really tired of his ugly relatives. They’d become more and more disgusting as they grew up. They smelled like Porta Potties. They had, like, zero personal hygiene, and they were constantly making noise—building things, hammering metal, cutting stone. They’d been useful for building the palace, but now they were just annoying.
Kronos called Atlas and Hyperion and a couple of his other goons. They rounded up the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handed Ones and told them they were going for a nice drive in the country to look at wildflowers. Then they jumped the poor guys, wrapped them in chains again, and tossed them back into Tartarus.
If Gaea woke up, she wouldn’t be happy—but so what? Kronos was the king now. Mom would just have to deal with it.
Things were much quieter at the palace after that, but Kronos still had a major case of the grumpies. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t have a girlfriend.
In fact, he had a particular girl in mind.
Secretly, he had a crush on Rhea.
She was gorgeous. Every time the Titan family got together, Kronos stole glances at her. If he noticed any of the other guys flirting with her, he would pull them aside for a private conversation with his scythe in hand, and warn them never to do it again.
He loved how Rhea laughed. Her smile was brighter than Helios’s chick magnet…uh, I mean the sun. He loved the way her dark curly hair swept her shoulders. Her eyes were as green as meadows, and her lips…well, Kronos dreamed about kissing those lips.
Also, Rhea was sweet and kind and everyone loved her. Kronos thought: If I just had a wife like that, my family wouldn’t fear me as much. They’d come to the palace more often. Rhea would teach me to be a better Titan. Life would be awesome!
But another part of him thought, No! I can’t get married, because of that stupid curse!
Kronos grumbled in frustration. He was the king of the freaking universe! He could do whatever he wanted! Maybe Ouranos had just been messing with him and there was no curse. Or maybe he would get lucky and he wouldn’t have kids.
Note to self: If you’re trying not to have kids, don’t marry a lady who is the Titan of motherhood.
Kronos tried to restrain himself, but finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. He invited Rhea to a romantic dinner and poured out his feelings. He proposed to her on the spot.
Now, I don’t know if Rhea loved the guy or not. If she didn’t, I imagine she was too afraid to say so. This was Kronos the Crooked One, after all—the dude who had killed their dad. The king of the freaking universe.
It didn’t help that the whole time they ate dinner, his scythe was resting on a hook on the wall right behind him, its blade gleaming in the candlelight like it was still covered in golden ichor.
Rhea agreed to marry him.
Maybe she thought she could make him into a better guy. Maybe Kronos believed that, too. They had a nice honeymoon. A few weeks later, when Kronos heard that (surprise, surprise) Rhea was expecting their first child, he tried to convince himself everything was fine. He was happy! He would never be a bad father like Ouranos. It didn’t matter if the baby was a boy Titan or a girl Titan. Kronos would love him or her and forget all about that old curse.
Then the kid was born—a beautiful baby girl.
Rhea had been secretly worried her child might turn out to be a Cyclops or a Hundred-Handed One. Maybe Kronos had been stressing about that, too. But nope. The child was perfect.
In fact, she was a little too perfect.
Rhea named her Hestia. She swaddled the baby in soft blankets and showed her to her proud papa. At first, Kronos smiled. The kid was not a monster—sweet! But as he tickled her chin and looked into her eyes and made the usual cute goo-goo noises, Kronos realized Hestia wasn’t exactly a Titan.
She was smaller than a Titan baby, but heavier and perfectly proportioned. Her eyes were much too intelligent for a newborn. She radiated power. With Kronos’s understanding of time, he could easily envision what this girl would look like when she grew up. She would be smaller than a Titan, but capable of great things. She would surpass any Titan at whatever she chose to do.
Hestia was like an improved version of the Titans—Titan 2.0, the Next Big Thing. In fact, she wasn’t a Titan at all. She was a goddess—the first member of an entirely new branch of immortal evolution.
Looking at her, Kronos felt like an old cell phone staring at the latest model smartphone. He knew his days were numbered.
His proud papa smile faded. This kid could not be allowed to grow up, or the prophecy of Ouranos would come true. Kronos had to act fast. He knew Rhea would never agree to have her child killed, and she’d brought those stupid lions with her as usual. He couldn’t have a fight in the throne room. Besides, he couldn’t reach for his scythe while holding the baby. He had to get rid of Hestia immediately and irreversibly.
He opened his mouth—super, super wide, wider than he even realized he could. His lower jaw was hinged like on one of those massive snakes that can eat a cow. He stuffed Hestia in his mouth and swallowed her whole.
Just like: GULP. She was gone.
As you can imagine, Rhea completely freaked.
“My baby!” she screamed. “You—you just—”
“Oh, wow.” Kronos belched. “My bad. Sorry.”
Rhea’s eyes bugged out. She screamed some more. She would have launched herself at Kronos and pummeled him with her fists, or ordered her lions to attack, but she was afraid of hurting the baby that was now stuck inside him.
“Cough her up!” Rhea demanded.
“Can’t,” Kronos said. “I have this super-strong stomach. Once something goes down, it doesn’t come back up.”
“How could you swallow her?” she shouted. “That was our child!”
“Yeah, about that…” Kronos tried to look apologetic. “Listen, babe, it wasn’t going to work out with that kid.”
“Work out?”
“There was this curse.” Kronos told her what Ouranos had prophesied. “I mean, come on, sweetcakes! That baby wasn’t even a proper Titan. She was trouble, I could tell! The next kid will be better, I’m sure.”
This sounded perfectly reasonable to Kronos, but for some reason Rhea wasn’t satisfied. She stormed off in a rage.
You’d think Rhea would never forgive him. I mean, your husband eats your firstborn child like a slider hamburger….Your typical mother isn’t going to forget that.
But Rhea’s situation was complicated.
First, Kronos had swallowed the baby Hestia whole. Hestia, like her parents, was technically immortal. She couldn’t die, even inside her father’s stomach. Gross in there? Yes. A little claustrophobic? You bet. But fatal? No.
She’s still alive, Rhea consoled herself. I can find a way to get her back.
That calmed her down a little, though she didn’t have a plan. She couldn’t use force to get her way. Rhea was a gentle goddess. Even if she tried to fight, most of the strongest Titans, like Hyperion and that big goon Atlas, would back Kronos up.
She couldn’t risk a sneak attack with a knife or the scythe or even her lions, because that might hurt the baby.
Maybe you’re thinking, Wait a minute. If the kid is immortal, why is Rhea worried about hurting her? But, see, immortals can be hurt badly, crippled, or mutilated. An injury might not kill them, but they also don’t always heal from damage. They just stay crippled forever. You’ll see some examples of that later on. Rhea wasn’t about to cut open Kronos and risk chopping up her baby, because being in pieces is no way to live, especially when you live forever.
She couldn’t divorce Kronos, because nobody had invented divorce yet. And even if they had, Rhea would have been too scared to try. Can you blame her? As you may have noticed, Kronos was one crazy piece of work. Rhea had known that fact ever since he chopped up their dad with the scythe and then walked around the after-party in his ichor-stained shirt shouting, “Awesome murder, guys! High five!”
She couldn’t run, because Kronos was lord of the whole world. Unless she wanted to jump into Tartarus (which she didn’t), there was no place to go.
Her best bet was to stick it out, bide her time, and wait until she found a way to get Hestia back.
Kronos tried to be nice to her. He bought her presents and took her out to dinner, as if that could make her forget about the baby in his stomach.
When Kronos thought enough time had passed—like three or four days—he insisted that they try to have more kids.
Why? Maybe he had a secret death wish. Maybe he became obsessed with Ouranos’s prophecy and wanted to see if the next kid would be a proper Titan or one of those horrible, too-powerful, too-perfect little gods.
So Rhea had another baby—a little girl even cuter than the first. Rhea named her Demeter.
Rhea dared to hope. Demeter was so adorable, maybe she would melt Kronos’s heart. He couldn’t possibly feel threatened by this little bundle of joy.
Kronos took the child in his arms and saw right away that Demeter was another goddess. She glowed with an aura even more powerful than Hestia’s. She was trouble with a capital tau.
This time he didn’t hesitate. He opened his jaws and swallowed her down.
Cue the screaming fit from Mom. Cue the apologies.
Rhea was seriously tempted to call out her lions, but now the stakes were even higher. Kronos had two kids in there.
I know, you’re thinking it must’ve been getting crowded in the Titan lord’s gut. But gods are kind of flexible about their size. Sometimes they are huge. Sometimes they’re no bigger than humans.
I was not there in Kronos’s stomach, thankfully, but I’m guessing the little immortal babies just made themselves small. They continued to mature, but they didn’t get any bigger. They were like springs getting wound up tighter and tighter, hoping that someday they would get to burst out fully grown. And every day praying that Kronos wouldn’t have hot sauce with his dinner.
Poor Rhea. Kronos insisted they try again.
“The next child will be better,” he promised. “No more swallowing babies!”
The third kid? Also a girl. Rhea named her Hera, and she was the least Titan-ish, most godly yet. Rhea was indeed the Great Mother. In fact, she w
as a little too good at it. Every child she had was better and more powerful than the one before.
Rhea didn’t want to take little Hera to Kronos, but it was a tradition back then. Dad got to hold the baby. It was one of those natural laws that Themis always insisted on. (There was also a natural law against eating your kids, but Themis was too afraid to mention that to Kronos.)
And so Rhea mustered her courage. “My lord, may I present your daughter Hera.”
GULP.
This time, Rhea left the throne room without throwing a fit. She was too numb with pain and misery and disbelief. She had married a pathological liar who was also a murderer and a cannibal baby-eater.
Could things be any worse?
Oh, wait! He was also the king of the universe with lots of powerful henchmen, so she couldn’t fight back or run away.
Yeah. Things were worse.
Two more times she gave birth to perfect, lovely god babies. The fourth child was a boy named Hades. Rhea hoped Kronos would let him live, because every dad wants a son to play catch with, right? Nope. Down the hatch, matey!
The fifth child was another boy, Poseidon. Same story. SNARF.
At this point, Rhea fled the palace. She wept and wailed and didn’t know what to do. She went to her brothers and sisters, her nieces and nephews, anyone who would listen. She pleaded for help. The other Titans were either too scared of Kronos (like Themis), or they worked for Kronos (like Hyperion) and told her to stop whining.
Finally Rhea visited her sister Phoebe at the Oracle of Delphi, but sadly, even the Oracle had no advice for her. Rhea ran to the nearest meadow, threw herself on the ground, and began to cry. Suddenly she heard whispering from the earth. It was the voice of Gaea, who was still asleep; but even in her dreams the Earth Mother couldn’t stand to hear the wailing of her lovely daughter.