The God Beneath the Sea

by Leon Garfield

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PART ONE

  1 THE SEEDS OF POWER

  2 THE WAR OF THE GODS AND TITANS

  3 THE FRUITS OF POWER

  4 THE SPRINGTIME OF THE GODS

  5 THE FIRST THIEF

  6 DESIRE

  7 THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

  PART TWO

  8 THE CREATURES OF PROMETHEUS

  9 FIRE

  10 AN ORDINARY WOMAN

  PART THREE

  11 WOLVES

  12 MOTHERS’ BONES . . . STONES . . .

  13 THE LADY OF THE HARVESTS

  14 ‘CORE . . . CORE . . .’

  15 SPRING IN HELL

  16 A CHARMING LAD

  17 TWO THIEVES

  18 A DEADLY VISION

  19 THE BATTLE WITH DEATH

  20 THE SECOND FALL

  AFTERWORD

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  ‘Deep in Chaos, clogged in its thickness and night, there had been certain immortal seeds. They began to grow. Nourished by earth and air they grew into huge glittering beings who seized command over all the universe. They were the seven Titans.’

  The gods of Olympus are brought to life in this stunning retelling, in one continuous story, of the most famous of the Greek myths. A classic of children’s literature, this is the history of the gods from their violent beginnings to the creation of man.

  THE GOD

  BENEATH THE SEA

  LEON GARFIELD

  and

  EDWARD BLISHEN

  Illustrated by

  CHARLES KEEPING

  To

  Vivien,

  Nancy

  and

  Renate

  PART ONE

  THE MAKING OF THE GODS

  ONE

  THE SEEDS OF POWER

  At first it was a tiny prick of light – as if the sun had gone too close and caught the immense blue fabric of the sky. It glinted and glittered and presently it was seen to be moving, like a golden needle stitching away at the heavens.

  This was in the early morning. By noon its brightness had dimmed. Against the sun’s full blaze it was no more than a charred and flaming mote. The sun continued toward the west; the sky deepened and the mote had increased till it was the size of a thumbnail held at full stretch.

  Already its light cast a great pool of gold on the darkening sea and a curious sound was in the air. A thin wailing that rose at times to a scream . . .

  Now the sun was gone and the twisting, flickering, shining thing lit up a patch of the night as it rushed down to meet itself in the sea.

  The sound grew shriller, louder. The waves began to tremble and hasten hither and thither in a panic. It was coming . . . Then, for the briefest instant, the falling shape was seen quite clearly as it turned over and over in the air. It was a fiery, shrieking baby . . .

  Suddenly two white arms rose up out of the sea. They caught the infant as it fell and drew it swiftly down under the wave. The light was quenched and the sea rolled on, dark and peaceful under the stars.

  The gaping fish and the blundering turtles fled away; the ornamental sea-horses and giant crabs that seemed to carry spired and blushing cities on their backs drifted and clambered into nooks and crevices as the goddess sped down among them in a pearly storm of bubbles.

  Deeper and deeper she rushed with the frantic infant in her arms. The formidable monsters on the ocean’s floor curled and rolled away among the coral forests where the flash and glimmer of sea-nymphs lit the goddess on her way. At last she came to the entrance of a cave. Here, strange and intricate configurations of the rock caused the currents to twist and eddy and force the waters through a mighty conch shell so that they foamed and tumbled across the cave’s threshold like the fleece of the sea-god’s sheep.

  The goddess paused, then stepped across the waters into the cave and the grotto beyond.

  ‘Sister,’ she murmured. ‘Sister, here is the babe who fell from the sky.’

  The two goddesses, Thetis and Eurynome, gazed down on the infant who had lapsed into a frowning sleep. For a long while they regarded its limbs and crumpled face. Neither spoke and the only sound in the grotto was the wild music the sea made as it rushed through the great conch that guarded the entrance to the cave. Then Eurynome said softly, ‘Sister, though you did well to save him, there’s no doubt he is . . . hideous.’

  Thetis sighed. ‘Yet he shone so brightly as he fell—’

  ‘Then let us call him Hephaestus, the shining one, and – and hope he will improve.’

  ‘Hephaestus,’ whispered Thetis, bending so low over the sleeping child that her gleaming hair danced across his cheek. ‘What kind of a god will you be?’

  He slept in a silver cradle, and the mighty goddesses brought him such toys as became a baby – rattles of coral and pearls, glittering pebbles and curious shells. They fashioned a crystal window in the rock so he might watch the uncanny world that glimmered away into a green eternity. Sometimes the sea-nymphs would come to this window and press their faces against it and make the infant laugh. Then the great sisters would send them flying, for it was time for the growing god to sleep.

  They did not speak of his birth or how he’d come to the grotto; his nature was restless and discontented and such knowledge would not have improved it. So when Hephaestus asked how he had come to be, lovely Thetis thought it best to tell him that in the very beginning of things there was nothingness . . . a dreamless sleep. Then it was Eurynome who first awoke, put out her foot and found no place to rest it. So she divided the sea from the sky and danced naked on the wave. (Here Eurynome, who like her sister was but in the first blush of eternity, laughed and half-shook her head.) But it was so, Thetis insisted, and as Eurynome danced, a wind sprang up behind her. It was the north wind that gets all creatures with child.

  Hephaestus stared at Eurynome. His eyes were bright, and in them Eurynome saw an image of herself and her wild, lonely dance. Discontent left him and he seemed to forget what had troubled him most.

  Then, through the crystal window, he began to see and take note of the wild and passionate embracings of the sea-nymphs. He watched the sinuous coilings of deep creatures as they coupled. He was excited and bewildered. His dreams were all awry. Discontent returned, and the grotto grew dark with his scowls.

  So Eurynome herself decided that it was time for the ugly little god to know that he had come from high Olympus, and—

  ‘Olympus? What is that?’

  ‘It is a mountain in the sky, Hephaestus, where the gods have their home.’

  ‘Who are the gods?’

  ‘Children of the Titans who once ruled the universe.’

  ‘Tell me how they came to be and what became of them. Tell me who was before them, Eurynome; for Thetis says you were first of all. Is it so, Eurynome?’

  The goddess smiled. For a long while she said nothing. Little by little, the smile left her face, and shadows drifted across her brow. Then she began, and the walls of the grotto seemed to roll away as her words unmade them. She told of a thick, dark void, full of roaring and struggling. It was everywhere, and vast commotions banged and thundered as the unseen elements fought, one against another. Such was Chaos.

  Then a single spirit, no one knows which, plucked the elements apart and separated them even as the sea-nymphs and the turtles separate the weaving ferns that tangle their paths through the dark sea. Up and up soared the aether, dividing away from the hanging air. All that was heavy sank below. For a while it seemed to dance – as the sand dances in the wake of the sea-horses before it slowly settles. T
hen earth became firm and solid and lay at last in the arms of ocean, heaviest of the elements.

  Now came a marvel even more wonderful. Deep in Chaos, clogged in its thickness and night, there had been certain immortal seeds. They began to grow. Nourished by earth and air they grew into huge glittering beings who seized command over all the universe. They were the seven Titans.

  ‘Are you listening, Hephaestus?’

  The child looked up. He had been playing with his pearls and beads, and arranging them in patterns like the weeds and fishes he had observed through his window.

  ‘Will you hear more?’

  For a moment he searched for more pearls to finish his design; then, finding none, nodded.

  ‘The tale is dark and fearful, Hephaestus. Will it give you bad dreams?’

  ‘Will they be worse than the dream of falling, falling, falling?’

  Eurynome frowned, and looked up so that her eyes seemed to pierce the grotto’s roof and accuse the sky. Then she stretched out her hand and gently stroked Hephaestus’s harsh black hair.

  ‘You must ride the nightmare, child, even as it plunges. You must break it till it answers the rein and flies.’

  The child shook his head free of the goddess’s hand, and fixed her with his savage eyes.

  ‘The fearful tale. Give me another nightmare to ride.’

  The king of the seven Titans was Uranus, and in that ancient time he had seized the earth for his garden. He planted it and tended it till the mountains and valleys were all green and gold in an endless spring. Then Uranus lay with Mother Earth and she brought forth a second race of Titans, who were as harsh and savage as the rocks from which they had sprung. Among them were the one-eyed Cyclopes and the hundred-handed giants: craggy monsters who, in the stillness of night, resembled great configurations of land. Violent in their pride, they rebelled against their father. But they lacked his power. Uranus flung them into a deep, fearful hole called Tartarus. For nine nights and days they dropped like struggling black mountains, till at last they were extinguished in echoing shrieks and groans.

  Uranus listened and smiled. There was nothing in heaven and earth that could oppose him. His throne was the very rock of the universe. He closed his eyes and the sun and stars went out. He slept and dreamed that Mother Earth was in his arms. He saw her smile; he heard her sigh. His huge hands tightened till he dreamed her breath came sharp and passionate.

  He could even hear each separate intake, which seemed to catch at its return with an almost secret air; and he heard the beating of her heart. But he slept on, and a single lamp cast his heaving shadow against the soaring wall of his bedchamber. The lamp flickered, making the sleeping shadow writhe to the rhythm of his dream.

  The beating heart, the hissing breath – they were coming nearer. The flame leaped and danced at the wick. The shadow bulked and cowered, for another shadow had joined it. A dreadful, creeping shadow, at first like a bird with one wing upraised. But it was not a bird. It was Cronus, his eldest son, and the wing was a huge stone sickle!

  Uranus opened his eyes and the universe blazed up all round him. Then Cronus struck. And it all went out for ever. Not even his dying scream was heard, for it was drowned in Cronus’s mighty shout of triumph. The terrible king was dead.

  Doors and passages in the great stone castle rang and thundered as the Titans proclaimed his still more terrible son. They tore dead Uranus in pieces and cast them into the sea. They grinned and laughed and joked as they watched the dark sea crack in a hundred places to let the multitude of Uranus in. Then it closed up after, as if he had never been.

  But the ocean could not hide what had been done. Three drops of blood from the death wound had fallen unnoticed on the earth, and silently there rose up three terrible creatures. At first they stood still and quiet in the shadow of the castle’s southern wall. They might have been dwarfish trees – or bushes, even, with smooth black foliage that hung down like cloaks. But there was movement among what might have been their topmost twigs, as if some breeze was ruffling them. They were nests of snakes, spitting and twisting as they grew out of shadowy heads. Then, of a sudden, they swayed. The black foliage spread into wide, jointed wings. Once, twice, they beat the air; then the three creatures rose up. Round and round the castle they flew, and their shadows seemed to scratch and scar the stones. They would know that place again. Then they vanished into the upper air. They were the Furies – avengers of fathers murdered by their sons.

  Cronus slept in his father’s bed, with Rhea, his sister-wife. His dreams were easy and seemed to hang in thick curtains across his mind. Suddenly he awoke, as if the curtains had shifted. He stared uneasily into the dark, but saw nothing. He closed his eyes and tried to smile away whatever had disturbed him. But it would not go. There was, or seemed to be, a rustling and a creaking in the air and a smell of snakes. He turned on his back and looked up. Nothing. Yet some drops of moisture fell on his face. They burned like venom, and he cried out in fear and disgust. He did not sleep again that night.

  Next night the Furies came again. They looked down on the new king, smiling in his sleep. Then with their curious sharp instruments they made another hole in the curtain of his dreams and whispered through it that he, like his father, would be ruined by his son. With the coming of the dawn, they flew away, but left the marks of their shadows behind. They would be back.

  Night after night they came to visit Cronus, till his sleep hung in tatters and through every rent came the hateful words, ‘Cronus, you will be ruined by your son! There is no escape!’

  A wind blew through the king’s head and all the exposed caverns of his mind began to ache and crack. Nothing comforted him – neither his throne nor his queen. All was swept aside by the nightly terror of the Furies and the threat of the unborn son. Despairingly, he embraced Rhea; then, with a cry of dismay, thrust her from him as he remembered that out of this chief consolation would come his chief danger.

  Yet he could not endure without her, and at last she bore him a child. Proudly she brought it to him in swaddling clothes. The Furies’ words roared a gale through his head. His hands shook and madness finally seized him. He took the infant almost tenderly from the queen and thrust it, living, into his gigantic mouth. Then he laughed till his stone palace rocked on the mountain top. He had cheated the Furies.

  That night they came again. But Cronus was ready and went for them with his bare hands. He clawed the air and beat the walls, but it was not till dawn that they flew away. He saw them like black moths dwindling in the sky.

  The mad king grinned in triumph. Sooner or later, he would destroy his tormentors even as he had eaten his child. Nothing would shake his throne. So he kept spears in his bedchamber, and knives and arrows. They flew from the casements and scarred the walls as Cronus killed the air.

  Then Rhea bore another child. Was there a traitor in his bed? No matter. Cronus was armoured at all points. Again he ate the child.

  He would reign for ever.

  Some more children after that the wild Titan swallowed. Yet each time he took them from her almost lovingly, so that Rhea’s anguish was multiplied by hope.

  Then at last she bore such a son as she could not endure to lose. He shone like a star, and her heart ached as he smiled unknowingly.

  ‘Fetch me the child!’ she heard the mad king shout. ‘The child! The child!’

  With trembling hands, she hid the infant among the bedclothes, then stared round desperately. Beside the door was a stone that wedged it open in the heat of the day. Its size was the size of the child. Hastily she wound it in the swaddling bands over and over . . .

  A shadow darkened the doorway. Rhea looked up. Cronus stood before her. ‘Give me the child!’ Cronus’s eyes flickered over the tumbled bed linen. Frantically Rhea clasped the swaddled stone. He held out his arms. ‘My son! My son!’ he half whispered, half groaned, and opened wide his mouth. Rhea turned away. Terror seized her. The bedclothes were stirring. Fearfully she looked back at her husband. Had he see
n it? His eyes were hooded and remote and his hands hung empty at his sides.

  He reached out and stroked her cheek. Then he wiped his mouth and left the room.

  When he was gone, Rhea sank to her knees beside the bed. She stared into the careless folds. Then she started. Two golden eyes were gazing out at her, and an infant’s lips were curved in a prophetic smile.

  TWO

  THE WAR OF THE GODS AND TITANS

  ‘Was he a god, Eurynome?’

  Hephaestus, in the grotto under the sea, stared into the goddess’s eyes. But she seemed lost in thoughts and memories, and did not answer.

  ‘Yes, he was a god.’ It was gentle Thetis who spoke. She stretched out her hands, and Hephaestus shambled towards her and crouched at her knee. She smiled with pleasure and told the ugly little god of how this shining child was taken secretly to a cave on the island of Crete. Here there lived children of the Titans and the earth. They were strange, quick, wild creatures, like sinews of the air. They were the nymphs and spirits of the woods and streams. Into the care of these nymphs the child was given. They brought him mountain honey to eat, and hid his cries under their songs, so that Cronus should not hear him.

  ‘What was their song, Thetis?’

  Thetis sighed, and in a lilting voice she sang the song the nymphs had sung to the infant . . . and the wild music of the sea rushing through the conch shell accompanied her. Beyond the window the sea-nymphs listened, and the Sirens learned her song.

  Hephaestus’s eyes were closing.

  ‘What was his name?’ he mumbled dreamily.

  ‘Zeus.’

  But the god’s eyes were shut, and the name hung emptily in the air.

  How long he slept, there was no way of measuring; neither night nor day visited the grotto under the sea. Then he awoke, and the name of Zeus was on his lips. So Thetis told him more tales of Crete and Mount Ida where the infant grew to manhood. She told him of how, when tiny, the clever nymphs hung his cradle from a branch so that Cronus should find him neither on the earth nor in the sky. Then she told of how, in the dark nights, the flash and glimmer of his growing limbs might be seen as he moved among the foliage of Ida’s trees. And always she ended her tales with the song the nymphs had sung . . . and Hephaestus drifted away into dreams. But always among them there galloped the nightmare that flung him from its back so that he awoke with the desolate cry of one who had fallen from a high place.