Stone Blind(47)

She screamed and dropped the basket to the ground. Her sisters came running, but it was too late. The snake slithered out and bit Aglaurus on the foot. Herse and Pandrosus ran to their sister who was grasping her ankle and crying out in agony. Their thumping feet angered the snake so much that it bit each of them as well, before disappearing into the undergrowth.

I took the news to Athene myself. She has always loved crows: she likes us because we’re clever and she likes us because we know everything. But this time she wasn’t pleased at all. She was angry with the messenger because she was angry with the message, I suppose. Kra. So she said that from now on, crows would never be as welcome to her as owls. Owls! Not just her owl, the one Zeus gave her. All owls. Even though they aren’t half as bright as crows and don’t see a quarter of the things we see because they sleep during the day. But she has made her mind up and crows must be punished for the crime of the daughters of Cecrops. So now I don’t take any news to her. I bring it to you instead. Kra kra!





Stone


This one is small and I’m not sure you would want it. It has been perfectly caught as it runs along, its jointed legs seemingly frozen in time. It is not poised to attack, its sting is not raised. The sculptor wants us to think, I suppose, that it was caught unawares. If the sculptor thinks about his audience at all, of course. Perhaps these statues were not meant to be displayed, perhaps they were made just for the sheer pleasure of creating them. Perhaps they were not even supposed to look as realistic as they do: perhaps his skill surprised even him. But if you saw this one unexpectedly, you would fear for your life.





Gorgoneion


I’m wondering if you still think of her as a monster. I suppose it depends on what you think that word means. Monsters are, what? Ugly? Terrifying? Gorgons are both these things, certainly, although Medusa wasn’t always. Can a monster be beautiful if it is still terrifying? Perhaps it depends on how you experience fear and judge beauty.

And is a monster always evil? Is there ever such a thing as a good monster? Because what happens when a good person becomes a monster? I feel confident saying that Medusa was a good mortal: has that all disappeared now? Did it fall out with her hair? Because I think you already know why the snakes were so anxious that she cover her eyes when they heard her sister approaching. (That’s another question for another day, I suppose: do snakes have emotions? Are they capable of anxiety? But let’s focus on the question in hand.) They knew before Medusa knew that her gaze was now lethal.

She found out a day or two later, when she tried again to remove the bindings from her eyes. She turned her gaze on something she could see moving across the ground in front of her. A quick dark streak on the golden sand. It stopped, mid-run. She reached out and picked it up, dropped it straightaway when she realized she was holding a scorpion. Picked it up again when she understood that it was dead.

It took her a moment to work out what was wrong. It was the wrong texture for a scorpion. She had – perhaps this shouldn’t need saying, but just in case – never held a scorpion in her hands before. She knew their sting could be fatal. But she also knew how shiny they were, how slick their shells appeared. And this was rougher to the touch than a scorpion could be. And surely it was also too heavy, given its size? She took it and kept it and puzzled over it.

But she doubted her own eyes: who could blame her after they had sustained such an insult? She wondered if she hadn’t seen it move, if it was a tiny statue of a scorpion that had washed up on the shore. Or perhaps one of her sisters had found it in a human settlement nearby and brought it to show her, and then forgotten to tell her about it. None of these explanations seemed to her to be less plausible than the truth, that she had looked at the scorpion and it had turned to stone.

It would take two more days and two dead birds – a cormorant, a bee-eater – before she understood the truth.





Part Four


Love





Athene


It was Hephaestus she most wanted to hurt. The days on Olympus – which had once all seemed the same – were now sharply differentiated because she spent each one wondering how she could exact her revenge. And so every day became a complicated journey around the labyrinth of possibility and impossibility: she must hurt Hephaestus because he had hurt her, and honour demanded it. And yet she could not hurt the blacksmith, because Hera and Zeus protected him.

It had not always been so, of course. Hera had despised her son when he had been born lame: Athene had heard the Archer and his sister discussing it more than once (immortality and excessive self-regard left them prone to repetition). So Hera felt no love for Hephaestus until he bribed his way into her affections with his endless display of gifts and fawning. But that time had passed long before Athene had been born from the head of Zeus, and there was no way back to it now, she reluctantly concluded, retracing her steps to the beginning of the maze.

But if Hephaestus was safe in Hera’s affections, surely Athene could isolate him from Zeus? He had turned on Hephaestus once, she remembered that. A time when the king of the gods had finally lost his temper with his queen; her conspiracies and criticisms had made him blind with rage. He aimed a mighty thunderbolt that would have maimed even a goddess. But he missed, which only increased his wrath. He advanced on her, roaring, determined to punish her somehow. The other gods shrank back, either because they were too afraid of Zeus to intervene or simply did not care if Hera was obliterated. Only Hephaestus, the loyal little hound, stood by his mama: threw himself between them, begged them to make peace. Zeus had picked up the blacksmith by his lame foot and hurled him from the mountain. Hephaestus had been quite badly injured when he landed – Athene shivered with delight to think of it. If she could only find a way to provoke her father’s rage so he would do it again.