Stone Blind(7)

And how could anyone have prepared Sthenno for the change it had caused? She did not know where to site the pain she felt; she resented feeling it at all. But somewhere in her body was a strange new ache, which she eventually concluded was fear. Fear! In a Gorgon! The idea was absurd, infuriating. But that was what it was; she could not keep pretending to herself it was anything else. She lived with this throbbing, this constant nagging twinge that Medusa might not be safe. So not only was she – a Gorgon – experiencing fear, but she was feeling it on behalf of another Gorgon who should be as impervious as she herself once had been. Euryale felt it too, though she was too ashamed to mention it. Sthenno could see the same fluttering anxiety in her sister that she saw in herself. No wonder Phorcys had deposited the baby with them. No sea god would want to feel so weakened. A shudder ran through Sthenno as she thought of what she had lost: the sweet sense of owning herself and her feelings, of having no concerns at all, or only the very mildest kind. All of this was gone, exchanged without warning for a cold, gripping panic whenever a child stumbled or hid or cried.

This, she knew, was love. And she felt it even though she did not want it.





Hera


Amid the lofty grey peaks of Mount Olympus, Hera could see that something was wrong. Zeus was irritable at the best of times, but he was not usually as malevolent as this. The king of the gods had stalked Olympus for days, threatening one deity after another for the most minor infractions. The rock beneath his feet had shuddered at his step, the pine trees lower down the mountain cowered together. Usually, Zeus could manage to be civil to Apollo and Artemis. And yet there had been the most spectacular argument between the three of them earlier. And over nothing, really: Apollo was playing his lyre, which was annoying, certainly, but hardly a novelty. And Zeus sometimes cared for music. Hera preferred silence to everyone fawning over the pristine archer, but unusually she hadn’t started the fight.

Apollo had been playing the instrument quietly, with only his sister cooing at his skill. He was, Hera thought, being quite tolerable. Then he had played a wrong note and Artemis had laughed. Rather winsomely, in Hera’s opinion, but when did Zeus ever mind that? And yet her husband had shouted with rage, had blasted one thunderbolt after another in their direction. They were so shocked, they didn’t even mock him for his atrocious aim. The columns supporting their lovely colonnades needed a little repair work, and the oak trees in the distance were briefly illuminated then blackened. The stench of burning leaves angered Zeus still further. He had been so furious that Hera almost delayed her revenge for the Metis affair.

Of course he had done as she hoped, and wiped the smug goddess from the face of the earth. But Hera resented that it had happened at all. It was not enough to have punished Metis, she needed to punish Zeus. And she knew one way to do that. Well, she smiled to herself as she stared at her reflection in a shallow pool and found nothing wanting, she knew countless ways to do that.

Hera and Zeus were ideally matched, at least in terms of their capacity to antagonize one another. There were days when she believed he could scarcely rise from his bed without seducing or raping someone. The time and effort it then took her to harass every goddess, woman or nymph he had molested? Well, it grew no less draining the more she did it. Quite the opposite, in fact. And on this occasion, she had decided Zeus’s punishment should fit his particular, habitual wrongdoing. He had impregnated Metis, even if the child, god or demi-god, had not appeared. Hera paused to consider the awful possibility that there was a bastard infant somewhere which she had failed to locate and persecute. No. Her large brown eyes gave the misleading impression of a sweet-natured creature. A deer, say, or a cow. But she was as sharp-eyed as any predator. She had missed nothing.

So, where was the child? It infuriated her that she didn’t know. But she could hardly ask him. And none of her usual sources of information (nymphs trying to keep on her good side, in case the worst should happen to them) had been able to give her an answer. She would puzzle it out. But first she would punish him.

*

Hera did not mention Hephaestus to Zeus for a day or two (actually, she was not sure how many days it had been, since they all merged into one so quickly for her and the other gods). But it seemed to take only a few moments for her son to change from infant to adult. Perhaps all mothers felt this way, she wondered afterwards. And shrugged, because how could she ever know the answer without asking one? And who could be bothered to do that? All that mattered was that one moment he had been tiny, the next moment he was grown. He had a limp, she was irritated to notice, which he must have got from his father because he certainly didn’t get it from her. But since she would never reveal who the father was, no one would know. And Hephaestus was skilled with his hands: that had become clear straightaway.

In fact, if anything, he was too skilled. Because Zeus’s wrath that his wife had produced an illegitimate child of her own was swiftly ameliorated by discovering how useful this new deity was to have around. When Zeus had finally noticed a limping god with so much affection for the queen of the gods that she could only be his mother, he erupted with his customary petulance. But Hephaestus – always so eager to please everyone, especially Zeus – was quick to placate him by sculpting a bronze eagle and presenting it to his stepfather as a gift.

The other gods looked on with interest. Apollo was holding his lyre, but his sister’s hand was on his arm, advocating silence. Zeus scowled and grabbed the eagle, seemingly ready to hurl it at its creator. But as he raised it in his hand, the rays of the sun caught the bird. Hephaestus had somehow moulded the feathers in just such a way that when the light was on them, the eagle’s wings were the dark brown of Zeus’s favoured bird, but the feathered edges glowed gold, just as if Helios were catching the real bird in full flight. Zeus was on the verge of saying he had never seen anything more beautiful unless she was naked, when he caught sight of his wife’s eyes, softening as she looked at her son and her husband, and decided that perhaps some thoughts were best left unsaid.