Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Fifteen The Element of Surprise

 

 

Though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

 

With Hermes out from underfoot for the moment, I started taking stock, trying to sort my new responsibilities and powers into some semblance of order. I appeared to be Mistress of both land and sea now, as well as the Underworld, courtesy of my conquest of both Zeus and Poseidon, but the deaths of Ares, Hephaestus, and Apollo had also put me in charge of War, of Fire and all the metal arts, of healing, music, light, poetic inspiration, and of the Sun, albeit only for the last two thousand years or so, since the Sun had previously been the responsibility of Helios — current whereabouts unknown, if still extant — but the boundaries between the two of us had been subsumed into the overall notion of Light. The Gods, I’d found, were nothing if not adaptable to changing milieus.

My new powers as Goddess of the Sun were fascinating, though, although difficult to grasp, since almost everything important took place in a seething maelström of charged particles moving at the speed of light, slowed only by the meandering paths they took after collisions with their fellows, carried along by tremendous currents of degenerate hot gas, compressed almost to fluidity by the tremendous weight of the solar atmosphere overhead. “I’m beginning to think,” I said to Beryl, “that I can do this, with Hermes’ help.”

“Or possibly without. Wasn’t Zeus supposed to be all-powerful?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “if that was actually true or only flattery. He didn’t seem all that powerful when he showed up with his little gang. What sort of omnipotence is it that requires a backup plan?”

“Well,” she said archly, “You did eat his brother, when all is said and done, and your little trick with rocks falling from the sky was probably unexpected. You do have the gift of thinking outside the box, you know. For a guy who grew up in an age of bronze swords, crystalline celestial spheres, and epicycles, an untimely introduction to modern celestial mechanics by someone with a legacy of studying the accessible records of military strategic thinking over the last three or four thousand years would probably be indistinguishable from magic, and your intensive historical research in a modern library on scientific concepts would only add mystery to the miracle. Even some of our relatively modern scientists, like the former Linnæus, now Lynette, have trouble keeping up with you at times. Your own grasp of tactical manœuvering, based on the Horticulturist curriculum of military knowledge that all happened after his time, might well have taken the poor sod by surprise, and he was already wary of you, since Poseidon was a tough customer on his own, supposedly his near-equal.”

I thought about that before responding. “They do seem overly-dependent on brute force, these ancient Gods.” I thought a bit more. “I suppose they tend to be limited by the imaginations of their worshippers.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said. “When thunder and lightning are the only spectacular things around, that may be just about all one can manage to lug around in one’s armamentarium.”

“True, and I do tend to cheat — by their standards — through changing the rules of the contest to suit the moment.”

“Well,” she said, “winning is always the best strategy, no matter how one arranges it, and one rarely wins by doing only what’s expected of one.”

I nodded. “True. A long time ago, a guy named Carl von Clausewitz said, ‘All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it.’ Failing to expect the unexpected is probably the most notorious human weakness of all. From confidence tricksters like the Reivers, who depended upon what turned out to have been the naïve Horticulturist belief that ‘we were all in this together’ to gull their innocent victims, to the great military leaders of the past, trickery and deceit have been a staple of almost every conflict, with the victory usually going to those who managed their deceptions best.”

Beryl laughed. “Backstabbing has a bad reputation, doesn’t it? But daggers have never gone out of style. Our friend Hermes seems likely to have an almost endless supply.”

I grinned. “But not, I suspect, as many as I do. When it comes to having tricks up my sleeve, I try to plan ahead, and simply killing people is dead boring, when push comes to shove.”

She laughed again. “Especially since we now have to deal with them once separated from their mortal coil. It’s not nearly as tidy as it was when it was someone else’s bailiwick to clean up the mess left behind.”

“True, although we’ve only really been at it since the Egyptians were building pyramids, more or less. Before that, we were another crew with a different set of notions about the nature of the afterlife invented mainly by a priestly class more anxious to ensure their own livelihoods than anything else. I didn’t much care for it, until the whole rigmarole finally got more-or-less democratized when the Greeks took over.”

“Well, that’s true of priests in general, isn’t it? — the original con artists, as far as I can tell — but doesn’t that just make them wily Generals, to hear von Clausewitz tell it?”

I sighed. “I suppose it does; they’ve started enough wars over the ages. The trouble always was that they rarely left their wars for their Gods to arrange amongst themselves.”

“The poor dears!” Beryl exclaimed sarcastically. “It’s so irritating when Divinities don’t do their own chores, or even clean up their own messes. You’d think they were men, almost.”

I shrugged and cast my eyes briefly toward the heavens. Beryl had the knack of sarcasm down pat. “Well, this last lot was, but their ranks are thinning. To their credit, though, they acted as individuals rather than through proxies. I don’t suppose that there’ll be many left when all is said and done, but at least this latest lot had the courage of their own convictions.”

“They died well,” she conceded, “by their own standards.”

“True, and their deaths were merciful, for the most part, in that they were almost instantly flashed into vapor. Most of those who were merely injured survived with minor flash-burns and miscellaneous contusions from flying rocks and dirt, so received a healing bit of our special cheese to help them recover quickly. They were hangers-on, for the most part, what one might call ‘cannon-fodder,’ with no particular support in the form either of relatives who might be tempted to vengeance or fond admirers. Either way, the living and the dead, they’re no longer any sort of threat, since they can no longer call upon the help of their more powerful fellows, and are under my dominion in any case, through my overthrow of the three major Gods, who handily ruled the Land, the Sea, and the Underworld, Apollo, the lesser God who ruled the Sun, and a handful of minor divinities. The only domain still in any sort of doubt is the interstellar Void, and I might have some small claim on that through Tiamat, whose dominion was a confusing melange of primordial ocean and the fertile reaches of interstellar space, since the ancients had no clear referents to a Universe beyond the Earth itself, which was erroneously viewed as more-or-less all-encompassing, and somehow possessed the starry firmament, the planets, and the Sun itself as accretions held in ‘shells’ around its bulk.”

“Well, Tiamat herself claimed as much when she described her creation of the Universe, if you’ll recall. I even went to the trouble of an oracular pronouncement, just to clarify things in your mind, so please don’t tell me that you’ve forgotten it already!”

“Mea culpa,” I said sourly. “I’ve had a lot on my mind for the last few hours.”

“Oh, don’t be a pill,” she said primly. “If either of us had any reason to be put out of sorts, it would be me. You spent a few brief moments snuffing the old crew out of existence, leaving me to clean up the mess you left behind without so much as a by-your-leave.”

I blinked. “Was it really a lot of trouble?”

“It was,” she sniffed. “You never saw such a crowd of snooty crybabies demanding the perquisites of their supposed rank, the sorry lot of them pushing and shoving to be first in line, then complaining and demanding to see my superior when they didn’t get the cushy billet and special treatment they’d expected.”

“I hope you told them that you’re in charge of final dispositions,” I said. “That’s always been your prerogative and office, even before I showed up and took over the nominal head office.”

“To be fair, you’ve done a few on your own,” she observed.

“Well, yes,” I admitted, “but I was always conscious of your primacy and dispositive power in that regard, and did my best to meet your expectations.” I grinned at her. “I may be a tyrant, but I’m both benevolent and cute.”

“That last can be taken two ways, you know.”

“Of course, my very dear,” I purred with ill-concealed prurience, “wordplay is amongst my many fortés.”

She smiled back at me. “Why, Sapphire, you sly vixen, you, I do believe you may have something else in mind.”

“Don’t I always? Although I do think it may have at least something to do with adrenaline.”

“So they say,” she said, smiling. “You do look a little flushed.”

“A natural response to many stimuli, I’m told”

“I don’t know if there can actually be too many stimuli. It seems to me that seeking sensations of various sorts is what makes the world go round, as they say, from paramecia to people.”

I sniffed for effect. “Angular momentum makes the world go round, as you well know.”

She rolled her eyes. “Now you’re just being rotund.”

“Surely you mean ‘profound,’ ” I objected.

“Nope, fathead is as fathead does. You knew what I meant, so please don’t try to deny it. You never have been able to resist a wisecrack, even at completely inappropriate times, and flattering yourself over a trivial bon mot is certainly inappropriate, even at the best of times.”

Beryl was sometimes a stickler for what she considered to be ‘appropriate’ behavior and could at times, quite frankly, be a perfect pill. In fact, ever since she’d taken on the task of weighing the hearts of the dead, she’d become a lot more judgemental, taking all in all. Of course, there was another and entirely different way of looking at it, since the former ‘Dolt,’ then aptly short for Dolomite, had been vastly improved by her less-than-subtle transformation — as had I, I fondly hoped — first feminine, then apotheotic on many levels, and Harry knows what else was coming down the road. Perhaps, in fact, now that I really thought about it, it was I who was being unfair. “You’re right, of course, my darling heart of hearts. There are few things more tedious than calling attention to one’s own witticisms, since they’ve either already been noted or studiously ignored, depending on criteria which include the native wits of both sides to any conversation. Any failure, of course, is my own, since I obviously misjudged either my own cleverness or yours.”

“You do tend,” she said dryly, “to err in favor of your own, a common failing of genius. Kindly remember that Salvador Dalí is remembered mostly as a disgusting human being these days, George Orwell’s scathing assessment of his character having prevailed.”

Well, that set me back a bit, since I shared her view entirely. “Darling,” I said humbly, “please feel free to ‘smack me upside the haid,’ as they say down here, if I ever come even close to arrogant flamboyance or eccentricity.”

“Well,” she said with a smirk, “I do hope you aren’t expecting me to apply this new dispensation of yours liberally, since I’d hate to scramble your brains through repetitive trauma.”

“Repetitive trauma, my sweet ass,” I said indignantly. “I am not now and never have been quite that bad.”

“Says who?” she said. “As far as I can see, I’m the only thing standing between you and a truly magnificent pratfall, somewhere down the line, although I have to confess that enlisting the aid of Hermes was a stroke of genius.”

“How very perspicacious,” that selfsame worthy said quietly from the deep gloom beneath a nearby stand of live oaks. “I’ve rounded up a large group of Sophists you might be interested in, in-so-far as I’m aware of your complete purpose.” He beckoned to a largish group of new women – and a few old women reborn in the new dispensation – lurking behind him.

I was startled, although Beryl seemed less so. “That was quick,” I said. Then I looked at them more carefully and saw that many of their number were more comely incarnations of the very sages I’d thought about when first imagining a restoration of public education in general, but especially the great universities. “Last I looked, many of these people were still shades in Hades, though. However did you manage it?”

In answer, he held up his herald’s staff, a more rustic version of the traditional Caduceus, the Greek κηρύκειον, twin snakes entwined around a wooden bâton. “Amongst my many offices for the Gods and Goddesses, I’m the psychogogue who leads souls to and from the former realms of Hades — so we have a relationship of sorts, my dread Queen, that goes back for many millennia, at least in spirit. Amongst the many powers of my traveller’s stave are the twinned gifts of life and death; hence, the symbolism of the serpents.”

“That’s right,” Beryl exclaimed, “I remember you as Χθόνιος! Or Ningishzida!” She frowned. “You do seem to disguise yourself anew for every rôle you play.”

“My Queen,” he smiled modestly, “the most important aspect of diplomacy lies in presenting a charming face to every party. As a diplomat…,” he shifted through a bewildering series of entirely different appearances, from grizzled ancient to young maiden to rustic peasant to courtly lady to centaur, and then back to what seemed to be his current natural state, a handsome and muscular man, “…I adapt myself to every circumstance.” He shifted one last time, into the semblance of a beautiful young woman who might easily have been lost amongst our troop of soldiers. “If you’d prefer, I’m entirely amenable to serving you in any form that you prefer. As you might guess from my association with Mercury, I’m protean by nature, both eloquent and fluent in every sense.”

“Now that I actually think about it,” I said, remembering, “as Rhea, or Aphrodite, I do believe that we’re related.”

“Indeed,” she acknowledged. “Hermaphrodite is another of my many names, since all forms of communication lie within my purview.” Here, she wriggled her hips seductively, which I supposed might relate to her function as the God/Goddess of commerce, so it made some sense that the ‘oldest profession’ ought to fall well within her larger demesne.

“Well, Cousin,” I said. “Welcome to our happy little family, then. How is it that you can grant rebirth with such facility? We’ve had a great deal of trouble here-to-fore.”

“Like many things, My dread Queen, which may seem difficult at first, but really aren’t when looked at carefully, it’s often simply a matter of perspective. Life and death are intertwined, just as symbolised by the supporters on my staff, and one man’s meal is someone else’s body, going all the way back into the depths of time. Your own problem with supernovas is just another aspect of the same essential equivalence, as it’s only through the death of stars and planets that new stars and planets can be reborn as new cradles of burgeoning life.”

“I see,” said Beryl. “Just as every creature goes back into the Earth at some time after death, so every new creature is — in some sense — reborn from those same elements. Preparing a soul for rebirth, then, is just a matter of gathering together the right chemicals in their proper proportions.”

“Exactly, my dread Queens. Although some essential portion of their new bodies is supplied by protozoa and bacteria, which come preassembled, and so saves a great deal of time and effort.” She bowed to both of us as if this were a particularly impressive conjuring trick, which I suppose it was, since I hadn’t thought of it.

“Do you have any insights on the practicality of moving the Sun using coronal mass ejections from one pole or another?” I inquired.

“Indeed I do,” she said. “As the acknowledged Goddess of art, law, magic, science, the moon, wisdom, writing, fire, light, travellers, and sundry other responsibilities, I have considerable influence upon the Sun, despite the fact that my supposed ‘son,’ Apollo/Osiris, held the official post, or supposedly inherited it through my father Ra, but you know how sexist the ancients tended to be, feeling quite free to disguise the origins of their Gods as recycled reïncarnations of former Goddesses in order to flatter themselves that men ruled the Heavens as well as the mundane world. You’ve already met our Mother Tiamat, so you have at least some realisation of ultimate reality.”

Well, I could see exactly how skilled she would be at mediating any sort of conflict, and allaying even niggling suspicions. To judge from her brilliant performance just now, she could easily have reconciled foxes and chickens, perhaps even turned them into best friends for life, or at least would have made them wish that they were. “Yes, I’ve noticed,” I said dryly. “Reality can almost always be relied upon.”

“It can indeed,” she said with a sly sort of smile. “How may I be of further service, my dread Queen?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, I think you’d make a lovely Præceptrix for my new university system. You’ve already managed to collect quite a few Sophists and Lecturers who might wish to join one or another of the faculties, and I presume that more can be had where those came from, assuming that they’re willing to accept rebirth in our present world. I’ve already promised Lynette the leadership of at least the primary university in North America, but I have a global system in mind, so there’ll be plenty of opportunities for both local and regional bailiwicks and honours, with some sort of overarching supervision of the local institutions.” I still didn’t fully trust her; who in their right mind would? But they always say that more rats are caught with honey than with vinegar…, or was that flies? I never did understand what people were supposed to do with flies, whilst rats were almost a staple in the fortresses, at least for the enlisted families and underlings, but I’d heard it both ways. Perhaps they used flies for something before the Dandelion Wars; I do remember reading once in the library back home about a dish they called ‘shoofly pie,’ but I’d never bothered looking for a recipe, since my diet – even since escaping into the wild – was pretty much limited to stuff I found in cans and other rations laid up in the times before the war, at least until we began living more-or-less off the land since we’d begun our reconquest of America.

She seemed to consider my proposition for a moment before answering, “I’m sure, honored Queen, that you might find a more… reliable executive. Whilst I do have flashes of exquisite brilliance – or so I flatter myself – but I’ve never been known neither for my constancy nor – if truth be told – for my ability to refrain from a bit of innocent… fun… from time to time.”

“I trust that you’ll be better able to separate your hierarchical responsibilities from your personal pleasure in future, my loyal herald and messenger. To encourage this new habit of constancy, especially in interpersonal relationships, dear Hermes, I therefore strongly suggest that you retain your current form, dear Maia, Maia of the lovely black eyes, Goddess of the Earth before Gaia, your own mother by Zeus Pater, and a thousand other names and rôles – or Māyā, to use the Vedic equivalent – the pleasant face the workings of the Universe present to outside observers. You’ll find it a great help in recruitment these days – especially since male humans are becoming rare – and the possibility of… lasting consequences may help to keep your fertile mind on business.”

Her eyes narrowed with ill-concealed suspicion and hostility. “Am I to be constrained, dread Queen? I hadn’t counted upon any form of slavery when I freely offered my allegiance and fealty.”

“Not at all, beloved Messenger and Herald, but you may have noticed that the world around us is dominated by women now; you’d hate, I’m sure, to be mistaken for a Reiver, if only for the inconvenience and tedium of endless cycles of reïncarnation. As partial compensation and further honor, I grant to you the wings and appurtenances of Nike, anciently common, and the traditional chariot of the most-honored Gods and Goddesses, the golden Quadriga with four powerful black stallions to speed your journeys in my service.”

Her suspicion was quickly concealed, papered over with the practiced ease of the diplomat or politician. “Are you returning the demesne of the Sun to me, then?”

“I am. Haven’t these negotiations centered around that very dominion? Haven’t you noticed that the late and unlamented Ἀπόλλων, Apollo of Delphi, the prophet, physician, and patron of music, is no longer with us? I’m well aware that you have historical claims to many of these appellations and dominions, and am fully prepared to grant all these courtesies – so long either in abeyance or decline – to you alone, provided only that I have both your support and loyalty…, coupled with your solemn oath upon these selfsame undertakings.”

She blinked, curious, perhaps, that I neither coveted these things for myself nor mistrusted her beyond reason. “I so swear, dread Queen, and am astonished by your generosity and trust.”

“Thank you, dear messenger and perhaps our eventual friend. This our interaction is neither trick nor ploy, you’ll come to understand. Unlike most of those divinities you’ve hitherto been acquainted with, Beryl and I are adults, slow to anger, and not unreasonably inclined toward jealousy, mischief, nor spite.”

“In fact,” Beryl chimed in, “I believe a smallish group of Olympians approaches us now, and I’m rather more inclined to offer them tea and cookies than kill them.”

“As am I,” I added, “since it’s such a waste to vaporize them. I’m fairly sure that they’d have much to offer in the way of individual viewpoints and expertise, if only they’d have a mind to do so, and the cycle of rebirth is notoriously unreliable in terms of timeliness…, at least.”

“Well,” Beryl said defensively, “I like to think of it as a sort of… ripening. Some people just take a bit longer to properly… mature. It’s something like what we might call… childhood development, in which every individual, no matter what their actual social background, is given ample time to play and interact with others in Elysium or the Fields of Asphodel – and perhaps experience a few ‘do-overs’ involving draughts from Lethe or Mnemosyne – and the occasional ‘time-out’ in Tartarus or other unfortunate environment to encourage better attention to morality and compassion the next time around.”

“Well, that’s one way of looking at it,” Maia/Hermes mused. “I’m rather more accustomed to a less… hopeful… view of the afterlife.”

“Times change,” Beryl said lightly. “We tend to be somewhat less judgemental these days, although a good dose of bitter medicine may offer the potential penitents an incentive to reflect upon and mend their wicked ways. Certainly, I myself have taken the responsibility of consigning particular shades to torment – and am usually well-pleased by the salutary result – but some are more recalcitrant than others, and take more time to ripen and mature.” She paused and looked out toward the horizon, where another group of deities had appeared, all armed cap-à-pie, just as before, but with an admixture of more feminine representatives of the Olympian hierarchy. I was touched that they’d taken the trouble and time to scare up a few thunderbolts of their own, since they do cheer up the place, and leave a delightful fresh scent of electricity in the air. Somehow, it reminds me of seduction, although carnal love is sweeter and more earthy.

‘Tiamat!’ I called out in thought, ‘would you mind showing yourself to your sometimes haughty descendants?’ then released a fusillade of thunderbolts well away from their general line of approach, just as a cautionary display of strength to encourage circumspection and an inclination either to parley more readily or to expend less effort in intimidation. Mind you, a little intimidation can be an excellent beginning to any negotiation, or at least I’d found this to be the case in recent experience.

Tiamat lifted herself above the waves about a mile offshore and thundered, “Welcome, children! As you can see, our relative positions have altered slightly.” She smiled, itself an horrific exercise in studied intimidation.

I added, ‘Well come, indeed, sisters and friends! As you may observe, there’ve been some changes made, but not entirely to your own disadvantage, however discomfiting they may appear to be at first.’

‘We’d hate,’ Beryl gently expanded on my proposition, ‘to think that needless rancour might exist between us when we could be allies and boon companions.’

Slightly chastened, they came toward us without further outward showings of hostility, passing under Tiamat’s baleful gaze with some hint of diffidence, their understanding of her overall position in the scheme of things having been slightly altered from what it it so obviously had been heretofore, and their understanding of the two of us, and of the army behind us, sadly out-of-date. One – most probably Hera, by her aspect and accoutrements – said, “Was it you who killed my husband and brothers?”

“It was,” I said boldly, but with just a hint of compassionate sorrow for her loss, whatever that might be, “but can only plead necessity, since they were rapidly proceeding toward us in a hostile, even warlike, manner that threatened myself and my companions, so left me little responsible choice other than to… handle the danger they posed with some measure of finality. Rest assured that they’re perfectly safe in our Underworld, biding their time in relative comfort until rebirth.”

“And when might this proposed revanance occur?” the one whom I presumed to be Hera challenged me.

“When we judge them ready,” I said, “my sister bride and I.”

She fell instantly into indignant wroth. “But what possible right have either of you… upstarts to judge us, your predecessors and betters?”

“Power,” I said simply. “I’ve already vanquished the most powerful of the old Gods, this most recent gang of petty thugs, entirely on my own, and without even breaking a nail. Would you like to try your own luck with me?” I asked her. A bland smile brushed across my perfect lips as I arched one perfect brow and held up one hand in an elegant gesture to display my exquisite French Tips. My other hand, of course, held a weapon of puissance. Whilst I was all for the notion of filling up and spilling over like an endless waterfall of Sisterhood is Powerful, I’d read Bullfinch in my library, and each and every one of those ancient Gods and Goddesses had gone through more than a few sociopathic moments in which they’d acted like malevolent two-year-olds with ready access to deadly swords and axes sized perfectly to fit their dainty hands.

Hera looked at me as if assessing her chances, then shrugged and said, “Given the fact that you eliminated my husband and his cronies so handily, I believe it might be unwise of us to quarrel with our latest sisters.” She smiled graciously, although there was an almost palpable undertone of condescension in her voice that I didn’t quite like. Still, one supposes that it must rankle to have one’s place in the grand scheme of things upset so drastically, from co-ruler of Olympus and the world of human beings to an almost also-ran in one brilliant instant of incandescent fury flashing down from outer space, especially when outer space itself had been nearly inconceivable at the time. There’s nothing the ‘Old Guard’ likes less than to have their presumptions and assumptions toppled.

“My thoughts almost exactly,” I said insincerely, but with what I hoped at least believable touching warmth. “Please feel free to come visit our subterranean realms at any time if you wish to engage in any fond farewells with your former companions. Do call ahead to make arrangements, though, so that we can prepare a suitable reception.” I looked behind me and said, “Maia!”

Maia/Hermes appeared instantly at my side. “At your instant service, my dread Queen, please do impart to me your slightest desire.” She bowed low, with only the faintest hint of mockery.

I liked that in her. “I appreciate your prompt attention, dear friend. Allow me to call your attention to the previous female denizens of Olympus. Whenever it suits you, from time to time, I’d appreciate it if you might drop in on them to see if they have any pressing need to communicate or visit with their loved ones down below, if that might ease their understandable grief or curiosity. I’d consider this a kindness, both to me and to your former companions on Olympus.”

“Of course, mighty Sovereign. Your merest wish is my command.” She bowed low.

I smiled and bent down to raise her and then drew her to my ample bosom, made a bit more lavish by my pregnancy. “You flatter me, of course, but then that’s your nature, always so generous and loving, instilling amity and concord in those around you through your shining example and benign influence.” I smiled again, a benevolence aimed mostly toward our… guests… from cloud-topped Olympus.

“As you say, my ever-generous and loving Queen, productive colloquy is always facilitated by mutual understanding and cordial harmony, and all such intercourse falls within my purview.”

I smirked and said, “Indeed, it seems that all forms of… intimate communication fall within your scope of authority.” Okay, so it was a somewhat childish joke, so sue me. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was a teenaged boy, for whom the word ‘puerile’ was invented.

Maia/Hermes arched a brow in my general direction, not exactly displeased by my little jest. “Well, yes, dear Queen, but that usually goes without saying.” She rolled her eyes briefly toward the heavens.

“My dear Maia,” I said, “for you, there’s almost nothing that goes without saying.”

 

 

After suitable displays of hospitality, during which I was amazed to discover that our guests, when presented with our special ‘cheese’ as a part of our refreshments, immediately identified it as a type of ambrosia, and were curious to discover how we’d come by it. “It’s commonplace in the area,” I said, “but I’d actually thought it was a local product.”

“It does have a somewhat different flavor than that which is more familiar to us,” Hera said, “but I can feel it cleansing all defilement from my flesh and reïnfusing my body with immortality already, so it seems particularly potent. Do you also possess νέκταρ, which I suppose you’d be more familiar with as néktar?”

“Not that I know of, but then I haven’t looked. This form seems to have been sufficient thus far.”

“The two are equivalent,” she admitted, “just different preparations of the selfsame exhalation of power from the Earth itself. Since you seem to hold dominion thereof through your overthrow of my brother, the former regent, I imagine you could conjure it up in either form. I usually have it delivered by doves, but was never actually involved in its creation. How is my brother, by the way?”

“Doing very well, last I looked, and blissfully happy in her new life.”

“She’s reborn already? I would have thought you might have consigned him to Tartarus, as is the usual rule amongst us.”

“We’re not nearly so inhospitable,” I said. “Hades is doing very well indeed, and very happy, as I said. She goes by ‘Macaria’ these days, and I’m quite sure you’d like her, once you got to know her.”

Hera blinked, so I gathered that their relationship had not been entirely cordial in the past. “I confess that I’m astonished,” she said. “Is it your plan to be similarly merciful to all of us?”

“Merciful? I wasn’t aware that you’d done anything particularly deserving of censure in recent years. Why would I punish you, or any of your friends here present?”

She looked to be perplexed. “To consolidate your power? I don’t know; that’s always been the way it was in the past.”

“What’s past is only prologue;” I cribbed. “What’s to come, lies in my discharge, and I have no desire to repeat the mistakes of my predecessors. To be fair, aside from Hephaestus, already reborn without physical deformity and doing very well, most of the gang which attacked us were, in fact, consigned to Tartarus, but are very unlikely to stay there, just long enough to get their attention before accepting a draught of Lethe and sent off to rebirth. In the very long view, we live here on Earth in the shadow of an existential threat to our very existence, the random and chaotic nature of the violent Universe, and it’s my intention to either avoid or ameliorate that threat through careful planning and decisive action. I can’t perform this task effectively if I go around making enemies of even minor players, much less women of power and ancient heritage.”

“You’ll probably like this part,” Beryl added. “When she vanquished Apollo, Sapphire here took control of the Sun, and has already worked out the beginnings of a plan to steer our Solar system out of harm’s way, as much as possible.”

“Solar system?” Hera said, obviously out of her depth.

I explained. “What you might think of as the Earth with its fifty-five concentric crystalline spheres. We now perceive the Heavens as slightly more complex, and somewhat more susceptible to effective manipulation, since we no longer believe that our environs are either unchanging or impossible to change. I can give you a tangible reference if you like, but I might have trouble locating the text in Greek, if it matters. If you’d care to visit the Underworld, I can introduce you to some of the more brilliant of our Sophists who might be able to explain with more facility, or you could simply wait, as we’re attempting even now to gather together a new symposium of ancient and more recent scholars in the modern world with whom you might take counsel. It’s my intention to offer education gratis to anyone who has the inclination, although I’m sure we’ll have a few obstacles to overcome along the way.”

“Including women?” She seemed incredulous.

“Especially women. We tend, I think, to have a greater stake in the future – if only to ensure the welfare of our children – where many men seem take the cavalier attitude of the murderous Punch, a folkloric figure from a more recent antiquity, who lewdly tells his lover, after having thrown her baby to her death upon the rocky ground, ‘Don’t worry, Judy dear, there’s plenty more babies where that one came from.’ ”

“Surely,” Hera said, “there are legitimate reasons to fear one’s own offspring, though. Think of King Laius, who tried to kill his own child to thwart the prophesy which foretold his death by that child’s hand.”

“Perhaps, but would Oedipus have killed his father if he’d been raised within the bosom of his own loving family? Surely Laius himself set in motion the sequence of events that led to his own death, which some might think was just punishment for his own sin of attempted infanticide.”

“Perhaps,” she conceded, “but both Laius and Oedipus were repugnant characters. One remembers that they fell into their fatal quarrel through arguing over who should stand aside to let the other pass on a narrow stretch of road. To me, it seems no matter which of them died, or even both, since they were a matched pair of belligerent fools.”

I smiled. “There,” I said, “you’ve outlined an important tenet of my own philosophy. The world, I think, would be a better place without quite so many arrogant twits cluttering up the place. From time to time, I’ve had the opportunity to rectify the problem, and haven’t shirked my duty.”

Hera looked at me appraisingly. “I take it that you find it easy to distinguish yourself from the typical fool, then?”

“I do,” I conceded. “For one thing, we’re here having an amicable conversation without trying to kill one another. For another, those we have killed have been, for the most part, cruel abusers of women and children, with no particular redeeming qualities that we could discover. I try to remain phlegmatic, even in battle, and although I’ve undoubtedly made a few mistakes, I’ve tried to keep them to a minimum.”

She thought about my words for quite some time before replying. “I admit that my initial armed response was thoughtless – for this oversight I do apologize – and upon careful review I can see that Hades acted rashly in the first place, yet you managed to overlook his violent capture and rape of your lover to the extent that he has wonderful prospects ahead of him in his new life post-conquest, perhaps even an exemplary path of upward progress that might eventually make him worthy of divinity once more. I must confess, however, that his harsh rejection of Persephone, the Kore, upon whom the salvation and spiritual achievements of so many depend, has put him in my bad books.”

“I’m well aware of this,” Beryl interjected, “but assure you that I have personally maintained the spiritual continuity of the ancient traditions in my own right. Not one soul has been impeded on its progress toward their rightful reward in the afterlife, however they may have conceived it at the time of their initiation into the Mysteries. Persephone herself is free to come and go as she pleases, either to return to the world of light or to tarry for the benefit of those souls she has taken into her personal care. I’m not at all jealous of her, and hope that we may be – or become – good friends.”

“Are you yourself an Initiate, then?” she asked, curious rather than concerned.

“I embody the Sacred Mysteries in my own person,” Beryl replied, “and fully inspire and reward those who follow the ancient traditions as an essential aspect of my own divinity. In a word or two, I will be what I will be, ʾehyeh ʾašer ʾehyeh.”

Hera said simply, “Lady.”

I responded, but not directly, having had enough of metaphysics, for which I had little patience, despite the advantages it offered, “We have no designs upon your persons, not any of you, and wish to assure you that your homes and persons are sacrosanct, as well as your authority and prerogatives, insofar as they do not touch upon our own. In fact, we seek your aid in achieving several of our own purposes, among which are to pacify the plants and make this world more hospitable to humanity again – as it was at the dawn of human civilization – and to set humanity moving forward once more in the arts and sciences, both in rebuilding whatever has been lost, and in forging ahead on many fronts, artistic, cultural, and scientific. In the interim, however, let us all sit and chat, introducing ourselves to each other, although I believe I recognize at least wise Athena, fierce Artemis, and noble Hestia.”

“You might like to acquaint yourself with Demeter, then, mother to Persephone, the Kore, whose essential personality and powers are strangely commingled with your lover Beryl.” She led forth a woman crowned in gold, the filigree points of her elaborate regalia decorated with golden ears of wheat and the band encircled with a narrow river of winged snakes entwined in endless pursuit of themselves, the symbols of her dominion over the Earth itself and the entirety of the vegetable world, especially grain, but also domestic animals and snakes, the latter, one supposes, due to her central rôle in the Elusinian and other Mysteries, both as mother of the Kore, thereby the implicit mother of all humanity, and as the source of that Kundalini power which propelled the soul through endless cycles of rebirth, with wisdom as an ultimate goal. In one hand, she held a wooden staff with a carved lotus flower as another symbol of perpetual life, an attribute she shared with Isis – Isat, as she was known to the ancient Egyptians – Lakshmi, Sarasvati, Guanyin, and a thousand Bodhisattvas.

Beryl reached out to clasp her close, saying, “Welcome, Mother, to our familial embrace. We’re honored by your presence, and truly need your help.”

“My help? Whatever for?”

“Reconciliation,” I said, “for one, entirely appropriate to your authority as guardian and inspiration of the true family, the sacred hearth and center of the home, but also a metaphor for the order of the Universe-at-large. I aim to tame the chaotic nature of the Cosmos, ameliorating the cruelty of random cosmic violence by subordinating it to the needs of sentience and life itself.”

“Tame Chaos? How could that be possible?” she asked.

“Through humane intervention, wherever possible, just as humanity has done for half a million years or more. Foodstuffs are sometimes in short supply, yet human beings have been inspired to set up both farms and granaries to tide them over during the lean times. The home itself is a similar intervention, so that human beings are far less subject to the vagaries of weather and predators, being more-or-less safe within walls and beneath a roof. So too the sacred hearth itself, the spiritual center of a human home, is also a means whereby the food we eat can be cooked, preventing many diseases and increasing the nutritional value of our foodstuffs.”

“So, this scheme of yours to move the Sun accomplishes some similar purpose in protecting the hearth and home?” She seemed especially intrigued by this prospect, as one might suspect.

I nodded. “Yes. Just as the hearth is carefully designed to honor, shelter, and control the essence of hospitable fire, which has destructive as well as beneficial potential, my scheme is meant to provide a similar protection for the Earth itself, taking us out of the chaotic galactic plane – where sometimes dangerous conditions prevail – and putting us into a position of greater safely out in the galactic ‘halo’ which surrounds our galaxy, where nearby supernovas are comparatively rare.”

“Would it be possible to move these ‘supernovas’ instead?” Hera mused, cleverly applying her own considerable intellect to a potential solution.

“I thought about that, but these events are both extremely rare – individual instances scattered amongst literally millions, perhaps billions, of potential candidates – and critical to the formation of new suns and planets, as Tiamat has kindly explained to me, so robbing the galaxy of their presence would almost surely prevent other civilizations from developing in future, just as human civilizations depend upon volcanoes to bring up riches from within the Earth, fertilizing the land and providing ready access to metals and minerals which would otherwise be in very short supply.”

“Well, naturally,” Hera said. “That’s how Hades derived his original power. Even the ancients observed that volcanic soils are extremely fertile, and that sulphur and other valuable minerals were often thrown up on the surface of the Earth by volcanic eruptions.“

“According to Tiamat,” I answered, “and corroborated by the human scientific observations made by some of our guests in the underworld, almost all the complex elements – at least everything much heavier than oxygen – were produced in supernovas, and certainly distributed widely by one or another sort of stellar explosion, with the smaller novas and other forms of mass ejection comprising from five to ten percent of total mass spilled out into the interstellar medium, and supernovas making up the bulk of it. Certainly, without supernovas, the Earth we know would not exist, and even here volcanoes play a very important rôle in human civilization in that they form natural retorts suitable for distilling and concentrating many important minerals, including bauxite – from which aluminium is derived – diamonds, gold, nickel, lead, zinc, and copper, to name a few of the most common, and those most notably valuable to humanity. It’s certainly volcanic activity that brings these valuable minerals to the surface as well, where they can be very useful indeed.”

“And most all this treasure is created in these so-called ‘supernovas?’ ”

“It is,” I acknowledged. “As it turns out, all tangible materials are made of atoms, just as your ancient Greek philosophers imagined, but these ‘atoms,’ once supposed to be indivisible, are actually comprised of smaller particles which can be broken apart and reforged into new materials if the fires are hot enough and enough force is applied.”

“Just as copper can be commingled with tin to form bronze?”

“Exactly so, at least in principle. The energy required, however, is immense, and requires a very special type of ‘forge’ most common in the central portion of very massive stars, and the heaviest atoms can only be produced in the stupendous explosions that result from the violent compression of these extremely large stars.”

“And it’s these explosions that present a danger to life on our Earth?”

“Yes, not from the explosion itself, but from the high-energy particles emitted from such explosions, much like very fine sand may be whipped up by strong winds into a deadly blast that can strip leaves and bark from trees and skin from unprotected people.”

“I understand, I think,” Hera said uncertainly.

“It’s a difficult concept,” I said, “and I confess that I myself have had to take the words of our most accomplished Sophists in this field pretty much on faith, although they claim to have done this in laboratory experiments not more than three hundred years ago, before the collapse of the world scientific establishment during the wars and other struggles brought on by global warming and the uncontrolled environmental mutagens that resulted in new and deadly species of plants that captured our entire attention.”

“I wasn’t aware of this,” Hera said. “We’ve been dozing, I think, since humanity gave up on us.”

“I understand,” I said, “and seek to rectify this state of affairs through an increased level of benign divine involvement, so will depend upon all of you to do your part without such quarrelling or malicious mischief as has transpired in the past. I’m sure the altered fates of many of the most powerful male denizens of Olympus will serve as both good example and cautionary tale for any nascent sociopaths.” I wasn’t terribly concerned about potential revolts, since I suspected that at least some portion of our success of late, almost from the very start, is that the world hasn’t seen a decent general officer take the field in several centuries, so potential opposition has grown complacent and disorganized, both jointly and severally. Although the plants were evolving to become more deadly, there was never any overall strategy involved, just a series of more-or-less random responses to particular selection pressures, but I couldn’t account for the appearance of what appeared to be a species of ‘ambrosia’ – ἀμβροσία – on this continent, so far removed from the exhalations of Etna or Santorini, and where Sybils weren’t exactly thick on the ground.

 

 

A few days later, we were making our collective way along an arm of the sea south of what used to be Charleston, well on our way to Savannah, then on to Florida, which was rumored to be controlled by some sort of Reiver King, and thus fair game. Hera was still with us, intrigued by our brave New World, and of course by the notion of taming Chaos, every woman’s dream, but the rest of the Olympians had gone back home, to do whatever it is that semi-retired Goddesses do in their ample spare time. “So, dear sister,” I informed Hera, who had taken to equestrianism with great enthusiasm, “did you know that this was once the very center of the North American slave trade?”

“I did not,” she answered, “but what does it matter? Wherever people congregate, there inevitably arise those who seek to rule and these rulers capitalize on their labour, persons, or other assets. The strong dominate the weak through whatever means come readily to hand, whether economic, political, or through brute force. Slavery is just one drab color on an entire spectrum of human exploitation, and probably not the worst.” She appeared to be as utterly unconcerned as her words implied.

“What do you mean? The Reivers we’re chasing use women as prostitutes, murder those who have no value to them, and wantonly destroy all those human artefacts that seem to have no immediate value.”

“So have conquerors throughout the ages; it’s nothing new. Conquerors tend overwhelmingly to be men, and most men have very simple tastes, rapine being only one of the most direct.”

“And well amongst least admirable,” I said acerbically. “I choose when, where, and with whom I have a sexual connection to, and insist that all my friends have similar latitude in their preferences.” Then, I added, either parenthetically or prophetically, I’m never quite sure which mode I’m in these days, “I’m extremely friendly, all in all, so one can never tell with what disagreeable fellow I might take umbrage. Thus far, it’s been pretty much universal, as you can see.”

“Well then, you’ll quite enjoy the company of these women who now approach, since they share your general condemnation of men who betray their obligations to the Gods… and Goddesses, now further exalted with your connivance.” She rolled her eyes toward Heaven.

I looked up and saw a host of what looked to be angels, winged women flying towards us in a ragged ‘Vee’ formation at least three thousand feet above us, so their figures were tiny, their faces almost indistinguishable from this distance. Still, Hera didn’t seem at all discomfited, so I took my cue from her and signalled the troops, “Hai! Captain Topaz! We’re expecting visitors, so please make camp and prepare refreshments for around…” I glanced up again, estimating… “thirty… ish… guests!” Then I found a likely spot quite near a largish shade tree to dismount and wait for the imminent arrival of our visitors.

Our Topaz was an absolute wonder, and had our camp organized and homely whilst they were still dropping down towards us with a series of shrill, ululating, cries that would undoubtedly have woken the dead, had they been sleeping, which of course they didn’t. Their leader – if that were she, since she spoke with some authority once they’d landed in a sudden rush of wings, the winds of their passage accompanying them in buffets that lifted clothes and hair, and a presence that made one almost humble, if one were so inclined, which of course I wasn’t at all – faced me and said, in a voice as soft and lovely as jasmine incense on a summer night, “My name is Peisinoë. You killed Poseidon?”

Leaving aside metaphysical quibbles as pointless, and taking my cue from her no-nonsense brusqueness, I said, “Yes, I did.”

She knelt and bowed her head, despite my instant but inarticulate protestations, and said, “We are in your debt.” The others all made the same obeisance, as if they were the chorus in some eldritch passion play.

“Please,” I said, “let’s not stand on ceremony, or… rather… let’s all stand up. I killed him not to do you any particular favor, so any good that came from my actions was merely collateral to my own purpose, which was mostly to stay alive and to protect my friends from his unprovoked assault.”

“None-the-less,” she said, “and whatever your intention, you’ve been of great benefit to all of us, whom the Sea Tyrant had held in vile bondage through the mistaken assumption that we were denizens of the oceans. The debt stands.” Prophetically, or perhaps they simply preferred to coördinate their every action, they all stood up in synchrony, even as she spoke these words.

“So you’re not ocean-dwellers?” I asked, assuming an affirmative answer, reasonably enough, since they’d flown in from the heavens above us. In fact, I couldn’t see any reason for them to fall within Poseidon’s dominions at all.

“Not entirely; we’re equally at home in every realm, the Empyrean, the wide fields of Āsgarthr and Earth, the remote mountain fastness of Shangri-La, the deep blue ocean depths inhabited by the mer-folk, and even the Underworld. In fact, we cross every boundary with impunity, because we predate almost every later deity and creature, being essentially coeval with Tiamat, the Creatrix of all there is.”

“I see,” I said, although I didn’t, or not really. I quickly drew a mental card, The Fool, which I couldn’t relate to at all. I was pretty sure it wasn’t me, but who else could it refer to? Most all of our new friends seemed impossibly ancient, and seemed rather ensconced in rather specific rôles and attitudes, hardly innocents, at least.

“I see you don’t,” their leader said. “We are the Σειρῆνες, the Seirēnes, the Sirens, in your vulgar tongue, the Daughters of the Earth.”

“I do see,” I said, “though not clearly. I had a vague report from Persephone of your attempt to succour her in Hell, but confess that her account of your visit was somewhat incoherent, since she was traumatized by her long subjection in captivity.”

“How is she then?”

“Somewhat forgetful. She begged a sip of Lethe and went back home to Demeter, her mother, but returns to the Underworld from time to time, since she has a rôle and duty there that she shares with Beryl here.” I pointed Beryl out with a slight movement of my eyes and chin.

The angelic leader nodded. “We tried to help her, but she’d eaten whilst in Hades’ captivity, which gave him certain rights of hospitality, despite the fact that his largesse was imposed upon her through violent rapture.”

“Luckily for us, then, that our own obligations were somewhat less constrained by traditional habits of thought and archaic morality.”

She furrowed her brow. “By ‘us,’ do you include Persephone herself?”

“We do. We are co-equals in the new Underworld, and she’s free to come and go as she pleases, no longer held captive to any sort of schedule, much less the former Hades, whose personal destiny has yet to be determined, since she too chooses her own path these days.”

“She?”

“I gave her a sip of our local Nektar, so she’s reïnfused with our own peculiar immortality, but I see that we share this exceptional freedom from duality.”

She cocked her head at me. “You do?”

“We do, all of us. I am pregnant by Beryl here, my wife and lover, although she herself is pregnant by the former Hades, now known as Macaria, ‘she who is blessed,’ who is pregnant as well, though I blush to admit by whom. We grappled rather closely during our psychic duel, and there was at least some unintended contact of our private parts whilst he attempted to rape me, as was his usual habit at the time. I suppose that one might say that he was ‘hoist on his own petard,’ although it seems somewhat vulgar thus to say.”

She laughed, and after a rapid-fire explanation in some foreign tongue to her fellows, they laughed as well. “I suppose it would be pointless to ask then, if your shared child is a boy or a girl.”

“It would, and Macaria is as pleased as Punch – once she’d realized the full ramifications of her new condition – because bearing the first child of the new ruler of the Underworld gives her a certain inherited status to replace her old mastery, and has thus served to soften the official demotion, and she has beaucoup bragging rights amongst her fellows as the mother of my first-born and heir. Of course, the situation is vastly complicated by the fact that I was pregnant myself – by Beryl, as I said – at the time that I impregnated Macaria, so the situation is fraught with seeming paradox in terms of everyday assumptions about paternity. The whole sordid episode might well furnish a dozen bards with new tales to delight rapt audiences for a thousand years to come.” I rolled my eyes toward the distant sky, not at all unaware of the irony involved. That’s the whole trouble with being clever; it’s very difficult to be nearly as self-righteous as the average ignorant clod.

“Our own customs will be of little help, then,” she said smiling, “if such things matter to you, since we hold all things in common, and so avoid any problems with either inheritance or primogeniture.”

That puzzled me, since it was contrary to the way things worked amongst the Horticulturists, but I soon figured it out. “It actually seems the most sensible plan,” I said, “for a society of immortals. Any other arrangement would eventually lead to at least local monopolies on both power and wealth, and encourage pointless bickering. I gather that the Olympians don’t adhere to similar customs.”

She nodded graciously, perhaps marginally impressed. “You’re right, of course, and it’s certainly true that they spent a great portion of their endless lives quarrelling amongst themselves.”

“So I’d gathered. Most of the Olympians we’ve met – with the exception of our dear sister Hera and her companions – have been violently bellicose and quick to anger. I suppose squabbling might help to pass the time that might otherwise be taken up with either twiddling their thumbs or following the latest fashion trends, but I’d much rather do something that makes some positive difference in the world besides leaving behind a mess to clean up. ”

She grinned quite girlishly. “Well, I suspect that these paragons of civilized bonhomie may have been motivated to reconsider their first response and adopt a far less confrontational stance after contemplating the fates of their former companions. There are very few things that concentrate one’s attention on potential outcomes nearly as well as the imminent possibility of death.”

“So, what is it, exactly, that you ladies do in your spare time?”

“Oh,” she drawled, with a studied air of negligent insouciance, “…right wrongs, punish malefactors, persuade the guilty to confess, and – without putting too fine on point on it – humbling those who offend against the norms of human life, which is a rather pretentious way of saying, ‘We’ve got a little list, they never will be missed.’ It’s a rather flexible standard which has evolved over the years, but I have to confess that slaughtering villains is still very much on the table. We see, however, that you’ve already adopted a very similar position on your own, so I’d say that you were born to be a Siren, if you ever get tired of your current gig.”

I smiled. “Well, I’ve got quite a lot on my plate right now, so it may be a while, but I’m flattered, although I do think that it’s somewhat better to anticipate problems than to kibitz after the fact. That’s what I’m in the process of arranging right now, actually, trying to prevent a future catastrophe so far in the future that it seems like hubris even for me, and I have a long history of grandiose dreams.”

“No problem there,” Peisinoë said. “Our own mission is equally quixotic, I think, in that despite thousands of years spent providing very well-publicized and terrifying examples of what eventually happens when one is cruel, or unjust, or dishonest, or whatever deviltry one cares to contemplate, there are always a great number of people eager to inflict exactly that same evil to someone else.”

“People have an amazing ability to consider themselves natural exceptions to the general rule, so that’s not surprising at all.”

She scowled. “That may well be true, but it’s still down to sheer stupidity, not that human stupidity actually surprises me after all this time. The reptilian dinosaurs were quite amenable to thoughtful compromise – when they ruled the Earth – in comparison to that paragon of animals, Homo sapiens.”

This struck me as a rather harsh indictment, but then I thought me of the Hundred Years War and changed my mind. “Well, we haven’t been getting along all that well lately, I have to agree.”

“On the other hand, we heartily approve of your latest course of action against the worst of the lot, although a little more Shrecklichkeit might better the lesson for those who might be moved to repent their folly.”

“Possibly, but scorn and hatred are endlessly attractive to the human spirit, and driving folly into hiding means little if it festers underground. Granted, we have a ‘penitentiary’ system in the Underworld that can’t be bettered, since we can weigh our prisoner’s hearts quite literally, and miscarriages of justice are essentially impossible, or at least they are under the current revolutionary régime. I do accept the fact that the previous management had been much less concerned with justice and, in fact, had acted in a lawless manner on more than one occasion, having been complicit in – or guilty of – acts of revenge, false imprisonment, and various criminal assaults, of which the most egregious – to my mind, at least – was the rape and impregnation of my own lover. I was extremely ticked off about that.”

“And yet, you acted mercifully toward him, blessing him with both beauty and joy in full measure, depriving him only of his manhood, which I’m sure must have irritated him.”

“Not as much,” I said, “as being tortured through eternity might have, the sort of cruel excess that he and his pals had inflicted on both sinners and political enemies during his tour of duty at the helm.”

“Well,” she said, “in his partial defence, State terrorism has been the cohesive force behind almost every civilization for thousands of years. As the drover said about the mule, ‘First, you have to get their attention.’ ”

I laughed. I knew the story, although I’d never actually seen a ‘mule.’ “I suppose you’re right; you’ve obviously had a lot more experience as the rough equivalent of a police force than we have here, but we like to pretend – at least – to limit our punitive interactions with the rubes to something approximating the due process and letter of the law, aside from armed conflict between warring states, and even then there are laws and customs which must needs be obeyed, lest one wind up on the losing side and brought to justice for them.” Then I thought for a bit before adding, “Of course, omniscience does help quite a bit when it comes time to judge between guilt and innocence.”

“True,” she said judiciously. “We ourselves have inflicted considerable pain over the millennia, but it’s also true that at least some of the many reports of our fell cruelty were grossly exaggerated, partly for the covert purpose of encouraging compliance with social norms before the fact, rather than after, when harm has already been done, and you yourself have made ‘bad examples’ from among the more egregious of your local sinners. You mustn’t be quite so quick at judging others before examining all the facts in every case.”

She’d scored a good point there. We had, in fact, made limited use of Tartarus and other pœnal strictures, and in part spurred on by wrath. “I do repent me,” I said. “I was overhasty in my speech, even if one disregards the context. When dealing with immortals, and aren’t we all? the notion of proportionality goes all awry, since we juggle with infinities.”

          Solstice

“Five thousand solemn rounds we’ve trod since first this feast was made.
The Dragon rose above us then but ever since has strayed
Through airs still filled with secret song and hidden from our sight.

The yellow gold within the earth was formed from Dragon’s blood
And crystal tears He shed for us are buried in the mud
Of oceans lost since we awoke still dreaming of the deep
And velvet coils of fiery love which wreathed us in our sleep.

The tune was ancient, even then, before we heard the sound
Of starlight falling from the sky and music underground
Which called our feet to join the dance and never be dismayed.

Our Lady kindled every star and shaped this tender Earth
To cradle children of Her womb through ages of rebirth.
The Moon above us lights our way, the Sun above us burns;
Her gifts to keep us safe from harm until the Dragon turns.

From our stations in the chorus we praise the growing light
Which shows our path before us into the sea of night

       Where love awaits,
       Where joy awakes,
       Where magic may be found.

Uncertain, lonely mariners who journey with the stars,
We steer our flimsy vessels forth into the restless dark.
No earthly wind surrounds our craft, no sails we have nor spars;
We long to find safe harbor where we hope to disembark.”

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved