Chapter 14 #2
Apollo lifts his lyre and begins to play.
Even in his drunkenness, the beauty of it drifting through the violet air is spellbinding.
The fumes from the wine, rich with honey and spice, intermingle, and my mind starts to float, a pleasant intoxication stealing in.
Even Zeus seems less objectionable in this moonlit grove, his company more tolerable.
It might be the influence of Dionysus, who keeps the wine flowing and shares story after story.
It’s impossible that he’s been to all the places he describes, or done half of the things he claims, his anecdotes getting more fanciful and raucous as we keep drinking.
Gods grow swiftly—my own Eros went from infancy to adulthood in a single day.
With eternity stretching before us, we rarely bother to keep track of time.
We aren’t mortals, counting the precious seasons of our lives before they run out altogether.
Even so, Dionysus can’t have been plucked from his dying mother’s womb long enough ago to have experienced half these stories, but still I can’t take my eyes off him.
He’s so exuberant and handsome that I don’t care if what he says is truth or invention.
“Why were no other gods invited tonight?” Eros asks, rumpled and ruddy-cheeked but with a sly glint in his eye. “You didn’t bring Athena or Demeter. No Hera? No Ares?”
I give him a sharp look at that last name. He smiles, unrepentant.
Zeus guffaws. “We didn’t even invite you.” He swigs more wine, and it spills through his beard, dripping onto his chiton.
“But we’re glad you showed up,” Dionysus interjects. He raises his drinking-horn to me. “You can come here anytime you like.” His eyes lock with mine and I feel another wave of delightful dizziness rolling through me.
“Not the others, though,” Zeus says. “Leave them on Olympus.”
“You sent Ares to Corinth,” Poseidon reminds him, nudging his arm and losing his balance in the process, lurching to the side and sending his own wine in a surging tide over the edge of his horn. He looks at it stupidly and laughs.
Dionysus leans over to pour him some more.
“Corinth?” I ask, unable to hide my surprise. “Why?”
Zeus sits up, energized. “You remember the river god Asopos?”
I shake my head.
“Come on, you do. I told you about him. He came after me, complaining that I’d taken his daughter away.”
“Oh, yes,” I say. “You crippled him with your thunderbolt.” I think of Hephaestus, struck in the chest, the horror on his face and the smell of charred flesh. It gives me a sobering chill.
“Well,” says Zeus, “I found out who told Asopos where I’d taken her.”
“Someone in Corinth?” I guess. Zeus’ rambling tales are nowhere near as entertaining as listening to Dionysus.
“A king,” he says. “Sisyphus.”
“So why is Ares there?” I ask. “Have you declared war on his city?”
“No, no.” He pauses to drink, and I roll my eyes at Eros across the circle. “I sent Thanatos first.”
“To kill him?” Thanatos, God of Death.
“That’s right.” Zeus nods emphatically. “Thanatos was to put him in chains, ones forged by Hephaestus, and drag him to the Underworld. But—and I don’t know how—Sisyphus overpowered him.”
“How could a mortal overpower a god?” I ask.
“It must be the chains,” Apollo interrupts. His voice is so smooth, every word he utters sounds like poetry. “Thanatos could break free of any mortal restraints in an instant. But if the king managed to trap him in chains from the workshop of Hephaestus—”
“No one could escape, not even a god,” Poseidon finishes.
The hint of admiration frustrates me. The gods can see the value of Hephaestus’ genius; they know that his work is incomparable.
But Eris was right when she said that none would speak up in his defense against Zeus.
That’s her skill: she can see the truth and fling it down like a weapon, knows just how to use it to wound.
“Hephaestus gave me the key,” Zeus says. “He gave me the chains. The chains and the key. I gave Thanatos the chains.” He frowns, trying hard to follow his own story. “Before I threw him in a volcano. Hephaestus. Not Thanatos.”
Poseidon and Apollo are laughing, but I’m not amused. “So the mortal man has Thanatos chained up. You have the key. And you gave it to Ares? So that he can free Thanatos?”
“That’s right!” Zeus cries. “I saw him, on Olympus. He came back, I don’t know why. Ares hates coming to Olympus. But he was there, so I told him. I told him to go, and he obeyed.”
“That doesn’t sound like Ares,” Eros says slyly.
“No.” Zeus furrows his brow more deeply. “It doesn’t.” He shrugs. “Anyway, he and Thanatos will be taking Sisyphus to the Underworld by now.”
“The Underworld?”
Zeus stares at me. “Why not?”
“I’m just surprised,” I say swiftly. “No god goes there but Hermes.”
“Thanatos will show him the way,” Zeus says.
My heart quickens at the news that Ares was on Olympus. He must have returned, expecting to find me, not an errand from Zeus.
And now he’s gone again.
Under the beating drums and drifting song, the gods are pulled into dancing with the Maenads.
With Zeus now distracted by the nymphs, wandering with a couple into the shadows, I lean back against a mossy rock and let Dionysus refill my drinking-horn.
The girl who fell into me on my arrival catches my eye across the fire, her smile full of promise.
It’s seductive—the reckless abandon that’s building in this grove. I can’t go to Ares; he’s far beyond my reach right now. But here, my senses tingle and I feel alive…and the wine is heady and delicious, almost as hypnotic as its god.
It feels like so long since Ares was in my bed, and impatience crackles under my skin like a flame.
Dionysus slides closer and whispers into my ear, “Come, walk with me.”
I glance at the Maenad, then back at Dionysus’ pretty face. I imagine how I could unwrap his secrets, discover him under the moonlight the way he wants me to, and what’s to stop me?
The tree branches sway above our heads as the wind ripples through the leaves. He stands up, the leopard at his feet lifting her head and yawning, stretching luxuriously.
I think I know now what it is that I want from him.
He slips out of the grove, the leopard padding after him, and I follow.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To the top of the mountain,” he says. “You can see the whole island from there.”
The leopard slinks around him, almost making him stumble, but he’s nimble even after so much wine. Above us, the stars glitter and, below, the sounds of the revelry diminish with the distance.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
“I do,” I say. “It reminds me of Cyprus.”
“I’d like to go there. I’ve heard of your festivals.”
“They’re much like this,” I say. “All the better if you came and brought your wine. I could say the same about the feasts on Olympus. I think you’d win over every god there.”
I say it lightly, but his face is serious. “If not for Hera,” he mutters.
I pause. As we walk, I feel more sober, though my blood is still heated and my steps unsteady. There’s nothing like the mention of Hera’s name to kill a moment of joy. “She wouldn’t welcome you, no,” I agree.
He swings around, taking my hand and pulling me on. “I’ll go there anyway,” he says. “She won’t be able to stop me. I have Zeus’ favor.”
“Oh,” I say. His palm is warm, his fingers intertwining with mine. The touch of his skin almost makes me forget what I decided. “That might not help. Zeus and Hera—”
“I know,” he says. “Perpetually at war with one another.”
“And you don’t want to be in the middle,” I say with feeling.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I won’t underestimate her. She killed my mother for spite. I know she’s ruthless.”
My heart twists with sympathy. He’s young, too young to take on a goddess like Hera, who has had centuries to cultivate her cruelty. His openness is a sign of that—or else it’s that he’s at ease with me, enough to confide in me so quickly.
But what he’s saying—that he has Zeus’ ear—is exactly what I wanted to hear. I need his trust. I can’t let myself get distracted by his stories or by the fact that we’re alone, cloaked by darkness, with him looking so beautiful in the moonlight.
“That’s another thing I’m going to remedy,” he adds, the seriousness lifting away, replaced with a smile as quickly as clouds shifting away from the sun.
“Remedy how?”
He readjusts his ivy crown. “I’ll go to the Underworld,” he says. “And bring her back.”
I like his grandiosity, his confidence. “I know that Zeus has sent Ares there,” I say. “But no Olympian god goes to the Underworld except Hermes. I don’t know how you’d succeed alone.”
“I’m not an Olympian god,” he reminds me. “Not yet.”
“What do you mean not yet?”
He stops abruptly, and I look around. We’re at the summit, nothing around us but the star-scattered skies.
“Aphrodite,” he says, “I have plans.”
“To take on Hera and Hades?”
“Maybe.”
I laugh. He sounds so sure of himself. “Well, you’ve already done the impossible.”
“How so?”
“Your mother was mortal,” I say. “But you’re a god. Zeus fathers children across the human world all the time. They might be kings or heroes, perhaps, but never gods.”
“Didn’t he tell you what he did?” Dionysus asks.
“What?”
“When he took me from my mother’s womb to save me from Hera’s wrath,” he says, “I wasn’t ready to be born. I would have died in his hands, but he sewed me into his thigh so that I could live, and so I was born twice—once from her in the moment that she died, and the second time from Zeus.”
I stare at him, wondering if my mind is still addled by the wine or if he’s really saying this. “Are you sure?” I ask.
“Of course. Wasn’t Athena born from his head? Hera didn’t think of that. When she sought to kill me, she made me immortal by mistake.” He grins, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “I already defeated her once,” he goes on. “Before I was even born.”
His delight is infectious. Almost irresistible.
“Dionysus.”
He looks at me, eager, and I know he thinks this is our moment. Maybe it would be. Maybe if he hadn’t brought me up here, where I can hear the rush of the sea around the island, where I remember that the rest of the world exists.
Reluctantly, I free my hand from his. “Will you keep Zeus drinking here?” I ask. “Keep him busy until morning?”
“Really? That’s it?” He’s still smiling, but disappointment quenches some of the sparkle in his eyes.
“It is,” I tell him. “There’s somewhere I want to go, and I don’t want Zeus to know about it.”
Hope flares again in his eyes. “Will you tell me?”
“Not now,” I answer. “But soon, I hope.”
He scratches the leopard behind her ears and she gazes up at him, enraptured. He thinks about it for a moment, his face serious. “I’ll keep your secret,” he says at last. “You can trust me.”
“Thank you,” I say. I do trust him. More than that, I recognize myself in him. His ease, his optimism, his rapturous enjoyment. If I conjured a god into existence, I’m not sure I’d come up with one more alluring than this reveling God of Wine.
Or one that’s better suited to me.
Before I’m too tempted to stay, I transform, soaring away as a dove. Eros will bring my chariot back to Cyprus, but, regardless, I expect this isn’t my last visit to Naxos. I have an open invitation, after all, and the god of this island is a little too interesting for me not to take him up on it.