Chapter 15
As I fly across villages and towns, I feel the absence of the Blacksmith God. The figurines of Hephaestus that before stood in every forge have toppled from shelves and shattered into fragments. His temples stand empty, no worshippers flocking to leave offerings to an exiled god.
As Sicily comes into view, the volcano is impossible to miss. It seethes with smoke, a vast plume erupting from its crater, sparks incandescent against the lightening sky.
I land at its base, cloaked in my dove form. I hop back and forth on the bare earth, looking up at its steep slopes, listening to the rumble emanating from within.
If Hephaestus really is behind these walls of rock, I’m not sure how to reach him.
I risk the wrath of Zeus every second I stay here; there’s strife ahead, whatever I do, and Eris hungers for it.
If Zeus punishes me, it’s a rift on Olympus—a crack into which she can prize her fingers and claw us apart, especially if Ares takes my side.
If I give up on Hephaestus, the resentment that will simmer inside me will call to her like the songs of the Sirens, a grudge that she’ll drag free until I can no longer resist her.
She’ll use her power remorselessly if she spies the chance to upend our peace.
But I’m not afraid. I shimmer back into my true form. I won’t hide.
Nothing grows near the summit. The verdant greens and yellows below die away to an expanse of charred, jagged rock. In the boiling heart of the mountain, molten rock churns and bubbles, baleful jets of smoke surging black and choking into the air.
“I’m here,” I whisper.
The volcano seethes.
I know that by now, on the island of Naxos, the gods will be lost in wine-drenched slumber. I’m sure that in Corinth the house of the king will be empty, its oak doors swinging open, the contents within overturned and strewn about. Ares won’t linger on his mission for Zeus.
This is my moment to help my friend; my opportunity to do it undisturbed, with no interference from anyone else.
I peer down at the sloping sides and see a gash in the forest that clusters around the lower slopes, chunks of rock strewn about just below. I make my way back down and steal closer to the site of the disturbance.
The rocky face of the volcano has been breached; a rough, uneven hole carved out of the side. It’s hidden by the trees, whose boughs nod close to it, their foliage screening out anyone looking from the sky.
Either a god has dug their way inside—although I’m sure that no one else has come here with the goal of rescue—or else this cave has been forced open from within.
I slip into the mountain. The roof is low over my head.
In the darkness I can hear the scatter of pebbles, and I imagine the entire volcano collapsing in on me.
From somewhere deep inside, it rumbles and growls, and I picture rivers of boiling rock, torrents of it shuddering and thundering, crashing through the walls at my side and sweeping me away in a fiery tide.
“Hephaestus?” I call.
My own voice bounces off the tunnel, ringing back to me.
I try again.
Now I’m sure there is a faint answer, overlapping with my echo.
The dim light streaming in behind me is swallowed by the blackness within. I press my hand against the rocky wall, taking one step and then another. “Hephaestus?” I call again.
This time it’s clearer, though still indistinguishable. It might not be words, only a groan. But it’s him, I’m convinced of it.
Ahead of me, a faint amber glow begins to appear, and the narrow tunnel widens as I walk.
The ceiling slopes higher, the space around me opening up into a cavern, right in the heart of the volcano.
A lake of liquid fire bubbles in the center, its light casting wild shadows across the empty space—empty, except for a figure, bent and hunched, leaning against a pillar of rock to hold himself up.
I gasp.
He lifts his eyes to mine. The hulking shape of his shoulders makes him immediately recognizable, and I’m glad of it, because I see no trace of my friend in the hollow gaze staring back at me.
“What is this?” I breathe.
He makes a sound—a bitter laugh or a sob, I don’t know which, only that it sounds painful, like it’s scraping free from a dry, charred throat. The molten lake surges in response to his voice, spitting and heaving. He lifts a hand and it calms under his gesture.
“You see,” he croaks. “Zeus threw me from the heavens and banished me here.”
I nod, tears starting in my eyes.
“He took everything from me,” he says. “And made me the God of the Volcano instead.”
The melting, seething rock shifting in rhythm with his words starts to make a kind of sense.
He could always bend metal to his will, direct its flow when he heated it to liquid, shaping it as he wanted.
This is just the same. The burning river moves to his command.
“That’s how you’ve made this place,” I say aloud.
He hasn’t been suffocated by the weight of the mountain or scalded by its lava.
He’s forced it into shape around him, carved out this craggy hall and the tunnel that led me here, tamed the fiery streams and made them run where he wishes. “It’s incredible.”
I jump at his bark of laughter. It’s nothing like any sound I’ve ever heard Hephaestus make. “It ruined me.”
I take a step closer. “What do you mean?”
He makes an effort to gather himself, to straighten up from the pillar, but his face tightens with pain. His fingers are splayed, gripping tight to the stone.
Gods are perfect, immortal and indestructible. But I’ve heard of divine suffering. Ouranos, my father, was torn to shreds, and Prometheus endures daily torment, though I’ve never seen it. I’ve never known a wounded god. I don’t know how to heal him. “Let me get you out of here,” I say.
“He’ll never allow it. I’m safer here than anywhere else.”
“Then I’ll bring you what you need. Nectar, ambrosia, anything you want.”
“You’ll leave?” Panic flares in his voice.
“But I’ll come back. I promise I’ll come back.
” I draw close to him, my heart leaping with nerves.
I’m afraid to touch him, anxious that I’ll cause him pain, but I crouch down at his side and slide my hand gently up his arm, around his heavy shoulders.
He tenses, his body taut with agony or fear, but I feel him relax a little into my touch.
“You can heal now,” I tell him. “You’ve survived Zeus’ wrath; you’ve conquered this volcano. ”
“Don’t tell any of the others you’ve been here. Not Zeus.” He clutches at me, afraid.
I shake my head. “I won’t. I’ll go and come back without anyone knowing.”
It feels cruel to leave him, and a tendril of shame tugs at me as I glance back the way I came.
The heat, the airlessness, the taste of despair that fills this place drags at my soul.
I long for the sparkle of the sun on white-topped waves and the fresh tang of salt in the air, away from the monstrous orange light flickering on these dark walls and the sulphurous odor that clings to my hair and my skin.
He jerks his head in assent. I let go of him, half of me reluctant to leave and the other half eager to see the sky, to erase the sadness of this broken god from my mind long enough to summon the strength to see him again.
“Thank you,” he mutters.
“Don’t thank me,” I say. “I couldn’t get to you sooner, or else I would have.”
The sweat beads on his forehead. It’s an effort, I realize, for him to speak.
“Just wait for me,” I say, and I lean in to kiss his cheek. His skin is cool and damp. He doesn’t smell like Hephaestus; he barely looks like Hephaestus.
He doesn’t say anything.
I don’t let myself walk away too fast, as desperate as I am to be out of here. Only so I can bring him help sooner, I tell myself.
I feel sick and shaken when I reach the outside.
I think of the promise I made him, not to let anyone else know.
I could tell Charis the truth, but the image of Hephaestus clutching at the stone pillar, hardly able to hold himself up, makes me wonder if he’d want anyone else to see him like that.
The other gods have always perceived him to be weak, ostracizing him even before he became an exile.
I don’t want to reinforce that in her mind.
We move in a world where our flawlessness defines us, exalts us above the rest of the world.
“You can’t break through a volcano.”
I jump, whirling around.
In the soft pink light of the emerging dawn, Demeter’s hair glows rich and glossy brown, like the polished sheen of carved cedar.
“Have you tried?” I ask.
“No. Zeus forbade it.”
“Then why are you here?”
She glances from side to side. “Let’s walk under the cover of the trees.”
I follow her into the shade of the wide-spreading oaks growing across the lower slopes of the mountain, relieved to get away from the entrance to Hephaestus’ cave before she realizes I’ve already found my way in.
She stops beside a sprawling shrub, clustered with fragrant yellow blooms. The bright petals frame her, and she looks like a forest-spirit in her soft green dress, flowers woven through her curls. “I come to Sicily to visit my daughter,” she says.
My heartbeat steadies as I try to put thoughts of Hephaestus out of my mind for now and focus on her. She must be speaking of the daughter she bore Zeus centuries ago. “This is where you hid her? On this island?”
She nods. “For so long that I think the gods have forgotten her by now.”
“But you still keep her a secret.”
“I do.” There is something measured in the way she looks at me: a blend of motherly concern and knowingness that makes me feel as though it’s my secret being exposed rather than hers. “It’s better this way.”
“So why are you telling me now?”
“Because you won’t tell anyone,” she says. “If you did, you’d have to explain why you were on this island against Zeus’ explicit instruction.”