Chapter 24
In the morning, the clamor of the forge rings through the skies above Lemnos.
I make my way from our mountain palace to the workshop Hephaestus has hollowed out of the volcano, the same as he did on Sicily.
The God of the Volcano as well as the forge.
Zeus’ punishment only enhanced his power in the end.
Orange sparks spit and seethe from the summit, the smoke wreathing the cone in a dark cloak.
The clanking of metal echoes through the surrounding forests, and the very ground beneath my feet thrums with the vibrations.
The rhythm of it feels comforting; a familiar and satisfying hum of activity.
When he sees me at the entrance, he drops the tongs he’s holding onto a bench beside him, not seeming to notice that they slide to the floor with a dull clang.
Picking up a rag and wiping the sweat from his forehead, he calls out something to the Cyclopes working around him, his words indistinct in the noise, and hurries toward me.
I notice the imbalance in his gait and the ever-present staff in his hand, but there is hardly any awkwardness in his movement.
“Come outside,” he says, “away from the heat and the noise.”
As soon as we’re in the fresh air, he launches into an apology. “I’m sorry,” he says, “for everything that’s happened. But surely now you’ve kept your oath. You’ve done what Zeus asked. You married me. Now you can leave.”
“I thought about it,” I say.
“And?”
“I don’t know.” I run a hand through my hair, pushing it back from my face. “I haven’t come this far just to risk ending it too soon. Zeus has to be satisfied.” The waters of the Styx herself hold me in place. Will the oath be fulfilled by just one day of marriage? I can’t be sure.
“Well,” he says, “I can go. We can take turns being on Lemnos. I can be in Sicily, you can go to Cyprus, he can think we’re together without its being true.”
“I will go to Cyprus,” I say. “I have my work there; I won’t neglect my followers. But this is my home now too, and it’s yours as well. I don’t need you to leave, Hephaestus.” I take a deep breath. “I know I said I’d never forgive you, and maybe I won’t—not completely. But I don’t hate you.”
Relief floods his face. Perhaps he’s lost the optimistic enthusiasm he always possessed. But I feel like he seems even stronger now, his strength forged and honed into something harder. Less breakable.
“I’m glad,” he says.
I smile, and, in between the cracks around the forge’s entrance, flowers begin to emerge. They poke their heads through, sinuous and stretching, fiery spikes of vivid orange and deep blue. Hephaestus turns to watch them, fascinated.
Deep in the forest, I feel a shudder of awakening.
A wolf slinking through the fringes of the trees lifts her muzzle to the air, the scent of her mate drifting irresistibly toward her.
A familiar thrumming takes hold inside me, a delightful anticipation that builds and then all of a sudden dwindles away.
The bright petals curl and wilt, and the wolf sniffs the empty air before turning back in disappointment.
Cicadas hum in the undergrowth, their song building up to a crescendo that stays tantalizingly out of reach, and a stag paws at the earth, rubbing its antlers against a tree’s branches in frustration.
I frown. Something isn’t right. My tendrils of power snake and curl across the island, stirring all its creatures, but then they dissipate. Fading away before they can fully take hold.
“What is it?” Hephaestus asks.
“I don’t know.” I cock my head and concentrate on summoning it again, but there is only a shiver, rippling into emptiness.
“Aphrodite?”
I shake myself out of it. “It’s nothing,” I say with false brightness.
But I feel a prickling on the nape of my neck; a certainty that whatever this is, it cannot bode well.
—
I come to know Lemnos, wandering from coast to coast across the island.
I find a beach where the sands are tinged with red and springs where the water is heated by molten earth.
I bathe as I breathe in the faint scent of crushed petals, and the warmth cradles me.
High dunes, sculpted by the winds, stretch out like a desert; the land is full of charred and twisted rocks, rugged forests and lonely shores.
Villages are scattered here and there, and in the center of each there are statues to Hephaestus—and, at his side, hastily erected carvings of me.
There’s always smoke rising from the blacksmith’s forge, and often I’ll see Hephaestus there, patiently wielding tools and demonstrating techniques, his forearms smeared with soot as though he’s one of the mortals who gather, awestruck and captivated, to hear his lessons.
My husband, as brooding and powerful as the barren cliffs pounded by waves out in the bay, speaks with kindness to his worshipping disciples and never betrays so much as a moment’s frustration when they fumble or tire in the face of his unending stamina.
I like it when he doesn’t notice I’m there, when his face lights up with pleasure as an apprentice boy shows him the sword or double-headed axe he’s forged. The process is so slow; no other god would take such time to impart their skills and knowledge into simpler human minds.
“How long were you watching?” he once asked when he spied me, and I laughed.
“I didn’t know any other gods loved mortals the way that I do,” I told him.
But my delight in mortals is usually briefer, more fleeting.
I like to spark a fire inside them and move on, not stay to cultivate the flames.
I hear the prayers of the inhabitants of Lemnos, shy at first as they grow used to my presence, tentatively asking for love like their god has been blessed with.
I wince, and try to grant them something better.
I summon the Horae to Lemnos, and their chatter and smiles enliven our quiet mountaintop home.
I notice how often Dysis visits the forge, and quickly deduce that Kedalion, the metalworking god who serves as Hephaestus’ attendant, is the lure.
Their eyes meet across a stream of molten metal, and I feel a familiar surge of excitement, one I feared was gone forever.
I drag Hephaestus out of the workshop on a flimsy excuse, taking a moment to embolden the hopeful lovers’ hearts before we leave them alone together.
I’m delighted to see them later, emerging from the forests under the moonlight, his arm around her shoulder.
“Your doing?” Hephaestus asks me, and I nod. He smiles approvingly. “I almost forgot,” he says. “I made this for you.”
He holds out his hand, and I gasp. His fingers loop through the circlet of a golden crown and, as he tilts it toward me, I see gems glittering on each of the nine points, as bright and dazzling as fire.
“Hephaestus,” I say, “why?”
He shrugs, and I see the warmth flushing his cheeks in the dim twilight. “I thought you’d like it.”
“I do,” I say. I can’t take my eyes off it. It’s utterly spectacular. “I love it,” I say. “But you’ve made enough jewelry for me already. Don’t give me something else.”
He looks at me seriously. “What will I do with it, then?” he asks. “It won’t suit me.”
Laughter bubbles up inside me, utterly joyful.
It’s such a perfect and unexpected joke, and I’m still surprised every time the earnest, steady Hephaestus makes one.
“It would look ridiculous on you,” I agree, sneaking another covetous glance at its shimmering delicacy.
“Why not give it to Dionysus? He needs a crown now he has a throne, doesn’t he? ” I say wryly.
Once Hephaestus was restored to power, it seemed that Dionysus’ ambitions would be thwarted again, until Hestia announced that he could take her throne; she would retire to the hearth and give up her place at the council.
Hephaestus looks at me sidelong. “You know that Hestia was never interested in ruling.”
“Maybe not,” I say. It still troubles me, though, that a throne has gone from a quiet and measured goddess to the wild Dionysus. From an ally of Hera to a son of Zeus.
“Well, I will give it to him,” Hephaestus decides. He gestures for me to climb the steep steps cut into the rocky mountainside first.
“A good idea.” I pause, hovering for a moment over an apology. Sometimes it feels like we’ve fallen into the easy back-and-forth of our old friendship again, before the awkwardness rises up once more. However much he conceals it, I know my rejection of his gift stings.
A cry pierces the evening air, interrupting my thoughts: Dysis, storming away from Kedalion, tears streaming down her face.
“Go,” Hephaestus says. “I’ll see you at home.”
But I’m hurrying to her already, and when I reach her she’s wiping her tears away. “What happened?” I ask.
“He’s so insensitive,” she seethes. “Talking about how beautiful the river-nymphs are.”
“Oh, Dysis. I thought it was going so well between you.”
“It was,” she says. “It was perfect—and then suddenly, everything went awry.”
I put my arm around her shoulder. “How so?”
She sighs. “I don’t know. It was as though we were dancing together and then, all at once, there was no more music. Or it’s that we were hearing different melodies to each other.”
“That’s strange,” I say, biting my lip. Something about her words stirs something inside me, a whisper of a worry I’ve felt already.
“Let’s go back,” she says, sniffing back more tears.
“Yes,” I say, “let’s have some wine. Have you eaten?”
She shakes her head. “I just want to go to bed.”
Later, I wake from a restless sleep and fragmented dreams. It’s times like this, in the slow midnight hours, when I feel the most alone, that I’m tempted to go to Hephaestus.
When I see the muscles rolling in his arms as he works at the anvil, when the sun gleams on his rich, brown hair and he looks up, smiling, I think how easy it would be.
Easy for a while. But with the potential to be as disastrous as the fictitious opening of Pandora’s jar—and, just like in Zeus’ version of that tale, it would be me to blame.
If not Hephaestus, why not visit Dionysus again? The thought occurs to me, the memory of our friendship and the lure of his mountain groves, his wine and his charm. But something always stops me before I make it to my chariot. The urge rises, then drains away to nothing.
And I notice how often, when I ride between Lemnos and Paphos, I look down from my chariot to see a swarm of warriors charging into battle on the ground below.
Like the tides of the ocean, wars have always swelled and subsided across the earth.
But with Eris at their center, they keep surging on, obliterating everything in their path, entirely unchecked.
The thought of Ares’ abandoned mansion haunts me.
I know there’s no point in going back, but I find myself turning my chariot toward Thrace more often than I’d like.
It’s an instinct, a memory that resides in my bones and muscles, no matter how hard I try to shake it free.
It’s in one such moment of weakness, which takes me closer to Thrace than I’ve previously allowed myself to go, that I see a conflagration up ahead.
It’s a great tower of flame in the direction of Mount Haemus, burning so high I can hear its roar from this distance and feel the shudder of warmth pulsing through the air.
The wrangling in my soul—tormenting myself by returning to the place my heart broke into pieces—gives way to a sickening lurch of fear.
At the foot of Mount Haemus lies Ares’ shrine.
From his bed, I used to hear the cries of his worshippers—rapturous with victory or desolate with grief—echoing up toward us.
I’d listen to the bellowing of the sacrificial bulls and smell the fumes of their roasting flesh when I was in his arms. The God of War has few sacred places, and he made his home where his followers dwelled.
Most mortals fear him and shrink away from his worship, but the fervor and passion of those who dedicated their lives to him fed his power and his magnificence as though they numbered thousands more, and he rewarded them with his proximity.
I need to know if it’s his shrine that burns now.
I won’t make my doves fly into the blinding smoke and heat.
I land my chariot, take on feathers and fly the rest of the way myself.
My eyes sting as I approach, the air thick and harsh in my throat, dizzying me as I swoop down.
I make myself a goddess once more on the ground, dragging the heels of my hands across my eyes and blinking in the livid crimson light, back on Thracian soil again.
It’s impossible to make anything out, but then something rolls from the inferno, coming to a halt by my foot.
A stone head, wearing a carved helmet. I nudge it with my toe, tipping it over so that its painted face stares up at the furious sky.
Those dark eyes and the flat line of that unsmiling mouth hit me with a jolt.
In the haze and the chaos, I see them dancing, shadows against the flame. They scream and lift their hands, erratic and wild, and above the deafening rumble of the fire I can make out the name they cry out loud.
Eris! Eris! Eris!
A wave of nausea makes me unsteady and I back away. I desperately don’t want to see what’s become of the rest of the statue.
His worshippers have abandoned him, as surely as he abandoned them. The Goddess of Strife reigns here now.
Ares is a god in exile.