Chapter 30 #2
I look him squarely in the face. “I only just found out.” I glance at Helios. “I assume he’s been spying on me?”
Helios draws himself up, sitting tall and majestic. He’s swathed in a purple robe, crowned and bearded, a smug gleam in his eye. “Zeus sent me to look for the War God,” he says. “I happened to notice you were on those same steppes.”
“I didn’t go there for Ares,” I say breezily. “I had my own business on the steppe. Nothing to do with him.”
Zeus and Helios exchange skeptical glances. What an irritating pairing they make.
“Did you speak to him?” Zeus asks.
I shake my head. “No.”
“Well, I’d like him to come back,” Zeus says. “Athena is tired of trying to keep that Strife Goddess in check. Maybe you could help persuade him to return to his responsibilities.” He leers.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I’m surprised you haven’t replaced him. I seem to recall your saying it would be easy. I thought you could father a war-god with no trouble.”
“I could,” Zeus snaps.
I take a sip of wine. I do prefer it to fermented mare’s milk, but my company last night was infinitely better than this.
“I’d like to hear more about the Amazons,” Halirrhothios pipes up. “Helios was telling us all about them. They sound very interesting.”
“You wouldn’t last a day on the steppe,” I warn him. “They’d spear you as soon as they saw you.”
His chest puffs up and he looks to his father, indignant. “A son of Poseidon?” he scoffs. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“You should go to Scythia, actually,” I say. “I’d love to see the outcome.”
“That’s my son, Aphrodite.” Poseidon glowers at me.
“Don’t encourage him with ideas above his station,” I say with scorn.
Halirrhothios sulks, petulant, but at least has the good sense not to challenge me further.
There’s something familiar, though, in his resentful glare. Something about the mingling of greens and blues in his eyes that makes me think of someone…a nymph rising up from the sea, begging me for Poseidon’s favor.
I did promise I’d make Poseidon remember her. Perhaps that’s why he’s so enamored with this unremarkable son she’s given him.
Dionysus keeps the wine flowing, and I keep drinking. Halirrhothios can’t keep up with immortal revelers—he’s soon slumped and snoring—but the rest of us continue as the skies outside turn gray and misty.
“I must go,” Helios remarks, eyeing the approaching dawn.
I’m about to return to my own quarters, but before I can rise someone slides into the seat beside me.
“Hello, Aphrodite,” she says.
“Charis.”
The frostiness I had felt between us has thawed. She looks a little tired, and very serious. But that flat, cold stare has gone, and I can see my friend again.
The hall is beginning to thin out, gods drifting back to their beds and bidding good nights, all the illicit trysts that have been forming over the course of the night culminating now.
Hephaestus has already left—whether he’s taken his chariot back to Lemnos or opted for his old forge here, I don’t know.
“So you found Ares,” she says.
“Honestly, I didn’t go to Scythia in search of him,” I say. “I was telling the truth.”
“But you found him,” she says. “And still, you came back.”
I search her face, wondering what she’s really asking. “I belong here,” I say at last. “That’s what I chose, and I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Haven’t you?”
I look at her steadily. “Would you care if I had?”
She sighs. “I would.”
Unexpectedly, tears brim in my eyes.
“What is it?” she asks, and I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak.
“Oh, Aphrodite,” she says, and puts her arm around me.
Her hair is soft against my cheek. She’s petal-scented, warm and kind, and it makes me unravel far faster than her continuing animosity would have done.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
“I know you didn’t mean for it to turn out the way it did,” she says.
“I wouldn’t have married him if I’d had any other choice,” I say. “For his sake as well as yours.”
“It might be for the best that you did,” she says.
“How?”
“Hephaestus might have always hoped, otherwise, that you’d love him in the end,” she says. “At least now he knows for sure.”
“Is that better?”
“Definitely. It’s far better to know for sure than to let hope linger forever.”
I wince. “You know I could help you,” I say. “You could forget him, if you want. Just say the word.”
“No.” She smiles slightly. Determined as ever.
“He might be able to see now that you would be so much better for him than me,” I suggest.
“He might. But, however it turns out, I wouldn’t want you to make my feelings disappear,” she says, “or replace them with something false and temporary. You wouldn’t want that for yourself, would you?”
I take a long breath. “No,” I say. “You always were so wise, Charis.”
She squeezes my hand. “So, tell me, did you see Ares in Scythia?”
“I did,” I say. “But that was all it was. He didn’t even know I was there.”
“Why not?” she asks.
“Because nothing has changed. I wouldn’t run away with him when he wanted me to and I still wouldn’t.” I shake my head. “It was always complicated between us. And even in exile, he’s still a war-god. It was never going to work.”
“I know what he is,” she says quietly. “But, Aphrodite, there will always be war. And without Ares—well, look at the alternative.”
“Eris,” I sigh heavily.
“You know that suffering exists everywhere. Discord, pain and grief—they aren’t unique to war and conflict. Ares is far from the only one of us—gods or otherwise—who causes harm. Whether we mean to or not.”
I let her words sink in. “I have thought about that,” I say at last. “After all, I know what suffering love can cause.”
She smiles. “You’re responsible for a lot of happiness too.”
“I wish I could have brought some to you,” I say.
“I don’t think,” she says carefully, “that I would give up what it’s felt like to love Hephaestus, even though he never loved me back.
Even if he never does. I’m not saying I’ve never wished that I didn’t.
Sometimes the hurt is so much that I think I’d prefer to feel nothing at all.
But I know that, really, that would be worse. ”
“It would be worse to feel nothing than heartbreak? Are you sure?” I want to believe her, but I’ve seen for myself how hard she found it watching me marry Hephaestus.
“I am,” she says. “And I think you feel the same.”
I stay silent.
“Love opens us up to the possibility of pain,” she says.
“You can’t protect us against it. You can’t strive for perfection all the time.
You govern something ungovernable—a realm that’s wild and dangerous, one where there are great rewards at stake but risks as well. And it’s no different for Ares.”
I thought once that the God of War couldn’t be anything other than violent and terrible. I still struggle to reconcile the Ares I loved with what he represents.
But I also know that there’s more to Ares than battle. I’ve seen his kindness too. His capacity for love, even if he no longer has any left for me.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say. “Ares chose exile.”
Charis sighs and glances out at the lightening sky. “Come on,” she says. “Come back to your chambers.”
She slips her arm through mine as we stand and walk back together.
—
Restless, I toss and turn in my bed. The peace of sleep eludes me. I would have thought it’d be easy to drift away after a night with the Amazons followed by a feast in Olympus, but I can’t.
The lovers in Scythia are keeping me awake. The unfinished business awaiting me on the steppe.
Was it enough to leave them lingering dreams?
Will they wake, their courage and determination renewed?
Or will hopelessness creep back in? Even worse, will the Amazons decide that chasing them away and stealing their horses isn’t enough?
If they decide the tribe is a threat to them, they will be swift and merciless in how they deal with them.
I push back the furs from my body, exasperated. I’ll go back. I promised Melo I’d try, and so I will.
I’m still not sure what the solution is, but this is exactly the kind of scenario that Eros enjoys. I’ll bring him with me, I decide, and ask him what he thinks.
He’s eager for the adventure of flying so far beyond our realm.
I go ahead in my chariot; he swoops behind me, aloft on his golden wings.
I find the Amazons first. The men are indeed trying to get as much distance between them as they can, but the women are faster—they have more horses, after all—and still, the wily Melo is finding places to meet her lover in secret.
Eros and I watch her beckon three of her companions along; the Scythian boy does the same and we sit back while the sparks ignite between them all.
As I expected, Eros is captivated by these trysts and the delicious torture of separation that further heightens their passion.
We fly across Scythia in my chariot, watching them beneath us and discussing what to do next.
I anticipate that his impulse for mischief will prompt him to action, that he’ll decide interference is the best path forwards, but he surprises me.
“You could let it play out,” he suggests. “See what happens?”
“What if the men give up and go back to their homes?” I ask him. “Or the Amazons decide to massacre them first?”
“That won’t happen,” Eros cheerfully asserts. We watch a hunting party in action, a woman hurling a spear and striking her prey directly in the heart. “Probably not, anyway,” he amends.
I look toward the horizon, across the swathes of grass and empty sky. “These aren’t our mortals,” I say. “Should I try to forget about them?”
He considers it. “I’m amazed you could detect this from so far away,” he says. “I’d never have heard anything at such a distance.”
“What good does it do if I can’t solve their problems?” I ask.
“You’ll find the answer,” he says. He gives me a sly look. “So what will you do? Go drinking with the Amazons again while you think about it?”