Pantheon
Reading Jacob's recent post Freya's Blade reminded me of a project I started a while back and didn't get around to working on a whole lot. I have a pretty solid opening for it, and a solid plotline, but I never buckled down and completed it (school, work, the ever-pressing weight of an uncertain future). I thought, here, I would show it to you guys and see what you think. Truth be told, I feel a little guilty just posting a new chapter of Forget About Me every week. This isn't my personal serial.
Anyhoo... the story is a murder mystery having to do with the Greek Gods (who, in their Campbellian aspects, embody all dieties and are, conversly, embodied by all dieties) and the Christian trinity about the time of the withering of polytheism in ancient Greece, and on into contemporary America (stopping at all points in between). I'm not sure how familiar you people are with the works of Neil Gaiman, but he has always been a tremendous inspiration to me, and the biggest challenge I had in writing this and fleshing out where I wanted the story to go (moreso the latter, as there wasn't all that much of the former) was trying to stay away from plagiarizing his works Murder Mysteries and American Gods. I will not pretend that these brilliant pieces of writing influenced me heavily, as does all his work, but I will say that I put forth a lot of effort into keeping my work separate, and I feel that I succeeded in that.
So. Here you go.
And the Lord spoke unto Abraham:
12:1
… “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you.
12:2
I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and I will make you a blessing to others.
12:3
I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.
And Abram obeyed, for when a god offers you so much, you can hardly resist. After all, he was only human.
17:1
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.
17:2
‘I will make a covenant with you, by which I will guarantee to make you into a mighty nation.”
17:3
At this, Abram fell face down in the dust. Then God said to him,
17:4
“This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of not just one nation, but a multitude of nations!
17:5
‘What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram; now you will be known as Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations.
17:6
‘I will give you millions of descendants who will represent many nations. Kings will be among them.
17:7
‘I will continue this everlasting covenant between us, generation after generation. It will continue between me and your offspring forever. And I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
17:8
Yes, I will give all this land of Canaan to you and to your offspring forever.
And I will be their God.
…
And Abraham obeyed, for it was more than his heart had ever hoped for, and more than his mind could ever have conceived.
And it came to be that everything the Lord demanded of Abraham, he obeyed. And everything the Lord had promised Abraham, he received. And everything the Lord did for Abraham was repaid by his and his descendants’ belief of and faith in the one true God Almighty.
Though, had you asked him, and were he to tell the truth, Abraham would seem uncertain about what God had said. Not the content, precisely, but to whom it had been spoken. He would say, if you pressed him, that, especially in the last matter he prophesied, God seemed not to be speaking to Abraham.
God seemed, he would say, to be speaking to Himself.
†
And Dionysus spoke unto the nearest Maenad:
“Oh my, yes. That is nice.”
The God of Wine had been hitting the bottle pretty heavily lately, though it could hardly be expected of him to do otherwise. The spirits never had any effect on him, however. At least not in the conventional, mundane, human sense.
It was more of a duty. The God of Wine was expected to spend all day quaffing his heart out, surrounded by nymphs and dryads, cavorting with satyrs and throwing festivals to honor the Gods. This was the day after one such get-together, and though, as a God, he felt nothing akin to even the vestige of a hangover or fatigue, it was understood that such things, in fact, existed, and a God was expected to at least show some respect for human sensibilities.
“Slightly to the right… yes,” spoke Dionysus. Seldom did his conversation stray far from this brief glimpse into his repartee. Other favorites were: “More, please,” and, “Mmmmm,” and the multi-purpose, “Ho ho ho.” Compared to other deific careers, he considered his lot to be fairly straightforward and, lucky for a god of leisure, rather undemanding. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to manifest anything important, outside of a bottle of burgundy or an interesting fruit to garnish the glass with.
“Is this better, O great and mighty Dionysus?” came a girlish, lilting voice from over his head.
“Mmmmm.”
He was also vaguely aware of what humans knew as “sensual pleasures” falling generally under his dominion. Fertility was not an immediate need, such as it ever is in cases of physical satisfaction, and was someone else’s problem, as far as Dionysus was concerned. At the moment, the Maenad attending him was rubbing his shoulders as he lounged luxuriantly on a cushioned chaise lounge, though what tension she could possibly hope to find there, let alone relieve, was so minute she may as well have been seeking out a grain of sand in his long, curling black locks, which shown in the sunlight to be a deep, dark red, so red as to seem black, as a fine and matured port might be.
“More, please.”
“Of course, O kind and gentle Dionysus.” The nymph frolicked away and back, filling the wine god’s chalice with amazing speed, most likely from eons of practice, and returned to her needless kneading.
“O lord of wine and humors,” came the cloying voice of the Maenad, “Your hair shines so beautifully in the sun. It shines as does the richest wine. It shines as does blood.” Her hands stroked and caressed up his shoulders to his neck to the base of his skull, and her fingers curled up into the deep ringlets of his hair.
“Mmmmm.” His eyes had closed.
The nymph licked her lips. “Do you remember, O Dionysus, when you were young? Do you remember when we would march with the satyrs? Do you remember your campaigns, O Dionysus?
‘Do you remember the blood?”
Dionysus opened one eye and surveyed the pillared mountaintop. It wasn’t one of his favorites, but he liked it just the same. He tried to be diplomatic as to where he held his galas. He looked into the corner of the marble atrium they now occupied, where a fat satyr slept with a goblet of wine half spilled over his belly, half matted into the fur on his legs. His hooves glistened with some of the finest wine ever to grace earth, and Dionysus had called it into being with barely even a thought.
And yes, in the back of his mind, he could remember something. Moving across the world… an army of beasts and beings… demanding obedience… demanding recognition… demanding sacrifice.
The nymph pulled her kneading hands out of his hair and stared at them. They were coated in a dark, deep liquid, as if the god’s hair itself had suddenly exuded it. It gleamed on her fingers like the warm reflection of wine, like the cold, ruined shimmer of blood, and like the flash of eyeteeth in the sun’s setting light. She started to lick it off her hands, savoring each drop, letting none go to waste.
His father… his mother… the queen… his own body being torn asunder solely for having been born unto… him… his approval… his love…
And then it faded away, as it always did. He took one last, dry taste from the chalice in his hand, hardly a mouthful, and held it over his head.
“More, please.”
The nymph looked disappointed and pulled her thumb slowly out of her mouth. The lust never lasted long. He couldn’t really remember it, no matter how hard he tried. He’d been different then. They’d all been different. Now, she couldn’t imagine what would bring the lust back for him. If she could, she would have done it.
She reached over and took the chalice from his hand, and turned away from him for the last time.
Dionysus heard a brief but deafening hum behind him. The quick flash of light that accompanied it was followed by a figure falling alongside him, charred and blackened where not red and glossy. The red of blood. The red of sure death.
The other Maenads screamed in horror, and the satyrs in any conscious state of mind scampered away as best as their ill-conceived anatomies would allow them to. The nymph fell lightly, even in death, face first onto the ground in front of him. Dionysus stared, in quiet devastation, at one of his most beautiful creations, reduced to a scorched pile of pitch. In his eyes, the flicker of an eons-old god shone for a moment. The madness that had once ruled him. The lust that had ravaged an entire world.
And through gritted teeth and a blood-haze, a voice like a growl near a quivering jugular came forward…
“Yes… I remember…ho ho ho.”
Dionysus rose quickly, in all his glory, a sight that would, in the case of Zeus or Hera, reduce mere mortals into piles of ashes, or, in Dionysus’ case, mindless beasts; for though he was, at worst, mad and sadistic, yearning and desirous, sociopathic and hideously cruel in the face of opposition… he was a kind god. He stood at full height, rising from his prone position in one sweeping motion.
And his hand went to his head. The world seemed to move around him, swaying back and forth, as if he, and only he, were suddenly at sea on a rickety boat. He wouldn’t be able to think this, of course, never having been drunk before, never having experienced the actual effects of alcohol before, but he felt it now, as real as blood, and the lack of precedence perhaps made it that much harder to cope with.
He almost fell over, twice, then found his footing, and attempted to focus on the figure before him. Two satyrs, attempting a heroic rescue, had been reduced to charcoal smudges on the white-marble floor. The walls started to run dark with wine, or blood, or both; and the sounds of barnyard animals braying and crowing, lions roaring, and dragons piercing the air with their cries filled the mountaintop as Dionysus lashed out with the full strength and breadth of his power. In his madness, he remembered his violent past, his great deeds, and wondered, intoxicated, why he couldn’t do more.
Dionysus looked at the figure, his bloodshot eyes raging with madness behind the fire blanket of complete and utter inebriation, and focused for one brief, terrible moment.
“…”
And, for a moment, Dionysus, god of Wine, Pleasure, and Blood, knew only white-hot pain. And after that, for the rest of eternity, he knew nothing at all.
†
Piotos was a simple man, in a time of simple men.
Piotos lived on the island of Milos, which rested on the edge of the spray of atolls that seemed to shoot from the mouth of Greece. Only great Crete and tiny Kythira lay apathetically between Milos and the open Mediterranean. An open gate. And, subsequently, so too did little stand between Piotos and the expanse of its waters, with years of myth and legend swirling in its crystal blue whorl. Funny, then, that the biggest thing keeping Piotos from venturing out past the mismatched islands, across the water to the exposed sea, perhaps even to the deep unknown below of an ocean far past, was not the gargantuan Crete or the minute Kythira, pathetically guarding their passage like the legs of an Athenian whore, spread wide to the world. Piotos never thought of leaving Milos. Because… well… where else was there to be?
Piotos had been born on Milos, had been raised by his father after his mother died giving birth to him, and had not known the presence of a woman until he was twenty-six years of age. This had no adverse effect on Piotos, as Piotos had no reason to believe he was missing out on anything. Having taken a wife in the eyes of the gods, he had fathered six sons, and was expecting to father many more. Truly, he had been smiled upon.
Piotos sat on an overhang of rock overlooking the blue, blue water that might be called breathtakingly beautiful if it were not little more than your day-after-day resting spot while walking your land. Piotos had seen this place too many times to be taken by its beauty, or perhaps his simply wasn’t a life of idle appreciation. He saved his gasps and teary thank-yous for the births of his children, for another successful harvest, and for never having to worry about anything out past the line in the distance. The line where one shade of dark blue abruptly turned light, and powdery. Where sea turned to sky, that was where Piotos stopped thinking about his life. Stopped thinking about the universe. Anything past that was not even worth mentioning as non-existent.
Piotos cradled his walking staff beneath his right arm, his legs dangling precariously but fearlessly over the rocky face of the cliff, the ease and confidence lent by years of having done exactly this and not slipping to a grisly, pointless end. He scratched his thin, bearded face, bits of white sand snagged eternally in its burnt, dry curls, and thought as hard as he was ever likely to think. The waves below continued to lick away at the face of the cliff, and continues their eons of sculpture, turning the rock into a wave of solid sand, into a tumultuous scene of the water in rock.
Piotos’ oldest had been a few miles from home when he heard the news, having been sent by his father to deliver a sack of something or other to their nearest neighbors down the coast. Piotos could no longer even remember what he’d put in the sack to give the boy an excuse to go, not that it mattered. His neighbor, his friend along the coast, had three daughters, and that should have been enough variety to whet the boys appetite. He was getting to an old enough age, and Piotos had always felt the need to make up for the lack of children in his own family, having been the sole child born to his poor, weak mother. Also, having fathered six children and knowing now indeed what he had been missing, Piotos wasn’t going to deny his son what his own father could never be bothered to show him, by the gods.
Gods.
Piotos’ oldest boy came back that night, to the screaming and flailing of a family dinner, fresh from having visited the creature of woman in an extra-matriarchal context for the first time; out of breath from running, from the excitement of shocking hearsay, and most likely in no small part from having been allowed to watch three young women dance together near the blindingly blue water during their daily routines. Alone.
Piotos looked up at his son as he entered the humble lodging, enough for all to live in, attributed his flushed expression to his dalliance with his friend’s daughters, and looked back down to his food as the boy’s mother half-ushered, half-corralled him into a seat and placed food before him, not quite having been listening to what the boy had been babbling since he’d come in through the door. However, as words half-listened to tend to do, they made their way from the doorway of the ear into the chamber of the mind at their own pace, a relatively long time after the boy had finished speaking.
Piotos again looked at his son, probably more gravely than he ever had or ever would. The boy watched the words enter his father’s brain in the expression of his eyes, and tried his best to sit straight, to be proud and strong, though these traits are seldom learned through sheer will above painful experience.
Piotos asked the boy, he had heard this from the father, not one of the girls? More of an assurance than a question. Piotos’ neighbor was an honest man, not one to waste words in idle gossip. The man hardly ever spoke save to warn of imminent danger, yet the boy reported hearing it from him. Piotos again asked the boy, from the father, not the daughters? Yes. The answer was yes, and even through the thin, mud walls of his effected bravery, he could see the boy wasn’t lying. Piotos would trust his friend. His friend was telling the truth. But what did that mean? In silence, the family finished their meal, more disturbed by their father’s unusual solemnity than the news itself, which had little if any meaning to them as a whole, and went to sleep that night slightly earlier than they otherwise might have.
Piotos looked out over the ocean, the cool wind blowing across his chest, just barely holding off the heat from the gleaming sun above. His eyes squinted slightly in step-by-step thoughts. The King had spoken. One couldn’t go against the King. The King had said this edict was known across the land, and that all would comply. Piotos didn’t necessarily fear reprisal from others should he not obey. But how could he not obey? The King had spoken.
Piotos thought: There is one God. My King has told me this. And what says otherwise? I have never seen the gods. Yes, I have been blessed, and I have been smiled upon, but perhaps I am so blessed because I have been blessed once by a God, rather than many times by many separate gods. Gods of fecundity and chance, gods of harvest and lust. It seems unlikely one man should be so lucky so many times. Perhaps this whole time, one God was smiling on me. Perhaps this whole time I was pleasing one God. Perhaps, just perhaps, I have been thanking and worshipping one God all my life, without ever even knowing it.
Piotos sat for longer there on the cliff, but in that moment his mind had been made up. In that moment, his mind had begun the process, the unseen domino effect, of convincing itself it had unknowingly worshipped one God its whole existence.
And, really, what was the difference between knowing and unknowing, as long as tribute is being paid? He would go home and tell the children, who would be too young to care, and he would tell his wife, who at most would direct her fertility ritual towards a more manageable deity come harvest-time. Life would go on, and Piotos would continue to believe.
Piotos got up after a time, dusted himself off and leaned on his walking staff, looking back across the land, away from the open sea. Thousands of years later, just north of where Piotos now stood, the Hecatombs would be found, burial sites for six-thousand ancient Christians here on this tiny island that, at its height, would only be home to five-thousand people. Piotos turned away from the land, did not turn back to the sea, and walked back to his hovel, keeping his eyes steadily on the shore, between the island to his left and the water to his right. Piotos would grow old on Milos, fathering more sons and, not to his dismay, a few daughters, and his children would grow proud and strong, and bear many children of their own. Piotos would die on Milos. Because… well… where else was there to die?
†
Anyhoo... the story is a murder mystery having to do with the Greek Gods (who, in their Campbellian aspects, embody all dieties and are, conversly, embodied by all dieties) and the Christian trinity about the time of the withering of polytheism in ancient Greece, and on into contemporary America (stopping at all points in between). I'm not sure how familiar you people are with the works of Neil Gaiman, but he has always been a tremendous inspiration to me, and the biggest challenge I had in writing this and fleshing out where I wanted the story to go (moreso the latter, as there wasn't all that much of the former) was trying to stay away from plagiarizing his works Murder Mysteries and American Gods. I will not pretend that these brilliant pieces of writing influenced me heavily, as does all his work, but I will say that I put forth a lot of effort into keeping my work separate, and I feel that I succeeded in that.
So. Here you go.
Pantheon
And the Lord spoke unto Abraham:
12:1
… “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you.
12:2
I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and I will make you a blessing to others.
12:3
I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.
And Abram obeyed, for when a god offers you so much, you can hardly resist. After all, he was only human.
17:1
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; serve me faithfully and live a blameless life.
17:2
‘I will make a covenant with you, by which I will guarantee to make you into a mighty nation.”
17:3
At this, Abram fell face down in the dust. Then God said to him,
17:4
“This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of not just one nation, but a multitude of nations!
17:5
‘What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram; now you will be known as Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations.
17:6
‘I will give you millions of descendants who will represent many nations. Kings will be among them.
17:7
‘I will continue this everlasting covenant between us, generation after generation. It will continue between me and your offspring forever. And I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
17:8
Yes, I will give all this land of Canaan to you and to your offspring forever.
And I will be their God.
…
And Abraham obeyed, for it was more than his heart had ever hoped for, and more than his mind could ever have conceived.
And it came to be that everything the Lord demanded of Abraham, he obeyed. And everything the Lord had promised Abraham, he received. And everything the Lord did for Abraham was repaid by his and his descendants’ belief of and faith in the one true God Almighty.
Though, had you asked him, and were he to tell the truth, Abraham would seem uncertain about what God had said. Not the content, precisely, but to whom it had been spoken. He would say, if you pressed him, that, especially in the last matter he prophesied, God seemed not to be speaking to Abraham.
God seemed, he would say, to be speaking to Himself.
†
And Dionysus spoke unto the nearest Maenad:
“Oh my, yes. That is nice.”
The God of Wine had been hitting the bottle pretty heavily lately, though it could hardly be expected of him to do otherwise. The spirits never had any effect on him, however. At least not in the conventional, mundane, human sense.
It was more of a duty. The God of Wine was expected to spend all day quaffing his heart out, surrounded by nymphs and dryads, cavorting with satyrs and throwing festivals to honor the Gods. This was the day after one such get-together, and though, as a God, he felt nothing akin to even the vestige of a hangover or fatigue, it was understood that such things, in fact, existed, and a God was expected to at least show some respect for human sensibilities.
“Slightly to the right… yes,” spoke Dionysus. Seldom did his conversation stray far from this brief glimpse into his repartee. Other favorites were: “More, please,” and, “Mmmmm,” and the multi-purpose, “Ho ho ho.” Compared to other deific careers, he considered his lot to be fairly straightforward and, lucky for a god of leisure, rather undemanding. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to manifest anything important, outside of a bottle of burgundy or an interesting fruit to garnish the glass with.
“Is this better, O great and mighty Dionysus?” came a girlish, lilting voice from over his head.
“Mmmmm.”
He was also vaguely aware of what humans knew as “sensual pleasures” falling generally under his dominion. Fertility was not an immediate need, such as it ever is in cases of physical satisfaction, and was someone else’s problem, as far as Dionysus was concerned. At the moment, the Maenad attending him was rubbing his shoulders as he lounged luxuriantly on a cushioned chaise lounge, though what tension she could possibly hope to find there, let alone relieve, was so minute she may as well have been seeking out a grain of sand in his long, curling black locks, which shown in the sunlight to be a deep, dark red, so red as to seem black, as a fine and matured port might be.
“More, please.”
“Of course, O kind and gentle Dionysus.” The nymph frolicked away and back, filling the wine god’s chalice with amazing speed, most likely from eons of practice, and returned to her needless kneading.
“O lord of wine and humors,” came the cloying voice of the Maenad, “Your hair shines so beautifully in the sun. It shines as does the richest wine. It shines as does blood.” Her hands stroked and caressed up his shoulders to his neck to the base of his skull, and her fingers curled up into the deep ringlets of his hair.
“Mmmmm.” His eyes had closed.
The nymph licked her lips. “Do you remember, O Dionysus, when you were young? Do you remember when we would march with the satyrs? Do you remember your campaigns, O Dionysus?
‘Do you remember the blood?”
Dionysus opened one eye and surveyed the pillared mountaintop. It wasn’t one of his favorites, but he liked it just the same. He tried to be diplomatic as to where he held his galas. He looked into the corner of the marble atrium they now occupied, where a fat satyr slept with a goblet of wine half spilled over his belly, half matted into the fur on his legs. His hooves glistened with some of the finest wine ever to grace earth, and Dionysus had called it into being with barely even a thought.
And yes, in the back of his mind, he could remember something. Moving across the world… an army of beasts and beings… demanding obedience… demanding recognition… demanding sacrifice.
The nymph pulled her kneading hands out of his hair and stared at them. They were coated in a dark, deep liquid, as if the god’s hair itself had suddenly exuded it. It gleamed on her fingers like the warm reflection of wine, like the cold, ruined shimmer of blood, and like the flash of eyeteeth in the sun’s setting light. She started to lick it off her hands, savoring each drop, letting none go to waste.
His father… his mother… the queen… his own body being torn asunder solely for having been born unto… him… his approval… his love…
And then it faded away, as it always did. He took one last, dry taste from the chalice in his hand, hardly a mouthful, and held it over his head.
“More, please.”
The nymph looked disappointed and pulled her thumb slowly out of her mouth. The lust never lasted long. He couldn’t really remember it, no matter how hard he tried. He’d been different then. They’d all been different. Now, she couldn’t imagine what would bring the lust back for him. If she could, she would have done it.
She reached over and took the chalice from his hand, and turned away from him for the last time.
Dionysus heard a brief but deafening hum behind him. The quick flash of light that accompanied it was followed by a figure falling alongside him, charred and blackened where not red and glossy. The red of blood. The red of sure death.
The other Maenads screamed in horror, and the satyrs in any conscious state of mind scampered away as best as their ill-conceived anatomies would allow them to. The nymph fell lightly, even in death, face first onto the ground in front of him. Dionysus stared, in quiet devastation, at one of his most beautiful creations, reduced to a scorched pile of pitch. In his eyes, the flicker of an eons-old god shone for a moment. The madness that had once ruled him. The lust that had ravaged an entire world.
And through gritted teeth and a blood-haze, a voice like a growl near a quivering jugular came forward…
“Yes… I remember…ho ho ho.”
Dionysus rose quickly, in all his glory, a sight that would, in the case of Zeus or Hera, reduce mere mortals into piles of ashes, or, in Dionysus’ case, mindless beasts; for though he was, at worst, mad and sadistic, yearning and desirous, sociopathic and hideously cruel in the face of opposition… he was a kind god. He stood at full height, rising from his prone position in one sweeping motion.
And his hand went to his head. The world seemed to move around him, swaying back and forth, as if he, and only he, were suddenly at sea on a rickety boat. He wouldn’t be able to think this, of course, never having been drunk before, never having experienced the actual effects of alcohol before, but he felt it now, as real as blood, and the lack of precedence perhaps made it that much harder to cope with.
He almost fell over, twice, then found his footing, and attempted to focus on the figure before him. Two satyrs, attempting a heroic rescue, had been reduced to charcoal smudges on the white-marble floor. The walls started to run dark with wine, or blood, or both; and the sounds of barnyard animals braying and crowing, lions roaring, and dragons piercing the air with their cries filled the mountaintop as Dionysus lashed out with the full strength and breadth of his power. In his madness, he remembered his violent past, his great deeds, and wondered, intoxicated, why he couldn’t do more.
Dionysus looked at the figure, his bloodshot eyes raging with madness behind the fire blanket of complete and utter inebriation, and focused for one brief, terrible moment.
“…”
And, for a moment, Dionysus, god of Wine, Pleasure, and Blood, knew only white-hot pain. And after that, for the rest of eternity, he knew nothing at all.
†
Piotos was a simple man, in a time of simple men.
Piotos lived on the island of Milos, which rested on the edge of the spray of atolls that seemed to shoot from the mouth of Greece. Only great Crete and tiny Kythira lay apathetically between Milos and the open Mediterranean. An open gate. And, subsequently, so too did little stand between Piotos and the expanse of its waters, with years of myth and legend swirling in its crystal blue whorl. Funny, then, that the biggest thing keeping Piotos from venturing out past the mismatched islands, across the water to the exposed sea, perhaps even to the deep unknown below of an ocean far past, was not the gargantuan Crete or the minute Kythira, pathetically guarding their passage like the legs of an Athenian whore, spread wide to the world. Piotos never thought of leaving Milos. Because… well… where else was there to be?
Piotos had been born on Milos, had been raised by his father after his mother died giving birth to him, and had not known the presence of a woman until he was twenty-six years of age. This had no adverse effect on Piotos, as Piotos had no reason to believe he was missing out on anything. Having taken a wife in the eyes of the gods, he had fathered six sons, and was expecting to father many more. Truly, he had been smiled upon.
Piotos sat on an overhang of rock overlooking the blue, blue water that might be called breathtakingly beautiful if it were not little more than your day-after-day resting spot while walking your land. Piotos had seen this place too many times to be taken by its beauty, or perhaps his simply wasn’t a life of idle appreciation. He saved his gasps and teary thank-yous for the births of his children, for another successful harvest, and for never having to worry about anything out past the line in the distance. The line where one shade of dark blue abruptly turned light, and powdery. Where sea turned to sky, that was where Piotos stopped thinking about his life. Stopped thinking about the universe. Anything past that was not even worth mentioning as non-existent.
Piotos cradled his walking staff beneath his right arm, his legs dangling precariously but fearlessly over the rocky face of the cliff, the ease and confidence lent by years of having done exactly this and not slipping to a grisly, pointless end. He scratched his thin, bearded face, bits of white sand snagged eternally in its burnt, dry curls, and thought as hard as he was ever likely to think. The waves below continued to lick away at the face of the cliff, and continues their eons of sculpture, turning the rock into a wave of solid sand, into a tumultuous scene of the water in rock.
Piotos’ oldest had been a few miles from home when he heard the news, having been sent by his father to deliver a sack of something or other to their nearest neighbors down the coast. Piotos could no longer even remember what he’d put in the sack to give the boy an excuse to go, not that it mattered. His neighbor, his friend along the coast, had three daughters, and that should have been enough variety to whet the boys appetite. He was getting to an old enough age, and Piotos had always felt the need to make up for the lack of children in his own family, having been the sole child born to his poor, weak mother. Also, having fathered six children and knowing now indeed what he had been missing, Piotos wasn’t going to deny his son what his own father could never be bothered to show him, by the gods.
Gods.
Piotos’ oldest boy came back that night, to the screaming and flailing of a family dinner, fresh from having visited the creature of woman in an extra-matriarchal context for the first time; out of breath from running, from the excitement of shocking hearsay, and most likely in no small part from having been allowed to watch three young women dance together near the blindingly blue water during their daily routines. Alone.
Piotos looked up at his son as he entered the humble lodging, enough for all to live in, attributed his flushed expression to his dalliance with his friend’s daughters, and looked back down to his food as the boy’s mother half-ushered, half-corralled him into a seat and placed food before him, not quite having been listening to what the boy had been babbling since he’d come in through the door. However, as words half-listened to tend to do, they made their way from the doorway of the ear into the chamber of the mind at their own pace, a relatively long time after the boy had finished speaking.
Piotos again looked at his son, probably more gravely than he ever had or ever would. The boy watched the words enter his father’s brain in the expression of his eyes, and tried his best to sit straight, to be proud and strong, though these traits are seldom learned through sheer will above painful experience.
Piotos asked the boy, he had heard this from the father, not one of the girls? More of an assurance than a question. Piotos’ neighbor was an honest man, not one to waste words in idle gossip. The man hardly ever spoke save to warn of imminent danger, yet the boy reported hearing it from him. Piotos again asked the boy, from the father, not the daughters? Yes. The answer was yes, and even through the thin, mud walls of his effected bravery, he could see the boy wasn’t lying. Piotos would trust his friend. His friend was telling the truth. But what did that mean? In silence, the family finished their meal, more disturbed by their father’s unusual solemnity than the news itself, which had little if any meaning to them as a whole, and went to sleep that night slightly earlier than they otherwise might have.
Piotos looked out over the ocean, the cool wind blowing across his chest, just barely holding off the heat from the gleaming sun above. His eyes squinted slightly in step-by-step thoughts. The King had spoken. One couldn’t go against the King. The King had said this edict was known across the land, and that all would comply. Piotos didn’t necessarily fear reprisal from others should he not obey. But how could he not obey? The King had spoken.
Piotos thought: There is one God. My King has told me this. And what says otherwise? I have never seen the gods. Yes, I have been blessed, and I have been smiled upon, but perhaps I am so blessed because I have been blessed once by a God, rather than many times by many separate gods. Gods of fecundity and chance, gods of harvest and lust. It seems unlikely one man should be so lucky so many times. Perhaps this whole time, one God was smiling on me. Perhaps this whole time I was pleasing one God. Perhaps, just perhaps, I have been thanking and worshipping one God all my life, without ever even knowing it.
Piotos sat for longer there on the cliff, but in that moment his mind had been made up. In that moment, his mind had begun the process, the unseen domino effect, of convincing itself it had unknowingly worshipped one God its whole existence.
And, really, what was the difference between knowing and unknowing, as long as tribute is being paid? He would go home and tell the children, who would be too young to care, and he would tell his wife, who at most would direct her fertility ritual towards a more manageable deity come harvest-time. Life would go on, and Piotos would continue to believe.
Piotos got up after a time, dusted himself off and leaned on his walking staff, looking back across the land, away from the open sea. Thousands of years later, just north of where Piotos now stood, the Hecatombs would be found, burial sites for six-thousand ancient Christians here on this tiny island that, at its height, would only be home to five-thousand people. Piotos turned away from the land, did not turn back to the sea, and walked back to his hovel, keeping his eyes steadily on the shore, between the island to his left and the water to his right. Piotos would grow old on Milos, fathering more sons and, not to his dismay, a few daughters, and his children would grow proud and strong, and bear many children of their own. Piotos would die on Milos. Because… well… where else was there to die?
†
Submitted by DeadLanguage at 1:12 AM
4 Comments:
All theologogical problems I may have with this piece aside, I really like it for the most part. The section about Dionysus reminds me of other work I have read about in the same vein, especially Garrison Keillor's "The Mid-life Crisis of Dionysus." I know you wouldn't probably have read or heard that though, so that's okay, besides which you have made it your own with the blood haze. Also, I like the bit about the Hecatombs at the end of the piece. That was very artfully slipped in there. I would like to see whatever else you may have of it in coming weeks as well.
Awesome, Max. I remember the scene with Dionysus from when you first wrote it, and you have flushed it out nicely since then, though even then it had stuck with my vivdly and I always wondered when you were going to finish that story.
For the record, I kind of thought it was cool having "Forget About Me." in a serial, and I was actually going to start putting up "Freya's Blade" week by week. I don't have any problem with it, though it is easier to wait on long selections.
I really liked the characterization of Piotos. He was a well formed character for a simple device to be used for showing the transition. It was also very cool focusing on one character, it makes the world of the Gods seem so vast and outside our world.
I'm really digging this story, definately something in my vein of interest. It'll be cool to have it up side by side with Freya's Blade, though I still want to read the rest of Forget About Me.
Then the posting and minor polishing of a long-finished project will continue! Complacency... HO!
Loving the first half. The Abraham bit is an interesting lead-in, and the scenes with Dionysus are...well...really cool. You're showing us a very unexpected and intriguing side of a god who's traditionally cast in the role of drunken, hedonistic sot, and I enjoyed it. I had a few "What the hell?" moments, but just enough that it piqued my interest even further.
I can't give a really adequate critique of the "Piotos" portion, because after the intensity of the Dionysus scene, this kind of lost me. That may just be my own inability to follow abrupt changes in a story as well as I should, though. I wasn't so much disappointed to be left hanging with regards to what happened with Dionysus... I just couldn't quite "grab on" to what was happening with Piotos. While I can appreciate the sudden contrast between the world of the gods and the world of a simple man, the writing style in that second half seemed also a bit less organized, a bit harder to follow.
I will read it again, though, and try to give some better input later. It's very, very interesting, and well written as usual.
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