Great Goddesses Read online

  It is like drowning when a God forgets how to love you. It is like they start wildfires, and end in embers of themselves.

  Selene, the Moon

  Everything falls in love under my gaze. The flowers whisper in the wind how they need each other. The ocean softens herself and kisses the cliffs, promising them she will never leave them. Mortals steal away into the night for their first kisses in dark corners, but I find them, bathe them in my light for love. Love is nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn’t matter who you love, as long as they fill your heart to the brim with joy, bring you courage where you feel you have none.

  I am a romantic, of course. Can you imagine me being anything else? I fell in love with a mortal. Perhaps it was the forbidden nature of it that made us love each other even more. My family’s ire when they found out knew no bounds, but I was defiant.

  I promised them that I would cease to glow. There would be no more moonlight for their trysts, the seas and oceans would seethe and storm, Nyx would rule now and forever more, and they let me have him.

  I should have known. It was a flicker, his life compared to mine. A mortal cannot love a God; they are meant for Hades in the end, and we are to be endless, but I would give up my endless in a heartbeat for him.

  Instead, I wrapped him in my shaking arms as he died, asked my niece Artemis for help.

  ‘Take him and turn him into a legacy,’ I begged.

  She took him and turned him into the majestic creature you call the wolf.

  Eos, the Dawn

  ‘We cannot do this,’ I whisper to Ares as he kisses my rosy fingers, before I use them to open the gates of my father’s home in the east.

  He laughs and asks me, ‘What are you afraid of?’

  I bite my lip. Of everything. But mostly, of crossing the Goddess of Love, who has a cruel sense of humour. And you are hers. Women like her, they never punish their man, they punish the woman who was with him.

  He kisses my worried brow. ‘You are too anxious. Come, she has many lovers, she cannot stop me from loving another too.’

  But you are her favourite . . . everything about Ares screams danger but I cannot help it. He knows how to break open something forgotten inside me.

  So what if he is the God of War, I say to myself as I allow myself to sink into his arms, fissions of pleasure erupting in my veins. The wars he makes aren’t for Gods, they are for mortals.

  Centuries later, I will lose my son to Troy. In a battlefield scorched in crimson and steel, I will lift his lifeless body and hold him close, tears blurring my vision. He isn’t even a man yet, I will whisper, smoothing his hairless face with the same fingers I once used to smooth his father’s brow.

  And somewhere in the skies, I will hear Aphrodite’s spiteful laugh as tears streak down my cheeks.

  The punishment for stealing in the art of love is unforgivable and perpetual. Ares was wrong.

  I should have known. I should have known. I should have known.

  Gaia Teaches Rhea Retribution

  Mothers are not meant to have a favourite child,

  but Rhea was Gaia’s favourite. She saw herself

  in Rhea, knew what it was like to be underestimated.

  They were both quiet nurturers, kind givers.

  Yet their own family took their generosity for weakness

  and often saw their softness as their disadvantage.

  No one believed Gaia or Rhea were capable

  of destruction, of vengeance, which is

  why even their own husbands took them for granted.

  If you practise brutality on a kind woman long enough

  you force them to work with their crueler instincts to survive.

  And mothers can become lionesses to keep their cubs alive.

  This is how the Earth found a way to bring

  the Sky to his knees, practised patience

  and used that time she hoarded as a key,

  styled an adamantine scythe, gave it to her own son

  Kronos to carve away Ouranos’s Godhood.

  And when Kronos became power mad and devoured

  his own children, she did what any good mother

  would do. Taught Rhea the same trick, to teach

  her child-devouring husband a lesson.

  Over cups of ambrosia, Gaia taught her daughter

  guile, trickery, the theft of patience, and how to turn her

  own softness, his underestimation, into an instrument.

  No one would expect obedient, quiet Rhea

  to be the downfall of her husband,

  that she would have the wit to manipulate prophecies,

  have the cunning to hide her last son Zeus,

  then shape him into the blade that would slash

  his father’s belly, free his siblings, avenge his mother,

  remind him that without love for his family,

  he is no king or Titan. What they did not know

  was they would set into motion a ten thousand

  year war between the Gods in their quest

  for revenge and retribution. How each would

  lose children and grandchildren

  in this power struggle they had started.

  There is a lesson here,

  a lesson about retribution,

  they forget that there is always a caveat,

  a whispered addendum. Even the heavens

  are not exempt from the violence which will visit

  if they are disrupt the natural order by ripping a child

  from their mother. Even Gods should know better

  than to challenge that kind of ancient wisdom,

  for there is nothing but ruin in store for deities

  and mortals alike when they dare trespass upon

  the unconditional love of a mother.

  The Titanomachy

  War should have been the pretty thing they promised each other it would be, amid battle cries and songs. The rise of new Gods against old should have been tainted in glory, simply glory.

  Instead, Hades glides silently over battlefields so metallic they reflected the twilight glow, and one almost forgot that Gods bled gold. His feet stained with ichor, he tries not to think of the blood as the family he could have known. Ichor turns his black robes gold, giving him a sickening kind of majesty to being the last one standing in an empty war zone. This could have been your uncle’s, this could have been your cousin’s, this one could have been your friend’s.

  Now we will never know.

  Hera cannot stop washing the hem of her dress. It feels like the blood there will never leave. She is holding back her tears, the Queen-to-be of the Heavens is not allowed the mortal act of crying. But she cannot remember who the golden honey-like blood staining her dress belongs to. Was it her father? Was it her aunt? How many of her own met their painful imprisonment at the end of her hands today? She gives up on the hem, lets it lie wetly against her tired, war-worn skin, tosses water on her face to hide her tears, but she can still taste the salt.

  And for the first and only time, she wishes she was mortal enough to allow herself her own tears.

  Gaia feels her children and grandchildren draw blood from each other, their battle waging upon her body. She causes earthquakes to stop them, so instead they wage bloodshed in the sky. She sends her children help in the form of monsters half-hearted, for it is her grandchildren they are going to destroy. She pleads and begs for them to stop but no one heeds her voice; they are too hungry for a power so destructive that it has killed many before them. Gaia is primordial. She is the only one who understands. No matter who wins, she knows she will lose.

  The problem with a mother’s love is that it is so unconditional that her grief becomes unconditional too.

  A universe in collapse is both ugly
and beautiful. Kronos watches the stars explode before him. Whole planets disintegrated which once held life. Histories of lesser deities wiped away in a heartbeat. All because of his selfishness, his need to control, to fight the prophecy which he had helped create. Your son will destroy you, his father had warned, as you have destroyed me. All that is left of his legacy is rusted, broken blades and shields in a forgotten bastion that once held never-ending fountains of wine and laughing divinity as far as the eye could see. He catches his exhausted reflection in the mirror and lets out a slow breath, the dust dancing through rays of the sun that drip in from cracks in the walls, in the ceilings.

  This is what the end of a Godhood looks like. A lonely king surveying what was once a kingdom that sang in the clouds now nothing but ash. Waiting for his turn to be cut into pieces, Tartarus calling his name.

  War should have been the prettiest thing dipped in glory. Instead, it is ten thousand years of ichor dripping like rain from the skies, bathing a crying mother in the blood of her own children. Ten thousand years of family bleeding out family, the young making monsters of the old and the old devouring on the new.

  3. A Mortal Interlude

  There is a difference between holy and pure.

  Holy is also the way the anger boils inside our throats,

  the forgotten in us that carves at our bellies,

  the need to turn the heavens themselves inside out

  when they twist the knife, and laugh, laugh, laugh.

  Unlearn holy as gentle. This is the lie we have all been

  feeding each other, mother to daughter, asking the calm

  within us to braid our hair, to touch a cool palm to our

  cheeks, remind us every night that anger will return ten

  fold if we do not control it. Forgive, forgive, forgive.

  Pure is what they measure out for us, like we are

  their personal recipes. As though we are made for

  practice, not for ourselves. A cup of softness, half a bowl

  of innocence, a bucket full of virginity, pretend our

  prison is our feast while they devour, devour, devour.

  We know better now. We face fires hand in hand.

  We look at each other and say the words each of us

  needs to hear. We let the anger boil and let loose flame

  by volatile flame. We smile, sacred burning, burning, burning,

  and reincarnate.

  The Olympians

  ‘From the Gods enthroned

  on the awesome rowing-bench

  there comes a violent love.’

  —Aeschylus, The Oresteia (458 BC)

  Young Zeus: The Crossroads

  Almost God boy, standing at

  the edge of your own abyss,

  weighing out your burden to be

  the enslaver of your own Titan family,

  or to turn it all away, stay hidden

  on this gentle Cretan island.

  You still doubt the meaning

  of your own heritage, don’t you?

  Still wonder if a God

  can change his destiny.

  But you do remember

  how your father tried to change his.

  Instead, he ended up cursed,

  and in turn you too, unborn,

  became a part of a prophecy.

  Tell me, Zeus, if you had a choice,

  would you choose true greatness

  or being the king of the Gods?

  Would you choose love,

  or will you need the sin

  that comes with the endless power,

  the corruption you may succumb to?

  Tell me, Zeus, if you had a choice,

  what is worthier of your soul?

  A throne cast in blood and terror?

  Or a life made of happiness but ordinary?

  Choose wisely.

  History depends upon it.

  Metis and Zeus

  1st Century

  The Titanide who will one day be his first wife knows him well enough to set his bones on ice.

  ‘Between all this Godhood and all this fear,’ she chides him, ‘you will crush yourself. The weight is too much.’

  He sighs, shoulders slumped under the weight of his destiny. ‘So take it from me, take it and give it to someone else.’

  She smiles, a smile as cunning as a fox about to outsmart its prey, says nothing, but knows all.

  2nd Century

  She is patient with him, even when he does not deserve it. She treats his lack of discipline like it is her virtue to teach him how to do better. Every time he comes close to giving up mastering the ability of thunder, of the weapons, she reminds him, ‘Fight for something that is worth dying for – that is the only way to win a war.’

  He thinks, and comes up empty-handed over and over again.

  Finally, unable to see him crushed any more, she gives it to him.

  ‘I promise, if you win this, you will never feel alone again.’

  His smile that day could rival the bluest sky after a fresh wash of rain, his heart thunders in his throat, in his chest. All he can hear is the beating of his own almost-heart in his ears. So loud, he doesn’t see the dread in her eyes.

  3rd Century

  ‘Sometimes you succumb to pettiness and you do not know how to control your rage.’ She observes him carefully, watching him curse an entire mountain to crumble at his feet when he cannot climb it.

  He hangs his head in shame, he is aware of his hubris, and discomfort is the emotion he handles most poorly.

  As he turns to her, about to apologise, he sees she has lifted a corner of her mouth like the crescent blaze of a sickle. ‘Good. Now we know we must use that.’

  Aftermath

  Two ivory thrones gleam before them – the only untouched, unharmed part of an otherwise dilapidated palace. A reward for years and years of training, and a ten thousand-year battle. ‘This is yours,’ she says warmly, and touches her hand to her womb feeling the shining life growing in there. ‘Ours.’

  She is too lost in love, glory and waning bloodlust to see the colour of his irises as he looks at her. The shade of a fox’s as it looks upon its prey.

  Metis, the Forgotten King Maker

  Is there a word for this?

  The waiting before the devouring.

  The knowing and unknowing

  of what is soon to be the ruins of you.

  He is a God-King after all.

  And I just his consort.

  So what if I was his king maker.

  Better women than me

  have made gentler kings

  and still met their ends.

  People think having the power of prophecy

  and cunning means you can avoid your fate.

  No, my loves,

  you are simply driven mad

  by the knowledge of what is coming

  and that you cannot stop it.

  Until you learn the way I did,

  how to alter a foretelling’s truth,

  weaponise sadness and deconstruct it

  into a life that works for you.

  The Metamorphoses of Zeus

  (An Abuser Regrets and Remembers)

  How does a boy

  who has destroyed his own father

  to be crowned a God-King

  stop himself

  from becoming

  a lost and isolated thing?

  He destroys.

  He devastates.

  He devours.

  He doesn’t ask.

  He teaches himself

  apologies are for the weak.

  After all, the only way

  to stop guilt from consuming you

  is to c
onsume it first.

  Pretend it doesn’t exist.

  It is the only way to stop it.

  This will work . . .

  . . . it has to.

  Ghosts in onyx and marble.

  Haunted in his dreams.

  Look at what you did.

  Look at your destruction.

  Look at all the tatters

  you have left of everyone

  you ever touched.

  The Making of a God-Queen

  (How Hera Survived Trauma)

  You were once just a girl who loved birds. You believed it was the nature of your divinity to heal tender winged beings because you thought you were one of them. You cared for each injured one you found. Until trauma made you stop. Until the tenderness in you hardened. And this is what you learn from loving something more than yourself in your girlhood:

  An injured cuckoo is sometimes a lascivious God in disguise waiting for you to cradle him so he can turn and ravage your youth.

  Small, hopeful things often lead painfully short lives and you are too immortal to become one of them.

  Adapt. Regain composure. Do not let him have the upper hand. Before he finds a way to shame you. Marry him and become the bridge he could never burn, never forget. No matter how much he tries to.

  And this is what you learn from nurturing snakes instead of birds:

  Soon they become your dearest friends.

  You grow immune to every kind of poison.

  And this is what becomes of you when he betrays your bed for another’s night after night:

  Your grief twists inside your gut till it becomes venomous breath.

  You grit your teeth and smile fork-tongued through the tragedy.