The demon in the skull, p.11
Hekate, page 11
‘COME HERE, CHILD’
Her voice was softer than it was
in Kronos’ cave, but I could still hear
every monster of the night it hid inside.
I shuddered, a cold in my veins.
I knew she did not like uninvited guests
inside her realm, and I had disobeyed.
Slowly, I stood on my own two feet,
and began to walk towards her, inch by inch.
I summoned all my courage.
But as I was walking,
I saw him, the dark-robed
figure with a kind face at her side.
It struck me in this moment
that this was the boy
who helped me with Cerberus.
But what was he doing here?
Why would he be
in Nyx’s realm?
It was his scythe
that gave him away.
Her favourite son.
Thanatos,
the God of Peaceful
Death and Endings.
Our Eyes Met
And recognition seized us both.
He was older now,
his face had grown more defined.
He no longer had the boyish youth
I had seen in him.
His cheekbones sat high
and though his hair was shorn,
it only did more to emphasize
his finely cut features
that seemed tenderly carved
from the loving hands
of an ancient being.
He was beautiful in a way
I had never seen before
and I felt the pull again.
Closer to the throne,
I realized his tired eyes
were rich with promise,
and a soft charcoal
the shades of grey of a storm.
I saw his lips upturn slightly
as I approached the throne,
and his smile gave me
a comfort I did not realize
I needed.
At Nyx’s Throne
Nyx was my great-aunt.
My grandmother Gaia
was her sister; they both
came from the womb of Chaos,
the creator of the universe.
They were the oldest of our family.
All Gods were somehow
aunts, uncles, cousins
brothers and sisters
to each other.
But what was different
about Nyx was that she
inspired a kind of fear
from other Gods simply
through the mention of her name.
It is said that even Zeus
knew better than to enter
her domain without permission
and here I was,
not even a Goddess,
standing at the base of
her throne. She did not move,
her onyx eyes set upon me
with a primeval anger.
Then she spoke coldly,
‘YOU MUST RETURN
TO YOUR GUARDIANS
IMMEDIATELY.’
I do not know
what came over me,
but I looked into her eyes,
my chin raised stubbornly,
my feet planted firmly,
and spoke loud and clearly.
‘NO.’
The Dark Fog Returned
I saw it swirl from around her chair,
filling the floors of the room.
I could feel its moist constraints
at my ankles. It looked like
a wine-dark ocean, rich with danger.
This was a threat.
I knew it as I saw it.
She leaned forward,
her dark dress of diamond stars
turning into rubies as she kept
her eyes on mine.
‘CHILD. DO YOU NOT KNOW
TO WHOM YOU SPEAK?’
Now or Never
I told myself, as the night sky outside
filled with an obsidian storm.
Standing as tall as I could, I met
the Night Goddess’ eyes and spoke.
‘When you were young, Goddess,
Chaos gave you your name, your gifts,
and even your curses. You knew
your story and your destiny
because your mother had dreams
and she was able to give them to you.’
My voice quivered slightly. ‘Neither
my mother nor my father could do this for me.
All I want to know is my divine purpose.
The Fates hold that answer. I am sure of it.
Do you not believe that divine blood
should know what their immortality is for?’
I watched her face as a series
of nameless expressions crossed it.
But before she could speak—
‘I Will Take Her, Mother’
His voice was soft and gentle.
It had to be. Thanatos was the God
of bringing peace in death.
I could see his storm-dark eyes clearer now,
so like his mother’s, but kinder.
And much more tired.
His mouth looked quicker
to smile than to frown
and that told me everything.
As the hurricane outside died,
and the dark fog melted away,
Thanatos stepped forward,
laying his scythe down at
his mother’s feet, a gesture of respect.
‘She too is the child of Gods,
just like you and me.
I will take her to the Fates
for the knowledge she craves.’
Nyx tapped the arm of her throne,
her expression adrift now
in a thousand thoughts.
I thought I knew how slowly
time, that old trickster, could move
when I was alone on Styx’s riverbanks.
But nothing seemed longer
than waiting for Nyx
to make up her mind.
I saw her face harden,
and steeled myself for a refusal.
But then she looked at Thanatos
and grudgingly,
to my surprise,
she nodded in agreement.
Thanatos
If I had not met him here, I wonder if I would know him to be the God of Peaceful Death. His face was warm as a tree bark in summer, even if his eyes were as ancient as the earth bed itself. He was quick to grasp his scythe and lead me out the halls. His gait was slower than Hermes’, who held a spring in his step wherever he went. Thanatos was a much older God than Hermes or even Hades – even though his features spoke of a strange, ageless youth. It had been his scythe that had given so many a quiet dreamless sleep even when they were gasping in pain. In the fields of Asphodel everyone spoke of him as the Kind One, how he had visited battlefields to end soldiers’ pain. How it was such a relief to give themselves over to his tender voice, sometimes after a lifetime of agony. Perhaps then it was in his nature to care for lost souls seeking relief from pain. Whether those lost souls were mortals… or Gods. We crossed through the Realm of Night, the birthplace of every single night that blessed the mortal world. Here midnight came to life, a cloak of royal blue soil and a wealth of deep purple and grey skies that looked like a bruise. It was beautiful in its own way, rich with dusky rivers and silver flowers. In the bruised sky, a shimmer of stars and two separate moons lit our way, one bougainvillea pink and one ocean blue. Finally, Thanatos stopped and I peeked around him to see why but had to shut my eyes to the brightness before me. A river flowed but it was a strange river, bright with gemstones every colour you could possibly imagine and more. This was the river of memory.
Mnemosyne
Before she was a river,
Mnemosyne was a Goddess
seeking her own voice
in an ever-changing world.
One of Gaia’s golden children,
she knew she held command
over the domain of memory,
the gift of remembrance.
But what good is a power
if no one teaches you how to use it?
After the Titanomachy
she set out to find answers.
Along the way she met a shepherd
who promised to help her.
For nine days and nine nights
they spoke of the stars
and the beauty of truths,
but on the very end of the ninth day,
this shepherd revealed
he had tricked her,
for he was truly
the God-King Zeus.
The story could end there,
but Mnemosyne was an ancient Goddess,
and in her womb she carried
her vengeance.
Nine Goddesses were born
of her. Each one
holding power over every art
and every craft beloved to the Gods.
And with her gift of memory,
she ensured that Zeus remembered
if he ever crossed her again,
she would empty his world
of everything beautiful,
fill his mind with only that
which caused pain.
In an effort to amend
his brother’s grave errors,
Hades gave her safety
in the form of this river
and sway over the realm
of memory. It was her waters
that gave us the gift of remembering.
Crossing Mnemosyne
Thanatos drew me to a battered boat
tied to a dock at the bank of the river.
‘It is safe,’ he told me,
seeing the hesitance in my features.
To demonstrate, he stepped in first,
and gestured with his scythe for me to get in.
I followed his movements
and stepped into the vessel.
A soft sprinkling could be heard
as the gems scratched at the sides
of the little boat. But it appeared to be
made of good strong oak so it resisted.
I stared at the gems as they moved.
It was like they were floating.
‘Those are memories.’ Thanatos’ voice
seeped into my thoughts. He twisted his scythe
and the wood twisted to become
a long paddle, which he dipped into
the gemstones. The boat
moved uneasily through the current.
‘What you did took courage.’
‘What Took Courage?’ I Asked Him
‘Your audacity with Nyx.’
It surprised me that he did not refer to
the Goddess of the Night as his mother.
‘Not many have had the courage—’
‘And remain to tell the tale?’
I finished his sentence. It struck me
in that moment that it was true.
Nyx left no one unscathed when pushed.
‘What is it like,’ I asked him,
‘to have her as your mother?’
The corners of his mouth lifted,
and his brow raised slightly with mirth.
‘She is as loving as she is terrifying.’
I would have asked what he meant,
but he was pulling into the bay.
Beyond us lay a legend
from which only few came back whole.
The Forest of Silence
When people ask about the dominion of Hades, very few speak about the Forest of Silence. It was a dark mimicry of a mortal forest, as though a cruel God had decided to make a mockery of everything we loved about them. With its trees that had roots and bark made of vipers, and carnivorous black rabbits and poisonous midnight deer that would chase you until you fell to them, this was not a place many entered willingly. Everything here thirsted for blood and ichor; the trees would try to drink from you while crushing your bones into dust. There were stories, of course. Tales of things that knew how to tear you apart and piece you back together, the forest becoming a maze that never let you out. A thousand monsters were born here every day: they said that Echidna, mother of monsters, had hidden her womb somewhere in this forest, ensuring a constant stream of progeny. The screams and screeches reminded me of my visit to Tartarus. My stomach clenched with worry each time I heard an otherworldly sound. But as I looked upon the dark foreboding of the woods, all I could see was the hope that lay on the other side. And that was enough to make my feet move.
Thanatos Knew These Woods So Well
It quelled my fears. I wondered if the folktales told by the mortals in Asphodel about him and his siblings were true: that they grew up with monster playmates instead of Godlings; whether this forest was where they played their games. It struck me then how he had grown up with monsters for companions and I had had my ghosts, our childhoods intertwined with their strangeness. Perhaps this was why he had been so tender with Cerberus? He knew how to be gentle with monsters, just like I had a love for my spirits that no one else understood. I had so much I wanted to ask him, but Thanatos walked these woods in complete silence. Whether this was because he was trying to avoid the attention of what lived here or he simply enjoyed the quiet, I did not know. What I did know was that at one point, a scaled darkness wrapped around my leg and with a single swipe of his scythe it was cut in two, leaving red sap across my skin. Shuddering, I wiped it off. We could have been walking for hours or days. We did not stop, though the tiredness of this quest was starting to wear on my bones. But I held my tongue, and I was glad for it, because soon we saw it: the impossibly tall black towers of Hades’ palace.
Hades’ Domain
Thanatos was watching me
as we emerged from the woods,
brambles stuck in our clothes
and blue-black leaves caught
in our hair. I took in the
four strange obsidian towers
that simply disappeared
into the earth’s crust above us
and the skulls that had been
hammered into the walls
as though a morbid decoration.
Bats flew everywhere,
one even landed in my hair,
but I shook it out before it settled.
Thanatos gestured to a small archway
at the very back of the palace.
It was twice his height
and I began to walk towards it,
but then he said, ‘We will take this way;
it is the servants’ door.’
With two thumps from
his scythe, the heavy doors
swung open. He walked ahead of me
whispering, ‘Be very quiet,
and let me do all of the talking.’
I Sensed It Before I Saw It
The thing that protected these halls.
It was less of a presence and more
of a feeling. A fear and then
a hollowing of your spirit.
It liked to toy with its prey
before it appeared, or so
I had heard. When it had fed
enough on my dread,
a hooded creature with long robes,
clawed hands that hung
with decayed flesh,
appeared before us.
Red eyes glowing
like ominous lanterns
in its hood.
This was a God in Grey.
And it stood
massive and unforgiving before us.
Thanatos cleared his throat.
‘Let us pass. We are here to see the Fates.’
It lifted its huge monster claw
and pointed at me. ‘She should not
be here,’ it whispered in an old, unused voice.
‘She is here with me.’ Thanatos was quiet,
but his voice was forceful. The thing did not move.
‘You can pass, but leave her here with me.’
I did not want to be left here.
Not with this thing.
Thanatos shook his head,
‘I am on a duty for Nyx.’
The creature let out a rasp and I realized
it was laughing. ‘Your mother
has no sway in Hades’ halls,
Godling. Give the child to me.’
I froze, my eyes wide.
Thanatos and I had just met properly.
He had no reason to fight for me,
especially at great risk to himself.
I took a step back, cursing
my own naivety, and the creature
advanced towards me.
But Thanatos raised his scythe
and blocked its way.
‘Do not go any closer to her.’
The words were soft,
but even I recognized
the cold edges of danger,
a challenge, threatened fury.
Eager to dispel the situation,
I wracked my brains
as the God in Grey growled,
and then I remembered it:
the golden apple I stole
from Elysium. It was still
