Mother Took Revenge on the King of the Gods for Me

My father was the God-King, and he loved my mortal mother with all his heart. To help her adapt to life in the divine realm, he even infused his own blood into her, granting her eternal youth and elevating her to the rank of a goddess. Defying the unanimous opposition of all gods, he built a resplendent palace solely for her here in the divine realm, making her the happiest woman across all heavens. Yet he never loved me — his first child, born of him and my mother. As time went by, he visited my mother less and less frequently. Eventually, I passed away. Mother begged him to seek justice for me, but he only replied indifferently, "We shall have many more children." His words crushed every last glimmer of hope in her heart. Mother grew utterly disillusioned with him, and resolved to avenge me with her own hands. The God-King’s patience toward her dwindled day by day. It was as if I had been born bearing nothing but misfortune. To avenge my wrongful death, Mother cast aside everything she once held dear. When she finally turned her back and left the divine realm forever, that aloof, domineering God-King went mad. He chased after her, begging desperately for her to return. Chapter 1 For half a year after I died, my mother never broke down again. She no longer shattered the sacred relics Zeus had given her, no longer wept over my shrine until the temple shook. Now she only sat by the window of the small temple on the western flank of Olympus, and she would sit there from morning till night. Only in the deep of night, when everything was still, did she press her face into the little blanket that had once covered me and weep without a sound. I drifted beside her and tried to wipe her tears away, but my hand passed through her half-transparent shoulder, again and again. My fingers slid over her cheek and met nothing. I was a wandering shade now, a ghost so bound to her mother that even the underworld would not take me in. My mother’s hollow grief began to wear on Zeus. He came in frowning, golden lightning crackling at his heels, not with rage but with impatience. He looked at her the way a man looks at some old ornament he has tired of but cannot quite bring himself to throw away. “Semele, she is dead,” he said. “Stop tormenting yourself.” “I have already raised her to the rank of nymph. I have kept a place for her on the Isles of the Blessed. I gave her the best of everything. Hebe lived in a side hall while she breathed; in death she sleeps among the blessed. What more could you want?” He paused, and when he spoke again it was the voice of a man tossing a coin to a beggar. “Stop pining for her. From now on we will live well together. As for Hera, I will deal with her. Only do not make trouble. Remember this: you stand on Olympus because of me. Without me, you are nothing.” My mother said nothing. She only closed her eyes. Her lashes trembled like a butterfly caught by the wings. That same evening, word ran through all of Olympus that Zeus meant to name one of Hera’s handmaids the new keeper of the temple household. He made a point of having my mother preside over the ceremony — less an invitation than a command. His messenger stood before her, courteous and immovable at once. “King asks only that you take the seat of honor. You need not say a word. A smile will do.” My mother did not refuse. She sat in the place of honor, wrapped in the violet robe Hera had sent. It was only when some tactless young god mentioned “the little princess who died so young” that she faltered, just for a moment. She was not angry. She was not even sad. She only said, mildly, “The past is the past. Let us not speak of it.” From across the room Zeus nodded, satisfied, and said to Hera, “You see? She has finally come to her senses. I told you all she needed was time.” Hera’s smile was gentle and perfectly placed. “King, you have taught her well.” After the ceremony broke up, my mother sent away every nymph who served her and sat alone in the cold temple. Olympus has no true darkness at night; Selene’s silver light pours into every corner, always. But that light is cold too. She cradled the amulet I had worn in life. It was a small gold disc with a single word cut into it, Peace, bought from an old silversmith back when she still lived among mortals. After Zeus brought her up to Olympus she had kept it on me always, saying it was the one piece of the mortal world we had left. “Hebe,” she whispered, her voice scraped raw, “wait for your mother just half a month more.” “Let me set everything in order. Then I will come and be with you.” I pressed a kiss to the bright gold scar on her wrist. She had made it one night with Zeus’s dagger, when being alive simply hurt too much. A passing nymph had found her in time. When Zeus heard, all he did was send word through a servant: “Tell her to stop carrying on. If she does it again, I will send her back to the mortal world.” Send her back? As if that would keep Hera from hunting her down. Out in the gardens of Olympus, Zeus drank and laughed with Hera. I drifted down the long colonnade and saw her leaning against his shoulder, his hand resting at her waist. They were deciding what honors to grant Hera’s family in the morning. He had no idea how little of my mother’s time he had left. --- I did not want my mother to die. I wanted her to live, and live well. But she could not hear me. She kept saying that without me she could not go on. So I prayed to the Styx, the river by which even Zeus dares not lie, the heaviest oath a god can swear. I said to the black water: let the best mother in the world live, and live well. The Styx gave me no answer. It only flowed on without a sound, carrying away the sighs of the countless dead. Chapter 2 Zeus came to my mother’s temple with Hera, the Queen of Heaven, at his side. Anyone with eyes could see it was Hera who tormented her. In the old days, every meeting with that woman left my mother choking on her anger. Hera would say the cruelest things behind the sweetest smile, tread on the hem of my mother’s robe the instant Zeus turned his back, mock her mortal birth in front of every servant in the hall. And Zeus took Hera’s side every time, scolding my mother for being small-minded. “Semele, can you not be a little more gracious? Hera is the Queen of Heaven. Whatever she says or does, she does for the good of the gods.” That was his favorite line. But watching my mother now, so calm, so far away, I understood. She would never let him wound her again. Her eyes were a pool of dead water that no wind could stir. Hera held out an exquisite vial, her smile sweet enough to run cold. It was carved from obsidian, its sides cut with runes of rest, and inside was the incense for the dead that Hephaestus had made with his own hands. My mother knew that vial at a glance. The same obsidian. The same ghost-blue runes. This was the second time she had seen it. The first time, she had lit it herself, to send away her own Hebe. “Semele,” Hera said, her voice soft as honey, “this is Hephaestus’s incense for the dead. It settles the spirit and brings sleep. King gave it to me, but I hear you sleep poorly. A daughter in the grave, what mother could rest? We are both women. I understand your pain.” She leaned a step closer and lowered her voice until only my mother could hear, soft as a snake sliding over dead leaves. “Soon you will have my child to keep you company. You will heal, in time.” My mother’s face changed. A tremor went through her that she could not stop. I knew what she was thinking. The child Hera spoke of was her own kin, the very one who had killed me: her nephew, Alcyoneus, a thick, dull-witted demigod boy. The day he shoved me from the Sacred Stair of Olympus, he had been smiling. He thought it was a game. Zeus stood behind Hera, watching it all, the corner of his mouth even curving up. He thought Hera was making peace. He thought his house had finally gone quiet. “Semele,” he said, smiling, “see how kind Hera is to you. You ought to learn from her. Stop sinking into what is done. Let the past be the past. Hebe would not want to see you like this.” The past. He called my death the past. My mother took the vial and said nothing. Her fingers shook, but her face stayed empty, the face of someone who had already died once and had nothing left to fear. That night she hurled the vial to the floor. Obsidian splinters scattered, and the ghost-blue scent unfurled and filled the whole temple. It was sweet, sickly sweet, sweet enough to turn the stomach. The weight of all those days finally crushed her. She slumped before my shrine and at last let herself sob — not the wild, tearing kind, but a stifled, broken weeping wrung straight from her chest. “Hebe, your mother is useless.” Her voice splintered into pieces. “I smiled at the woman who killed you. I smiled at her. Am I wicked? I should have killed her. But I could not. I cannot do anything at all.” I drifted at her side and watched her shoulders shake, and there was nothing I could do. Seeing her cry, I wanted to cry too. But I was a shade. I had no tears, no voice, no warmth. All I could do was hover there and lay my hand on her hair, over and over, though she felt nothing of it. Chapter 3 The day Zeus brought my mother up to Olympus was the happiest of her life. That was seven years ago. She was twenty-two then, living in a small seaside town in the mortal world. Her father was a fisherman, her own mother long dead, and her days were spent mending nets along the shore. Zeus turned himself into a golden eagle and dove down out of the sky. My mother said that in that first moment she thought the eagle meant to take her eyes, and she squeezed them shut in terror. But the eagle only settled lightly on her shoulder, its golden feathers brushing her cheek, warm and soft. Then it spoke. “I am Zeus, the King of the Gods. You are the most beautiful mortal I have ever seen.” She thought she was dreaming. She pinched her own arm and gasped at the sting. Zeus laughed, a sound like distant thunder. “No dream. Come away with me.” He took the shape of the golden eagle once more and had her climb onto his back. She hesitated a long while before she finally wrapped her arms around his neck. They passed through the clouds, through the field of stars, past the silver chariot of Selene the moon. The wind screamed in her ears. My mother said she had never flown so high or so fast in her life; she kept her eyes shut tight and felt her heart climbing into her throat. When they came down before the golden palace of Olympus, she opened her eyes. She saw a city built of marble and gold, columns rising into the clouds, stairs paved with gemstones. Nymphs in white robes stood in ranks to receive them, bowing to her and to the King of the Gods. Zeus took her hand and announced to them all, “This is Semele. From this day, she is my woman.” My mother did not know he had a wife. He had never said so, and no one on Olympus dared to. By the time she found out, it was too late. Hera already knew she existed. Hera already hated her. The first time my mother met Hera was on her third day on Olympus. Hera swept into the temple with a train of handmaids and looked my mother up and down, the way one inspects a fish at market. “So you are the mortal,” Hera said, a thin smile on her lips. “Nothing special to look at. King is amusing himself. In a few days he will tire of you. You would do well not to think too much of yourself.” My mother kept her head down and did not dare to speak. After Hera left, she went to Zeus. “You have a wife?” He was reading a scroll of prophecy and did not even look up. “She is the Queen of Heaven. Bear with it.” “But —” “I said, bear with it.” He raised his head at last, a flicker of impatience in his eyes. “Semele, what do you imagine Olympus is? Your little fishing village? There are rules here. Do not cause me trouble.” So she bore it. She bore it for three years. The day I was born, Hera set the Furies outside the birthing room. My mother labored three days and three nights, until the blood had soaked the whole bed red. She cried out Zeus’s name, over and over. He did not come. He was with Hera at a banquet, the ceremony raising her family to new rank. It was Artemis, goddess of the hunt and of maidens, who heard what my mother was suffering and sent one of her nymphs to help. Without her, both my mother and I would have died that night. I was born with golden ichor in my veins. That was the King’s blood, and it meant I was no ordinary mortal but a demigod. My mother held me and wept for a long time. “Hebe,” she said, “you have divine blood now. That means you will never die, doesn’t it?” She did not know. The ichor could not save me. The year I turned three, Hera’s nephew, a demigod boy named Alcyoneus, fifteen years old and built like an ox, came upon me on the Sacred Stair of Olympus. He asked whose daughter I was. I said I was Semele’s daughter. He smiled. He reached out and pushed me. The Stair is steep. The Sacred Stair of Olympus climbs into the clouds, each step half the height of a grown man. I flew out into the air and came down headfirst against the edge of the third step. My divine bones broke. Skull, spine, ribs, all of them shattered. My mouth filled with golden blood, hot and tasting of metal. I wanted to cry for my mother, but my jaw was broken and would not open. She rushed to catch me and could not. When she gathered me up, my body was soft in her arms, like a sack of broken bones. By the time Zeus arrived, Hera was already there. She knelt on the ground with her hands over her face, weeping louder than my mother. “The child was so wild,” Hera sobbed. “I told Semele again and again not to let her run about alone. The Stair is so high. So very dangerous.” Zeus bent and raised Hera up, patting her back gently. “Don’t cry. It wasn’t your fault.” Then he turned to my mother, who knelt on the stone with me in her arms. “Semele, I know you grieve. But do not throw wild accusations. Hera would never do such a thing. Alcyoneus is only fifteen. What malice could a child have?” A child. He called a boy of fifteen, twice my height, a child. I lay in my mother’s arms and looked up at her. There were no tears in her eyes, only an emptiness I had never seen before, as though everything inside her had been poured out and nothing was left. The three Fates said my thread of life had already broken. They had snapped it through and cast the ends into the Styx. My mother did not want my going to be full of pain. With tears in her eyes and her hands trembling, she lit the censer of incense Hera had sent, and the scent drifted and curled, and my breathing slowly eased. The shattered bones stopped hurting. The golden blood stopped flowing. I felt myself sinking down toward somewhere deep and warm. She hummed a song against my ear, an old tune from the mortal world, one she had known since before I was born. She said her own mother had taught it to her, that she used to sing it on the rocks by the sea as she mended her nets. “Crescent moon, shine soft and low, over the harbor, over the foam. My little one sleeps, safe and warm; no grief, no harm, till her hair turns to snow. Crescent moon, shine soft and low, over the water, over the home. My little one sleeps, safe and warm; no grief, no harm, till her hair turns to snow.” She sang it again and again. Her voice grew fainter, more broken with each turn. “My little one sleeps, safe and warm; no grief, no harm, till her hair turns to snow.” As the last note fell, I fell with it, into a sleep I would not wake from. My mother bent over my bed and wept until something in her tore. The sound she made was the cry of some wounded animal, not human, not divine, like the world itself splitting open. I would not leave my foolish mother. I stayed beside her. When she wept, I wept too. Chapter 4 After my mother lit the incense and let me go with her own hands, she fell ill for a long while. The physicians of Olympus came and called it a wasting of her divine essence: the faint trace of ichor in a mortal body was not enough to bear so great a grief. They gave her medicine, a golden liquid in a clear glass vial. She drank it, and brought it back up again. At her lowest, she opened her wrist. She used the silver dagger bestowed upon her by the King of the Gods. She drew a hot bath, submerged her arms, and drove the dagger deep into her wrist. Bright red blood streamed into the water, and the steam, heavy with the scent of blood, filled the entire bathroom. It was a passing nymph who found her, caught the smell of blood, threw open the door, and ran out screaming. When Zeus heard, he did not come to see her. He only sent word through a servant: “Tell her to stop carrying on. If she does it again, I will send her back to the mortal world.” Send her back? As if that would keep Hera from hunting her down. The only thought that kept my mother alive was me. I had died with nothing explained, nothing answered, and she could not let it rest. She meant to win justice for me. She knelt and begged Zeus to punish the one who had done it, the demigod boy Alcyoneus. She knelt in his great hall, before every high god, and bowed her head to the floor, again and again. Her forehead struck the marble with a dull sound. Blood ran down from it, over the bridge of her nose, and dripped to the ground. “King, please, punish the killer,” she said, her voice low but every word clear. “Hera’s nephew, Alcyoneus, threw my daughter from the Sacred Stair with his own hand. Every nymph there saw it.” Zeus had agreed readily enough at first. Before the assembled gods he said, “I will look into this. If there truly is a killer, he will not go lightly.” But one bout of Hera’s tears, and he softened. That night Hera went to his chamber in her nightclothes. She buried her face against his chest and wept until she shook. “King, Alcyoneus is only fifteen. He was only being reckless. He never meant it. He is my own nephew, my brother’s only son. If you kill him, I will not go on living.” Zeus patted her back. “There, there. I won’t kill him.” The next day he summoned my mother and told her to her face, “I have looked into it. Hebe slipped and fell on her own. The Stair is slick, and she loved to run and leap. An accident, that is all. These things happen.” My mother’s eyes went wide. “What did you say?” “I said it was an accident.” He frowned. “Semele, I know you are grieving, but you cannot keep tangling things up like this. Hera is gentle to the bone; she could not bring herself to crush an ant. Why would she harm Hebe? I questioned the boy myself. He was so frightened he could barely speak. What would you have me do to a child of fifteen?” My mother’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. “Enough.” He pushed her away — not with his hand, but with the haft of his thunder-scepter, a light flick of it, and she went down to the floor like a swept leaf. “Semele, do you know how wretched you look right now? Your eyes are swollen like walnuts, your face the color of a corpse. You don’t comb your hair, you don’t change your clothes. Look at yourself. Are you even a woman anymore?” He paused, then added, “Hera at least knows when to hold her tongue. You might learn from her.” My mother lay on the floor and did not cry. She only rose, slowly, gathered her skirts, slowly, and walked out of the hall, slowly. Her back was very straight. But I knew she was shaking. Zeus did not go after her. He turned and went to Hera’s chamber. Through a few walls I could hear Hera laughing, and the low rumble of his laughter answering hers. From that day, my mother never begged him for anything again. Chapter 5 Hera came smiling, a golden basket on her arm, a few golden apples nestled inside. They were the golden apples brought as tribute by the Hesperides, fruit from the divine tree that Gaia, the Earth Mother, had planted with her own hands. Each one was beyond price. Each one stood for honor and for power. Hera set the basket on my mother’s table, found a chair, sat, and crossed her legs. “Semele,” she said, her voice sweet as honey laced with poison, “I hear a child who dies young is lonely down below. It is so pitiable. The gods have always had the custom of marrying the dead to one another. My nephew Alcyoneus, the boy who pushed Hebe, died himself last month. They are near enough in age. Why not wed the two children in the grave, so each has company in the dark?” My mother stared at her. “What did you say?” Her voice was very low, as if forced up from the bottom of her throat. Hera rose and came around behind her, bent down, her lips almost at my mother’s ear. Her voice was light as a snake crossing dry leaves. “I said your short-lived little wretch will do nicely as an underworld bride for my dull nephew. The two of them down there, one to keep his house and one to grin like a fool. A perfect match.” My mother struck her across the face. The sound rang through the whole temple. Hera’s head snapped to the side, a thread of golden blood at the corner of her mouth. She shrieked and dropped to the floor, clutching her cheek, tears springing up at once. The next moment, Zeus burst in. His thunder slammed into my mother’s chest. She flew backward into the pillar behind her, and the marble cracked. The sound of her back striking it was muffled and heavy, like bone breaking against stone. Golden blood welled up from her mouth and fell, drop by drop, onto the white marble, like small flowers opening one by one. “Semele! Have you lost your mind?” Zeus gathered Hera up, wiping the blood from her mouth with his sleeve, his fingers, over and over, stricken. “Hera, does it hurt?” Hera burrowed into him, weeping, her voice frail as a wounded dove. “King, I never meant any harm. I only wanted the child to have company. My own nephew is dead too, and my heart aches. I thought the two of them together would not be so alone. I do not know why she is so angry with me.” “Don’t cry, don’t cry.” He lifted her like a child. “I will take you home.” My mother pushed herself up from the floor. Her back was bleeding, her forehead split, but she did not cry. She leaned against the pillar, breathing hard, watching him walk away. “Why don’t you ask your good wife what she said to me?” My mother’s voice tore out of her, so hoarse it was barely words. Zeus stopped. He looked back, and his eyes were as cold as the pit of Tartarus. “The marriage of the dead, I know about it. I gave my blessing. Two children with company in the grave is a kindness. And for that you raise your hand?” “A kindness.” My mother laughed. She laughed until she bent double, laughed until tears ran down. “Good. What a fine kindness.” Zeus frowned, as if weighing whether to say more. But Hera gave a small whimper in his arms, and he carried her off without another backward look. My mother stayed in the temple, sliding slowly down the pillar to the floor. She drew her knees up, buried her face in her arms, and wept without a sound. I drifted beside her and did not know what to do. Chapter 6 The marriage of the dead went ahead. Hera’s family gave themselves the airs of royal in-laws and swaggered through the realm of the gods. Alcyoneus’s parents, Hera’s brother and his wife, paraded into the great hall of Olympus in gold-edged robes to receive the homage of the gods. They called me their nephew’s bride at every turn, as though I had been anything to them while I lived. Zeus not only let it happen, he heaped rewards on them. He gave the family of Alcyoneus a temple of their own, gold and sacred relics, and promised that their second son would serve as a judge at the next Olympian Games. My mother knelt before my shrine the whole night through. “Hebe,” she said, “your mother is sorry. I promised to avenge you, and I cannot even protect myself.” “But I swear this.” She lifted her head, and there was a light in her eyes I had never seen. “Not one of them will know peace.” My mother changed. She no longer wept, no longer raged, no longer broke things. She became quiet, mild, obedient. When Zeus came, she smiled. When Hera came, she bowed. She would even pour Hera’s tea unbidden and murmur some empty pleasantry about how well the Queen of Heaven was looking. Zeus said to Hera, pleased, “You see? I always said all she needed was time. Mortals are slow, but they come around in the end.” Hera smiled. “You have taught her well, King.” But I knew. My mother had not come around. She was waiting. In secret she had reached an old friend from the mortal world, a fisherman’s daughter she had grown up with by the sea, now married into a small town where she kept an inn. My mother sent word through dreams and arranged a way out. One thing remained undone. She meant to make Zeus taste loss as well. Not the loss of a daughter; she did not believe he had ever truly cared for me. She meant to take his face, his dignity, the whole grand fiction of the King’s honor. Before the next council of the gods, she would stand before every high god and lay bare the truth of how Hera had killed me. She had proof. A nymph who had pitied her in the dungeons was willing to bear witness. But Zeus moved first. Perhaps Hera sensed something. Perhaps the suspicion was his own. That morning, before dawn, while my mother still slept, the temple doors were kicked in, and Zeus came through them with twelve armed guards at his back. They searched her chests and turned out the letters she had sent to the mortal world, written in a mortal hand that Zeus could not read. But one of Hera’s nymphs could, and she twisted every line, turning a daughter’s letters home into proof of a plot with the underworld. “Consorting with the spawn of the Titans. Scheming treason.” Zeus looked down at my mother, pinned to the floor, his voice without a trace of feeling. “Semele, I gave you your chance. I let you live, and you would not. Then do not blame me.” He did not kill her. He shut her in the dungeon at the foot of Olympus. It was built into the body of the mountain, with no window, no light, only iron bars and an iron door that would never open. The air was damp and cold, water seeping down the walls, a thin layer of foul water pooled on the ground. When they shoved her in, her knees struck the stone floor, and she gave a low grunt of pain. “When you have come to your senses, you may come out.” Zeus left those words behind him and walked away without looking back. The sound of the iron door closing rang in the dark for a long time. Chapter 7 The dungeon was cold and wet. My mother huddled in the corner with her arms around her knees, like an animal in a cage. The darkness was thick enough to grip in the hand, and the air reeked of rust and rot. Her clothes were soaked through, clinging to her skin, cold as ice. By the third day her legs had gone numb. Not in pain, simply without feeling. She tried to stand, and they would not obey her, two wooden posts that buckled and dropped her into the foul water. Her face went under, she choked, and she coughed for a long time. No one came. Zeus never came, not once. He was busy. He was busy celebrating with Hera the new divine rank her nephew had been granted. The boy who killed me had been raised, in death, to God of Courage, his statue set at the very gate of Olympus. The Plaza of Heroes was packed with gods. Hera stood at Zeus’s side, radiant. The parents of Alcyoneus wept and knelt and gave thanks. With his own hands Zeus set a golden laurel on the head of a statue of a thing that had never existed. “Alcyoneus, brave youth, who gave his life for the honor of the gods.” His voice carried across all of Olympus. “I raise him to God of Courage, to be revered for all time.” Gave his life? He had died in a hunting accident. He and a few demigod friends had gone after wild boar in the forest, and a boar had run him off a cliff. There was nothing glorious in it. But Zeus needed a hero, even a false one. My mother knew none of this. She knew only that she was sealed in the dark, with no food, no water, save the hard crust of bread and the bowl of filthy water shoved now and then through the gap beneath the door. By the ninth day she could no longer speak. Her lips were cracked, her tongue swollen like a stone, every breath like swallowing knives. She thought she would die there. But there was a young nymph among the guards who opened the door one night. Her name was Iole. She was one of Hera’s handmaids, set to watch the dungeon. She too had once had a daughter, lost in one of Hera’s schemes, and she hated Hera to the marrow of her bones. “Go.” Iole crouched before my mother and pressed a waterskin into her hands. “Follow this passage to its end. There is a small door. Outside it is Mirror Lake. Go into the water. There is a current at the bottom that runs down to the mortal world.” My mother looked at her and forced her voice out, like a rusted hinge. “Why?” “Because when my daughter died, there was no one beside her.” The tears slid down Iole’s face without a sound. “At least your daughter died in your arms. At least you could hold her.” My mother wept. It was the first time she had wept since they put her in that place. Iole took her arm and walked her, step by step, down the long passage. My mother’s legs would not answer her; every step was like walking on a blade. They went on so long that she began to believe she would never reach the end. At last a wooden door appeared. Iole pushed it open, and cold air poured in, carrying the smell of water-weed and earth. Beyond it lay Mirror Lake. Moonlight scattered across the surface in a thousand silver scales. “Quickly.” Iole gave her a push. “It is almost dawn.” My mother did not hesitate. She staggered to the water’s edge, looked back once at Iole, and let herself fall in. The cold of the lake climbed past her knees, her waist, her chest. She closed her eyes and let the water come at her from every side. She did not fight it. She let her body go loose and sank, the way a fallen leaf sinks. I wanted to call her back. I wanted to say, Mother, hold on. But I had no voice to cry out with. The water was cold, cold to the bone. Yet my mother said that in that moment she felt warm instead. The water shut out the world above, shut out Zeus and Hera, shut out every wound and shame. Under the water she could finally be still. And then the lake gave her back. The current at the bottom ran faster than Iole had warned. It swept her into an underground river that drove through the body of the mountain, through rock, through layer upon layer of dark. She tumbled and rose and sank and swallowed water, until at last it cast her up onto a riverbank. Sunlight fell on her face. She opened her eyes and saw a world she did not know. It was the mortal world. She had come home.