Hercules (13 page)

Zeus stood with Athena on Olympus. She had heard the Blind Man howling and had made her father listen. The words of the prophet drifted up to Zeus and made him frown.

“Hera has done this deed,” he said. “I forbade her to kill him herself, but she has done it through trickery.”

“Behold the man,” said Athena. “He, lying there, was the best and strongest, the bravest and most gentle of humankind. Let him join us here on Olympus and teach us to be human, too, before man, learning cruelty from us, destroys himself.”

“So be it,” said Zeus.

Far below, on the shore of the flashing sea, Hercules arose. He was clothed in flesh again, all new, milky and lustrous. His face was like the evening star, streaming light. He stood taller than before, changed, joyous, godlike.

He called. A chariot coasted down the steeps of air, drawn by twelve golden eagles, and the chariot was golden too. He lifted Iole into the chariot. And the gold of the eagles and the gold of the chariot flying straight toward the sun made so hot a stream of golden light that it pierced the old man’s blindness. His sight was restored, and the first thing he saw after forty years of darkness was the golden chariot streaking away, and Hercules holding Iole in his arms.

So Hercules was taken among the gods and lived among them, teaching them humanity. And Hera pretended it was all her idea.

There are different stories about what happened to Iole. Some say she became a goddess, that her name was shortened to Eos, and that she rode in the sun chariot, painting the dawn. Some say that Hercules drove that sun chariot, and that his name was changed to Helios. Others say, though, that Athena simply changed the girl into a gull, who flies forever over the sea, crying “Hercules, Hercules …”

We do know, though, what happened to the shirt. It fell into the hands of Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, who washed its poison away and cut out its embroidered pictures. From time to time, she takes a handful of these pictures and visits her hearths, scattering them among the flames, so that boys and girls, dreaming into the fire, see pictures in the heart of the flame and pin their own face on Hercules as he fights the Nemean Lion and the Hydra and the three-bodied giant … as he wrestles the river in all its changes and ties the octopus into knots and throws Anteus and does all those other brave and wonderful things. And these boys and girls, dreaming into the fire, promise themselves that they will be brave when they grow up and always fight those shapes of evil called monsters and always dare to be gentle, too.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 1984 by Bernard Evslin

Illustrations copyright © 1984 by Jos A. Smith

cover design by Omar F. Olivera

978-1-4532-6447-8

This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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