Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (36 page)

On the night that Rhea knew her baby was to be born, she crept out of the garden of Olympus and followed her mother down a moonlit slope to a grove of oaks. She saw light splintering among the hulking shadows; it was a golden cradle hanging from the tallest tree, glittering as it swung, as if the new moon itself had dropped from the sky and had been caught in the branches.

“That cradle is for the child you will bear tonight,” said Gaia.

“It's lovely here,” said Rhea, “but quite close to Olympus. Suppose Cronos stumbles on this place while hunting?”

“I have chosen carefully,” said Gaia. “These oaks spring from the butchered body of your father. Their taproots drink of his vengeful blood. And so the trees have learned to hate Cronos, and will stand sentinel for us. Should he approach, every loud crow that nests in these branches will cry a warning and I shall hide the child before he comes. Enough talk now. It is time for you to bear your son.”

Rhea squatted on the great white pillars of her thighs. Her hair was a net of moonlight. Her bare feet clutched the ground. Gaia pressed her belly and caught the child as it slid out.

Shouting with glee, she held him to the sky. A west wind arose, making the moon rock like a boat. Stars danced. Night birds rejoiced.

Gaia gazed at her daughter. “We'll have to change our plan,” she said. “Cronos will never believe that you had a miscarriage. You look too happy.”

“I can't help it, mother. I
am
too happy.”

“Yes, and as soon as as he sees you, he'll understand what has happened and will begin to hunt for the child.”

“What shall we do?”

Gaia snatched up a rock and wrapped it in a white cloth. “Go to him, holding this to your breast as if you were suckling a babe.”

“First let me hold my son. Isn't he the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?”

“Yes.”

“My marriage almost killed me mother. But I'm alive again. Alive! This babe is the breath of life to me. I name him Zeus.”

This meant breath in their language.

“Zeus he is and shall be. Go now daughter. Take up your rock and go. Trick your husband and save your child.”

Cronos awoke from a deep sleep to see Rhea approaching. Her face was radiant; she held a white bundle to her breast and was humming a lullaby. Cronos leaped from the great bed, snorting and bellowing. He snatched the bundle from her and swallowed it clothes and all.

The stone lay heavily upon him and he thought: “Curse it, this is one solid brat she dropped. He sits on my gut like a rock. Undoubtedly, he was the one destined to make trouble, and she tried to hide him from me, the treacherous bitch! Well, never again. I'll find a way to get rid of her, too.”

5

Zeus

Rhea didn't dare inflame her husband's suspicions by going to the grove too often or staying long enough to suckle her babe. So Gaia employed wet nurses—two nymphs who had recently given birth. One of them was a wood nymph named Melissa who belonged to the bee clan; her breasts ran with honey. The other, Lacta, was a meadow nymph, and the baby god drank rich milk from her breasts. So huge was his appetite, though, that he had soon sucked the nymphs dry and his grandmother had to import a she-goat.

The goat's name was Amalthea. Larger than any cow, she had a pelt of tightly curled fur, white as cloud fleece. Her eyes were slanted pools of yellow light; her horns, silvery gold as the new moon. Three nipples ran with milk, three ran with honey, and she never went dry. She not only suckled the young Zeus but allowed him to ride her like a horse. She swam with him, stood under the trees when he climbed them, and guarded him while he slept. She was the first creature he ever loved, and there was no one he ever loved more.

Now the godling had a quality that not even his doting mother or his wise old grandmother could appreciate. He was born with a sense of kingship that gave each of his senses imperial power. He claimed everything that touched his awareness: tree, nymph, spider, fish, cat, raindrop, wind, star, mudhole. Nothing was too big, too small, too wet, too dry, too old, or too young. Everything fascinated him; nothing disgusted him or made him afraid.

Zeus learned that he could do more with his eyes than see. His gaze carried the essence of himself along the line of his sight and seized all that he looked upon. He could make pebbles dance. As he grew, he made rocks move. They wrenched themselves out of their sockets of earth to roll after him. By simply looking at birds, he could make them motionless, then loose them again to fly in circles about his head.

All this time, Cronos, who was as patient as he was crafty, kept watching Rhea very closely. He also sent his Titan courtiers out daily, spying in all directions, until finally one came to him with a disturbing report. Cronos sent for Rhea and said: “I hear of a magical child roaming the woods—a boy, very handsome and supple as a sapling. Do you know anything about him?”

“No, my lord.”

“You know, wife, I had a dream about this. I saw the lad running across a field and a boulder rolling after him like a pet dog. You were standing beside me, watching, and when I asked you about him, you said: ‘Boy? What boy? There's no boy here.' See how you are? Always lying.”

“I cannot help what you dream. I know nothing of such a lad. Are you sure he exists? Have you seen him when you were awake?”

“There are those who have.”

“Perhaps he is of the Titan brood? A nephew of ours, then?”

“Nonsense! Any such child would have been introduced at court, you know that. Rhea, something is wrong. Something dwells in the forest and has become a menace to me. I shall go hunting tomorrow. I'll take my hounds, who can track down any game, and my spear that never misses its mark. I'll run him like a deer, whoever he is, and cut him down when he's brought to bay.”

Rhea fled the garden of Olympus and sought her mother. “Hide my son!” she cried. “Do it now. His father comes a-hunting!”

And she sobbed out her tale.

“The boy will be hidden deep, deep …” said Gaia. “But only long enough for Cronos to grow unwary. Then we must take action to end this terror.”

She called Zeus to her and said, “You must leave this place and go underground.”

“For how long?”

“Until your father decides that you don't exist.”

“What shall I do underground?”

“Learn what lies beneath, for it is also part of your realm-to-be, and not the least part. Explore its caves, its buried rivers, the roots of mountains. Observe the veins of iron and copper and tin. Study jewels that look like lumps of coal until the eyes grow wise. Look upon giant worms, wintering serpents, and twisted demons who reside in the clefts of rocks and shall serve you when you have founded death's domain. But, most importantly, you must visit your impounded kinsfolk—the Cyclopes, in their terrible cage, and the walled-up giants of a hundred hands. Go to them, learn their grief, judge the heat of their rage, and think how to befriend them. For it is these monsters who will help you establish your kingdom. Go, grandson, go under now. I shall send you word when it is safe to return.”

Cronos assembled a hunting party of Titans. He ordered out his pack of hounds. Specially bred to serve him on the chase, they were white as arctic wolves but with golden manes and plumed golden tails. They were swift enough to overtake a stag, powerful enough to pull it down in mid-stride, and had noses keen enough to follow a track three weeks old.

Horses had not yet been created, but Cronos and his Titans could run tirelessly all day long, and almost as swiftly as their hounds.

Indeed, this hunt lasted for a day and a night, and into a second day. Cronos made his party search every copse, every grove, every stand of river reed. They foraged up every slope of every hill on the Olympian range and entered every cave, but they found no trace of the boy. Cronos was in a savage mood when he returned to his palace.

He was very weary after the hunt, but he could not sleep. He tossed and turned, then finally realized what was keeping him awake. It was the silence. The howling had stopped. For the first time since he had caged the Cyclopes and trapped the giants, he did not hear their shrieking as it rose through layers of rock and drifted faintly on the wind to Olympus. It must be understood that screams of pain are a tyrant's lullaby.

“Why don't I hear them?” he muttered to himself. “Can they have broken out? No … impossible! They must simply have grown so weak that they can utter no sound. Or, perhaps, since they are given no food, they have devoured each other and there is no one left.”

He kept trying to comfort himself. Nevertheless, he could not sleep. He arose and began to prowl the corridors of the cloud castle. He was boiling with unfocused rage. He needed to hurt someone and he knew who that someone was. This was the night to punish his wife for all the unwanted infants she had borne, especially that last one who still lay like a stone in his belly.

He ran to the wall where his sickle hung. He lifted it down and swung it lightly, smiling. “A bit rusty,” he said to himself, “but sharp enough to slice that pestiferous wife of mine into as many pieces as it did my father.”

Holding the sickle, he strode toward the far wing of the castle where Rhea slept. But living with a murderous husband had taught her to be a light sleeper. She had trained herself to pick up the vibrations of his wrath even as she slept. Now, when she heard his heavy footsteps and the clank of iron, she knew it was time to leave.

She slipped out of her bed, ran into the garden, and slid like a shadow through the trees and down the slope. She listened for sounds of pursuit but heard nothing.

“Mother … mother,” she she called softly. She didn't dare raise her voice, nor did she have to. Gaia fledged herself out of the darkness. She came in the form of an enormous crone. Her hair hung like the vine called silver lace, and her eyes were slits of moonlight.

“Mother … mother,” whispered Rhea. “My husband has taken up his sickle. He means me terrible harm.”

“Yes, daughter, it's time for you to vanish for a while.”

“Where shall I go?”

“Follow your son underground.”

“Nothing would give me more joy. But he is so fiery, so proud, the little love. Would he welcome a mother trailing after him on his first adventure?”

“He will be able to use your help. He has much to do down there. He will be freeing your maimed brothers and sisters. Yes, I mean the Cyclopes, blighted first by their father's jealousy, then imprisoned by their brother's fear.”

“He buried them deep. How many times have I listened to him boast about locking the Cyclopes in their own cage? What can my son do? He's only half-grown.”

“And will grow no older unless we get rid of his father.”

“But can we? How?”

“The first step is to free the Cyclopes. They will serve us well in the dreadful war that is to come. Go down to your son now; stay with him until I recall you both.”

6

Underground

Not only prophetic oaks sprouted from the murdered Uranus, whose body had been chopped into small pieces and buried in many different places. Worms gathered too. They swarmed in a great, greedy tangle to drink his blood. They tunneled into the massive shards of his bones, fed on the rich marrow, and grew huge.

As they feasted on the god who had been cut up alive, they became filled with his unspent wrath. Envenomed through every cell of their bodies, they primed themselves for murder. Clothing themselves in leather scales as tough as armor plate, they grew teeth like ivory blades and spiked tails that could knock down trees. Finally, to become utterly destructive, they sprouted great leather wings and taught themselves to blow jets of flame out of their gullets.

So it was that a generation of dragons sprang out of the butchered god and grew into the very embodiment of spite. They became a breed of monster that was to form a taste for heroes and torment humankind for the next thousand years.

Now, young Zeus, while exploring a chain of caverns, came upon a dragon den. Separate dens, really. Except for one night a year, which was set aside for mating, no two dragons could meet without trying to kill each other. When the young were hatched out of the great green eggs, mother dragons kept them away from other adults, who liked to eat their young, just like Cronos.

Zeus wedged himself into a cleft of rock and hid there, observing his first dragon. He didn't know that these beasts had grown from the maggots that had fed themselves fat on the blood and bones of his buried grandfather. Though he felt no kinship to the scaly brutes, he studied them with great interest. He was especially struck by the way the dragons spouted flame. For some reason, this fascinated him beyond its own uniqueness. He knew this deadly trait was important to him, but he didn't know why.

He made his way to the Cyclopes' cage. He slipped into the chamber silently. Now, these early gods were not easily moved to sympathy. They kept their compassion for themselves and did not really feel the sufferings of anyone else. But when young Zeus looked through the bars into the cage and saw those gigantic figures standing as still as trees, their eyes blazing into the darkness—when he saw them looming there, so huge and patient, like penned cattle—he felt a strange tugging in his chest that he didn't know was pity. Their single blazing eyes misted over and big tears welled up until they overflowed and fell hissing onto the cage floor. Zeus saw those lava-hot tears, smelled the salt steam of them, and realized that these kinfolk of his had been standing here in the darkness for many years. He felt his own eyes getting wet and realized that for the first time in his life he was weeping. Then and there he knew what he would try to do.

He turned away from the cage and entered a rocky corridor. There, he leaned against a wall and looked at the floor. He stared steadily at a pile of pebbles until they began to stir. The pile broke. Pebbles came rolling toward him. Faster and faster they rolled, leaping and turning in the air. He looked away and the pebbles dropped. He stared at a fist-sized stone. It did not move. He stared hard and saw the stone twitch. It rose into the air, fell, and came skipping toward him. He looked away and it stopped. He turned his gaze on a medium-sized rock that was half-buried. It sat there motionless. He glared at it, pouring his will along the line of his sight. He saw the rock rise from its bed of earth, tearing itself free, shedding clumps of dirt. He made it rise straight up and hang in the air, then blinked and let it fall back into its hole.