John Powys - Atlantis

“And from these I have learnt the startling news that Father Zeus is no longer served by Hermes the Messenger; but on the contrary that Hermes has gone back to his birth-place in Mount Kyllene, whither his mother, Maia, the loveliest of the Pleiades, is still drawn down from the sky by the poets who worship her; so that she, along with her son’s music, shall enable countless generations of unborn men and women to embrace the dark spaces of life’s dubious experience with pleasure instead of pain!

“You, old corridor-companion, keep on telling me about this devilish priest of Orpheus with his mad incantations and his mania for Eros. Well, my friend, let me now tell you what I hear about this young Eros of the Mysteries. I hear he has recently mutilated himself so that he can make love to both sexes and be loved by both.

“My messengers are obscure as to the precise harm — if harm it is that he has done to himself; but that he has done something very serious to himself they do most strongly affirm, assuring me that the old Eros that gods and men have known until this hour is no more; and that a new and different Eros has taken his place. The elements also tell me that the goddess Aphrodite after being unfaithful to him with both mortals and immortals for so long has now fallen in love again with her crippled lord, Hephaistos, and is struggling to keep him to herself with every art she knows and all this in the Island of Lemnos!

“As to the Father of the Olympians, the great son of Kronos himself, the elements tell me that he is still on Mount Gargaros, but without his thunder and lightning which have been taken back by that same Cyclopean race from whom he originally received them. What makes it worse for this poor Thunderer, deprived of thunder, is that not only has his own son Hermes deserted him, but his other messenger and emissary, Iris, the Rainbow, has been entirely pre-empted, appropriated, and taken possession of, by Hera, the Queen of Heaven, who is now left alone on the summit of Olympos, with only a handful of frightened attendants, and surrounded by the empty palaces and the deserted pleasure-halls of the once-crowded City of the Gods.

“Under these conditions, as you may easily imagine, O great lion-slaying Nemean Club, to still possess a messenger like Iris is an indescribable relief, and you may be sure that Queen Hera makes the most of it, and despatches the luckless Iris on the most difficult quests. For example I happen to know that at this very moment this youthful immortal is wandering through the uttermost lands of the blameless Ethiopians searching for Pallas Athene.

“You ask me what I learn from the elements about Hermes since he no longer serves the Father of Gods and Men? Well, old companion of so many years, you who along with me have seen so many strange faces in our corridor to the palace of the king, what I have gathered from over-hearing these communications between the elements, which of course simply means the contact of air with water, water with fire, fire with earth, is so startling that I myself have difficulty in believing it. But what I’ve learnt I’ll tell you at once, old friend, if my voice still reaches you, as your un-winged Pegasos and your un-maned Arion whirl you to the end of the isle; and it is this.

“All the spirits of all the mortals who ever lived on earth have defied Aidoneus; and, following the ghost of Teiresias, have broken loose from Hades and are wandering at large over the whole earth. It is now Persephone who is searching for her mother, searching frantically, searching desperately for her, through all their familiar abodes, through all their ancient haunts, by every public way, along every well-known river.

“Hast thou seen my mother?” is her cry. “Hast thou seen a stately woman with a mantle over her head and a staff in her hand?”

“But the most astonishing part of the news the elements have brought me is this. By the advice of Hermes, who it appears has been down to Hades to find the mysterious and awful Aidoneus who carried off Persephone and made her swallow those honey-sweet seeds of the fatal pomegranate, this dark ruler of a deserted Hades has summoned his brother Poseidon to meet him at the utmost limit of the West where the Titan Atlas, as a punishment for opposing Zeus, holds up the sky.

“Here Aidoneus and Poseidon together may be able to persuade the Son of Kronos to join them in leaving Olympos to Hera and in restoring and building up again the shattered order of the world; in forcing the ghosts of the dead back to Hades, the Titans back to their punishment in Tartaros, and with the help of Atropos, the oldest of the Fates, getting both Eros and Dionysos under such complete control that the entire—”

It was at this crucial moment that the two insects within the bosom of the club of Herakles had to clutch each other in sheer panic. The whole cortège had stopped with a terrific jerk. There was a ghastly sound of eight equine hooves scraping against some flinty floor of rock.

In the stress of this shock the two wounded animals, Pegasos still bleeding where his lost wing had been torn out, and Arion still switching and bleeding where he had lost half his mane, drew up side by side. Odysseus as he slid down to the ground, not without a certain grim satisfaction, shifted his grasp from the reins to the bridle of Arion, while Nisos, leaving to Zeuks all real responsibility for the wounded Pegasos, pushed the treasure-sack as well as he could to the part of the creature’s back that was still unhurt.

As for Zeuks, he set himself to make a timely use of the healing properties of human saliva. He spat exhaustively upon the raw place in the creature’s side from which the wing had been plucked, and when he had finished doing this he proceeded to blow upon the glittering bubbles of his own spittle until the whole surface of the creature’s side was as iridescent as if the luckless Iris herself, exhausted by her pursuit of Athene among the blameless Ethiopians, had dissolved in fatigue upon his back.

Nisos glanced quickly round to see if the old King were using his spittle as balm for Arion’s shoulder from which Enorches had torn at least half of that flowing mane; but in place of anything of that sort Odysseus was leaning his own elbow upon Arion’s back together with the Nemean Club while he investigated the cause of this abrupt halt of their divine steeds.

Nisos had only to follow the tilt forward of the old king’s beard to share his discovery, and they both faced the interrupter of their ride with cautious wonder. It was at a wild, shaggy, goat-legged, goat-horned, and yet human-shaped figure lying fast asleep in the shadow of a great rock that the old man and the boy now gazed in astonishment.

And then Nisos suddenly realized that there was another figure in their path, and one with which he was already acquainted. This second figure was nobody else but the eldest of the Three Fates, the powerful Atropos herself.

Then once more the boy faced her, the same frail woman, resting her back just as she had done before against the trunk of a spruce-fir that grew upon the very rock beneath which the sleeping Goat-foot lay. Unlike this goat-horned, goat-legged figure, however, the little old woman with her back to the tree was wide-awake; nor did the tree against which she was resting break the glare of the afternoon sun for her in the manner in which the rock did for the Being below her.

“O! I never thought—” gasped Nisos the moment he met the eyes of this little old woman.

“No, you never thought, my boy, did you, that you and old Atropos would meet again so soon! In truth I never expected it myself. You see,” she went on, keeping her eyes fixed on the boy and completely disregarding both Odysseus and Zeuks, “we Fates are not — I wish indeed we were! — the sole arbiters of destiny in this mad world. It was, for example, only in very vague shape that we Three foresaw all that’s happening upon the earth today.