Mortal Gods

“Whatever.” Cassandra twisted around like a cranky cat, trying to get comfortable on the hard, damp surface.

“Do you ever dream of him?” Athena asked.

“No,” said Cassandra. “I wish I did. But I don’t. He’s just gone.”

Athena looked out into the drizzle. It took less than a minute for Cassandra to pass out cold.

*   *   *

The smell of rotting meat hit Odysseus square in the face, strong enough to stop him in his tracks.

“Where is it?” He waved his hand in front of his nose.

“Where’s what?” Hermes whispered.

“The bloody corpse flower. This one’s worse than the last. It must be a bunch of them. A bouquet of the buggers.”

“No. There are no flowers.”

Hermes’ flat voice made Odysseus forget the stench. For the last few minutes, their walk had been silent. He’d thought that Hermes had just gotten tired of talking. God knew they’d had plenty of dead air between them on their trek. But it hadn’t been that. Hermes had smelled it hundreds of yards ago. The scent of death. Real death.

“It might be a rotting animal. A big snake maybe.”

“Maybe,” Hermes said in his toneless voice. “Maybe.” Hermes’ legs moved on autopilot, propelling him mindlessly toward the source of the smell, because he’d come this far, and because he’d said he would do it. He had to see her for himself.

“Hey, mate. Maybe you shouldn’t.”

But it was too late. The trees opened up on a clearing painted red.

“Oh, god.” Odysseus tried to catch Hermes before he went to his knees but didn’t make it in time.

The space where Artemis had lost the chase was a glory of blood. Bits of her littered the clearing like the discarded pieces of a doll. Streaks of red shone on leaves and across the trunks of trees. There was so much of it, like she’d been filled to the brim, like buckets had been dashed across the ground. And it was still wet. Still fresh, as if they’d been only seconds too late to stop whatever had chased her from tearing her apart. But that was a lie. They could come back a week from now and find it the same. The blood would stay. Rain wouldn’t cleanse it. Animals wouldn’t consume it. Perhaps time would, if enough time still existed.

Odysseus surveyed the scene, mostly frozen. It wasn’t until his eyes set on a bloody pile of brown cloth that he gagged. It was part of Artemis’ shoulder and neck. Strands of silver-brown hair lay nearby, as if someone had torn them out of a brush.

“Hermes,” he said. “Don’t look.”

Hermes’ shoulders shook, and Odysseus put a hand down to steady him.

“I have to look!” he screeched, and jerked away. “Don’t you understand? Someone has to see.” His weeping was loud and unashamed, breath ripping through him like a storm through sailcloth. Raw enough to make Odysseus wince.

“They’re dead!”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Hermes spat. “Do you know? Because no one else does. No one knew who they were, or what they’d done. The sun and the moon went out and no one fucking noticed!”

Odysseus put an arm around his friend. Hermes wept for Artemis and Apollo. But he also wept for himself. These were Hermes’ fears. The fear of dying alone. The fear of ceasing to exist.

“We noticed,” Odysseus said quietly. “We’ll notice.”

“It’s not enough. How do you stand it?”

“I don’t know.”

Hermes gestured numbly to the blood surrounding them. “I haven’t seen her in a thousand years.”

“A thousand? That’s a long time. Even by an immortal’s standards.”

Hermes scoffed sadly. “You talk like you haven’t been stumbling around in a jungle for days on end. She wasn’t exactly easy to find. She never was.” He sobbed. “But I loved her.”

As the silence stretched out, Odysseus began to feel like an interloper, an unwelcome witness to this strange thing that no other human in the world might see. The blood splashed across the fallen leaves and rotting vegetation was a god’s blood. Artemis had been reduced to waste, when she’d been so strong, and young, and free.

“We should get back to Athena,” he said, so suddenly that Hermes flinched. “She’ll want to know.”

“What am I supposed to tell her?”

A voice came from behind them. “Tell her anything you want.”

Odysseus looked up. For an instant it was like hallucinating; seeing another person in the middle of the jungle made so little sense that it jarred his brain. Then a hand clamped around his throat and jerked him up to stare into a face he barely remembered. He’d only glimpsed it for brief moments, on a battlefield thousands of years ago.