A.N.: This story contains implied rape of a thirteen year old girl. Although considered a minor today, a girl this age in ancient Greece, probably younger, would be married and perhaps pregnant. Consider yourself warned.
Ashes of Spring
He wondered what exactly it was that drove him back to her day after day. Certainly there were mortals aplenty for him to take his pleasure with—willing or unwilling, none could resist him. It had been rather long since those below him began building large cities, began to be more interested in their own lives than remembering the existence of those lives relied solely on the pleasure or wrath Gods of Olympus.
But down in the fair meadows next to the seashore, a fair, lovely little thing finally caught his eye. She was the youngest daughter of Erechtheus, whose two other daughters had come to strange and terrifying fates themselves. They were much older than Creusa, who had just barely come out of childhood. She was a quiet girl, loving to sit by the sea and weave flowers into garlands for her hair, occasionally telling stories to her kitten or an invisible playmate she had made for herself. Out by herself, her hair, like ruddy spun gold, would come tumbling down her shoulders and fan out, spread by the strong wind, framing her sweet, white face.
He began to watch her every day, ignoring whatever else had concerned him before. He watched as she led her rather lonely life, having no one but a sharp tongued nurse to speak with, longing for the big sisters she had adored. For nearly five years, Creusa prayed for her sisters who had gone away. The eldest, Procnis, had left only to die, (the horribleness of her death was hidden from the little girl). The other, Orithyia, simply vanished one day in a huge gust of wind that had come from the banks of the Ilissus, on a day Creusa had been sick with a cold and cooped inside. She had never seen Orithyia again. He knew that the reason she came was to perhaps be carried off in one of the great gusts that came off the ocean to see her beloved sister.
She was not to know, of course, that Boreas had taken that lovely sister as his own, and that he had warned the North Wind against touching his own chosen prize.
She was too young to woo, but he wanted her desperately, this tiny kittenish girl of purity and sweetness. He wanted to sweep her up in his arms and take her as his own, to lay her down on his exquisite golden sheets, wrap her in silk and soft warm covers, to pull her sweet tiny body beneath his and possess her—and to keep her here with him in his divine halls for always.
This one would not come willingly. She was too young to understand what he wanted from her, and he had no intention of waiting for her to grow older. He wanted her now, more than Cassandra, more than Daphne, more than Coronis, or Marpessa. She was made for him, the silent sunny child, meant to leave her life of refined loneliness, to submit to him and not be sold off to some arrogant man who would lock her sunshine away and meet her light with brutality and mortal clumsiness.
Only, it would be too long—too long to wait for the proper permission to take her up to his heavenly halls. But in the meantime, he would have her. Have her by the roaring ocean she loved, caressed by the sea breezes and sweet air. As a child, she would fear him, but it did not signify. Creusa belonged to him, and before long she would learn to look upon him with love and devotion.
Creusa took her time this day as she carefully picked her way down the rocky steps of the shore. She didn't often come this way, where the rocks were dark and sharp. There was, however, a dark cave carved into the hillside where sometimes she went when the sun was too hot to bear. She would lie down on a little smooth shelf, on the edge of one wall, and sometimes fall asleep listening to the waves and roaring wind. Today was cold and gusty, however, and after being cooped up inside for most of the morning, the fresh air felt wonderful to her.
The yellow poppies were in bloom in the early spring, and she hastily removed her veil and began piling them, bright and cheerful against the gray of the sky, into the cloth.
For a long time she sat on the dry, cool grass, choosing the freshest blooms and laying them carefully next to each other. She wanted to stay longer—nurse was in a horrible mood after mother had left, and she didn't want to go back—but it was getting rather cold, and she had forgotten her new blue cloak, the one Mother had made for her for her thirteenth birthday, with the beautiful flowers embroidered around the hem in vibrant yellows and reds and pinks.
Mother was coming home today, and she had made the trip specifically to bring home all the brightest flowers she could find. She would even brave Nurse's wrath to arrange them in bunches in the great hall, to cheer her up after the long ride.
Finally, Creusa rose to her feed, made sure she had the bundle securely in her hand, and headed up the cliff. At the top of the cliff, where the winds were the strongest, she walked abruptly into something.
Starting immediately, shaken and alarmed, she looked up to see the most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life appear out of nowhere. He hadn't been there before. She was sure, because she always checked the cliff top for a stray sheep or dangerous bull before wandering across the land. The windswept plain had been empty, until this stranger appeared suddenly in front of her.
She couldn't help but stop and simply stare at him. He was tall—taller than any man she had ever seen, but neither gangly nor bulky. Indeed, by his divinely beautiful face and noble presence, the knowledge of what he must be entered her heart like a dagger. Child as she was, however, no notion of crawling or obeisance came to her. She simply looked at him in wonder, at his delicately crafted tunic and robes, the radiant gold of his hair, the way he was looking at her as intently as she was looking at him.
Finally the great stranger smiled, a gentle smile such as one might give to a child, and spoke her name. "Creusa." His voice was soft, caressing, loving in a way she remembered her mother used to speak to her when she was but a toddling baby. For an instant she felt an overwhelming urge to walk over to him and beg to be wrapped in his arms, embraced and rocked in comfort and warmth.
She did the only thing that she could possibly have done at that point. To come across a God, standing and breathing in one's way like any other mortal was one thing, but to have that God actually know, and then speak one's name—that was something else. To cover the squeak that had escaped her mouth, Creusa managed the lowest curtsey she could conjure, and whispered "My Lord."
She heard the soft crunching of footfalls of bare feet on grass, and then felt a strong hand under her chin, lifting her face up. "My child," the God said softly, "Do you know who I am?"
And she did, at that moment. There simply was no other this Being could be.
"The great God of Light, my Lord. Apollo." This last word she said in a whisper, hardly daring to speak it aloud to its rightful owner. Radiance and Beauty personified. How many statues of this Being had she seen—skilled and not, clothed and not, and yet they were all mere heaps of rubble, cold, unfeeling stone next to the blazing glory of the man standing before her.
He could take her right now, he knew. Scoop her up in his arms and bear her down to that dark cave, just as he had planned, take his pleasure from her terrified body. He closed his eyes in anticipation as he imagined her sweet flesh, the softness of her breasts, the whiteness of her thighs, the tight heat waiting for him between her legs, her golden hair falling about her face, the silk of it as he threaded his hands through it.
He would, he knew, soon. But she was even more lovely than he had envisioned, more sweet, shining inside with a white pure light few maidens had in such abundance. Truly, any maiden he had truly wanted—not with simply the heated love of desire—but truly, divinely, as a God—had had this shining pure light. Cassandra had had it, but she had been cold, shunning love for reverence and holy worship. Coronis had had it, but in her it was combined with too much of that other passion, desire, and in the end that fire had consumed her
And so he stood there, tall, regal, supremely beautiful and absolute in his divinity, and stretched his hand out toward her.
"Come here, Creusa," he said softly.
It was not in her to resist, and Creusa moved to the God, a heavy, strange sensation filling her more with each step. Far too soon, she had reached him, and he had reached around her and pulled her against himself with one swift movement.
Too startled to even shriek, she simply froze against him, half expecting to be incinerated where she stood. But he was simply warm, as mortals are, smelling of sunshine on roses and the purest sweet breezes. The next moment the world tilted and she was held up in his arms, not cradled, but slung across his shoulder and chest the way women carry young children. Indeed, she had never felt so small.
"Good girl," he whispered against her hair, and he began to walk. She knew already where he was headed.
So this was to be her fate. She had indeed heard tell more times than she could count the stories of heroes, those men born of a God's love for a mortal woman. It always seemed to Creusa that the God's were horribly selfish beings, to impregnate a girl and leave her to live or perish as luck would have it. She secretly and fearfully scorned the great god Zeus for these proclivities, his infidelities. She worshiped the maiden goddesses—the wisdom and dignity if Athena, the warmth and sweetness of Hestia, and the beauty and wildness of Artemis. If Apollo was implicated in these stories she tried not too listen. She worshipped the God, for his beauty above mortals, for his prophecies that guided the race of men, for his justice, and for his gifts of healing. She did not want to think he could be prone to such base actions.
And now here he was, her adored God, the one she had prayed to and talked to in secret, whom she had worshipped so fervently, carrying her as his prize to a dark cave under the sea.
She didn't want to go, didn't want to disappear into that darkness, to leave the comfort of the sun. She forgot, for a moment, that she was literally being carried by the radiance of the Sun itself, and looked up at Helios and his chariot at the last moment, somehow through clenching throat to vocalize her terror and pleading. The Sun ignored her, though feeling a twinge of pity for the stricken girl, another human misery adding to the myriads he had seen on his long journeys across the sky.
It was only a few steps from the cliff to the cave, but it was the defining moment of Creusa's life. Along the rocky carved out steps pretty flowers yellow as the sun were strewn, their fragile blossoms whipped and torn by the uncaring wind.