5. Incandescence
"Looking for something, Milady?" Zeus asked as their eyes met. "Or mayhap someone?" His voice was profound and harmonious, like tanged with distant thunder. Gentle and coloured by curiosity – but also something bittersweet, as if the victory he had just won, had reminded him of earlier, doubtlessly excruciating losses. The next moment he stood gracefully from his place and took the few steps over to her, his body language like a dance to an unheard rhythm. The dark cloak he was wearing was shifting strangely between purple and blue as he moved, the white tunic beneath oddly bright in the firelight, beads on straps gleaning faintly. Still these things weren't what mainly caught Hera's attention.
It was the pair of most amazing, captivating eyes she had ever beheld, blue like incandescent sapphires regarding her enquiringly. Intelligent, analytical and wise they were, the kind of eyes that have seen the whole world with all its beauty and horror, processed it and gathered it within this man to mold his self with.
His strikingly chiseled facial features were framed by unruly platinum blond curls that fell down over broad shoulders and an impressive chest. To say he took her breath away was an understatement, lost for words, Hera stopped in her tracks. Around her the nocturnal world faded. Her comrades, the people gathered by the bonfire, the talks and the music, the smell of food and the pale, silvery moon light – everything became of less significance.
"Well?" Zeus tilted his head, smiling politely as curiosity manifested itself across his visage. Curiosity combined with some other kind of awareness. She had affected him too, Hera understood. Strengthened by his benign interest she decided to grasp the nettle and go for it.
"I was looking for you, Sir," she answered, truthfully now, as she placed her hands on her hips, wetting her lips ever so slightly. With a corner of her mind she noted that Zeus had caused some kind of impact on Leto as well, however Astraios was silently waiting his turn, reluctantly resting in his inquisitiveness. "Zeus is it, right?"
"Yes it is," the tall and handsome man replied. "Zeus, of the house of Olympos of Derasone, however I doubt any of those names say anything to you. Not anymore. And you should be?"
"Hera," she replied. "Hera of – well, this place. Aragirian. Those with me are Astraios and Leto." Zeus and her comrades exchanged polite acknowledgements before Hera went on. "I imagine you're a bit over all this now, people coming to press your hands and thanking you for getting rid of the bastard Cronos. So I'm going to pass on that and get right down to business. Why did you defeat the Time Lord?"
"Because I could," Zeus' voice was resounding deeply and solemnly. As he took just the slightest step closer to her, Hera became aware of his body heat and his fragrances. There was the food and wine he had digested, but beneath she sensed a masculine, challenging scent and a faint residual trace of burnt magic, the distinct singed, ginger smell.
Hera felt her throat run dry, and something liquid and cold falling down in her belly, never had anyone affected her like this man, especially not after such a brief moment.
"Yes, we all saw that. It was impressive with that iridescent what-now-it-was."
"Condensed energy."
"Say what?" his mere presence was distracting her, she found that he had captivated her eyes with his blue orbs, the odd magenta sheen from the flames casting undulating shadows across his handsome face. 'Get a grip, Hera', she scolded herself, fighting an undercurrent of primal, very female emotions which definitely had no place here and now.
"Condensed energy," Zeus repeated himself. "Or to be more precise, all the energy I fired off at Cronos augmented and enriched, concentrated into one single point in time like sunshine focused through a lens. It became too much even for him."
"And you knew that beforehand?" she had to ask.
"Milady Hera, Cronos' main strength was his ability to manipulate time. Something he kept on doing until we were all risking to lose this war, simply because we forgot why we fought it. We even disremembered who we were. This power over time was his main weapon, a powerful weapon. Fearsome and irregular did it rip the currents apart and tore the boundaries between now and then, destroying our past, discarding the tomorrows that could have been. He used this armament constantly – which paradoxically made him predictable. So I decided to turn his own aptitude against him. Every ray of energy I launched at him was programmed with a single aim – to overrun Cronos' time manipulative force and manifest itself into the time span I chose. That being about half an hour from when I began to attack him."
"So when Cronos sent away everything you fired at him – it ended up in that place?" Hera asked, tracing her index finger in the air to underline her words. "I mean, in that time?"
"Yes, it all became re-manifested half an hour after the start of our fight. Half an hour of launched off energy, that's quite a bit, wouldn't you say so, Lady Hera?"
"I guess so," she could barely nod her head in agreement. She was impressed, there was no denying that. "Smart move, Zeus."
"Thank you, Milady," he bowed slightly, and she spotted a gleaning charm on a golden necklace which escaped his jewel-necked tunic as he righted himself up again. That charm, there was something familiar, but she couldn't remember where she had earlier seen it.
"Zeus," she hesitated, collecting her thoughts and her wits, trying to sound professional. "I actually wish to know your next step. By defeating Cronos, you have very much conquered this whole realm, which for so long has been under his boot. Therefore we wish to know what you have planned further on. What kind of conqueror are you, Zeus of Olympos?"
Hera hadn't thought of what response to expect from Zeus. Actually she had thought very little ahead, to not lock herself into prejudices. However she had never expected the comeback she now got. Zeus was essentially laughing at her comment.
"I've come to take back what's mine."
"And that should be?" she faced him in confusion and he smiled even wider.
"My home."
"Where is that?" spontaneously she craned her neck, looking in some random direction, as if she was expecting to behold a glittering city suddenly revealing itself like fata morgana on the horizon, trouncing the nightly shades. Then Zeus caught her attention again.
"It's right here," he replied. The next moment, just like the arrival of a summer thunderstorm, his mood changed from gleeful to sad, almost angered. "Or should have been. Or make that was. The city-state of Derasone was located right here right now. Right here twelve millions of people lived – before Cronos went back in time and destroyed it. Destroyed it and with it my family, my friends, all I held dear. My very purpose in life. All gone, save for my darling sister, Hestia, who got away, because she and I were in another place and time when the disaster struck."
"He killed your parents?" Suddenly Hera understood Zeus' motif all too well. Revenge. That harsh and lethal emotion, that toxic flame which had ended so many lives, including quite often the avengers' very own.
"Not exactly," Zeus sighed and took his eyes from her for the first time since they had met, lost himself in painful remembrance. "He prevented them from being born. By preventing their parents and grandparents and so many generations back in time from happening. The whole amazing kingdom of Derasone – my birthright. Gone like this!" With furrowed brows he snapped his fingers to underline his words. Suddenly the strangest emotion came over Hera. She wanted to reach out and hold him. To comfort him. Him – the most powerful and formidable man she had ever encountered, and on top of that - a complete stranger! A man not even from this time-world.
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"May I help you, stranger," the bent, elderly man said in English, which sounded like he had learned it by watching Kung Fu movies.
"I want a room for a few nights," Hannah replied as she righted up her roller suitcase on the gray marble floor, looking around a lobby which was anonymously stylish in gray, white and rust-red. "Nothing fancy, it just has to be clean and reasonably heated."
"Then you're lucky, we got one single room left. All the rest are occupied. That's 26 Euros a night. Including the breakfast buffet."
Surprised, Hannah raised a brow at that, yet saying nothing. She had expected this month too off-season and that she would probably be the only guest, perhaps bar one in the small hotel. She didn't comment it though; she just agreed and produced her credit card.
"Then I wonder if it's possible to hike the Mount Olympos," she continued.
"Another one?" the old man shook his head slightly. "Now, you don't look like the rest, don't have that crazed look, but who am I to tell? Whatever happened to our good Lord and gentle Maria?!"
The hotel owner returned her credit card, before he bent down with a protesting Greek word as his back obviously hurt. Returning up in standing position again, he handed a map over to her.
"See, Spiros made those. My nephew that is, he always seems to know how to make the money out of anything. Clone that lad some hundred times and there would be no crisis in this land, I tell you! This'll be 2 Euros for the map but since you're staying here, it's a discount on fifty cent. All the trekking paths are dotted out on this one, and they are also marked out when you get there. You can see where they start at least."
"You seem very well prepared," Hannah pointed out as she paid for the map.
"Yes, it's not every day this backwater gets a tourist boom so we decided to make hay while the sun shines."
"All those people – why do they come here?"
"Why, looking for the gods of course. Crazy people from all over the world. Even the Chinese mind you! They come here to climb the Olympos, looking for ole Zeus and his gang. Don't know what has gotten into people. I've never seen anything like it. For so long nobody asked for these characters, save for the odd classic student, and they were content with dusty books mind you. And then BAM – some five months ago. People started coming here in busloads, looking for them old gods. Came with caravans and tents and whatever and rented all the rooms available in the vicinity. I'm Kostas by the way," he held out a weathered and freckled hand, and Hannah took it, noticed the unexpected steeliness of the grip.
"Around Christmas it was worst. However these nutcases called it Solstice, lit up a huge bonfire, they actually expected Zeus to show himself. The old priest, father Jeremiah, he almost had a heart attack. And they partied and drank and made all kind of noise. Perhaps it was really Dionysos they were waiting for, what do I know?"
Hannah chuckled; she had recently learned who Dionysos was.
"But nothing happened," Kostas went on. "No Zeus no Dionysos, no nobody. Whereupon the lot of them went home. But recently they have started to seep back. Not flooding like earlier, but I should guess there are some 200 here around, looking for the gods. Now, before I insult you, are you one of them as well?"
"Not exactly," Hannah breathed in. "I'm here to look for some family members."
It was true after all...
"Oh, I understand," Kostas nodded his head with a grin. "Then I can assure you there have been no accidents, so your beloved ones should be safe, even though a bit obsessed with this Olympos thing. For some reason these people seem to have something – protecting them. If that really should be those old gods, now that's more than I can tell, but I bet you'll soon find yours. Perhaps I can even help you; perhaps they are even staying here. Where are you from?"
"Sweden."
"Unfortunately no Swedes here at this hotel," Kostas shook his white-maned head. "There's the Greek bunch of course, Athenians mostly. Then a few Germans and French, a Russian couple, a Chinese ditto, two American journalists and a sole Estonian man about my own age. Professor in literature, those who might hold an academic interest in the gods, however for him it appears to be religion as well."
Kostas had orated bit more before finally relieving Hannah to take her map and her luggage and pull it out across a cobblestoned backyard with some rickety blue garden furniture, a dry fountain and two old olive trees. Her room was on the other side, no 23. It was small, worn and Spartan – but immaculately clean. The white walls appeared to have been newly painted and the red curtains and bed cover looked new too. The room even had Wi-Fi according to a sign on the wall next to one asking her to not throw paper in the toilet. However right now, Hannah was neither interested in the Internet nor in the hygiene facilities, all she wanted to do was taking a rest after her lengthy trip. Kicking off her shoes, she fell down on the bed, which creaked alarmingly beneath her. Uh-oh, better be careful with that, earlier guests seemed to not have.
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"The thing is," Zeus said and swirled the wine in his cup, "I was married to Metis. However she cannot even remember that."
"What did she say when you told her?" Hera asked as she held on to his strong hand. It was all so strange. They had sat like this for hours while the merriments had died around them as people had sought solitude to find sleep. She had started with questioning the honesty in his motives, and ended up having the conversation of her life. With this powerful, handsome, awe-inspiring – and so incredibly lonely man.
"She just told me to forget it. In this new time-world she is married to a man named Tritonis. The predicted daughter we should have had – she's not going to happen."
By those words, Zeus rubbed the amulet again and seeing the question in her eyes she let go and showed it to her.
"My family crest. Aegis of Olympos. If you ever were in Derasone, you would probably have seen it. We used to be quite influential. Now I have no Athena to give it to."
"Athena?" Questioning she took the amulet, regarding the crossed thunderbolts. They were familiar; she could have sworn she'd seen this before.
"That was the name I had wanted to give to our daughter. If not everything had changed before it became possible."
"So he took your child as well, Zeus? Before she was even born?"
"Before she was even conceived. Gives you a headache, doesn't it?" Zeus rubbed his forehead with one large hand. "Cronos has done this to so many of us. Twisting our minds and our memories, eradicating the past so many times it's a wonder we haven't all gone crazy, when the things we believe we remember have never been. Now look at us," he let go of her hand to indicate the calm night around them, where just embers remained of the earlier so merry bonfires, "all lost and forlorn. It'll take ages to rebuild what we had. The question even is what we should rebuild. Your memories are clearly not mine, Hera. And I cannot take back the city I lost, the people who died. My mother, Rhea the brave. One of the Three Goddesses of Derasone. She never existed. I have become a man without parents. Not orphan but deprived of origin. An anomaly who perhaps should not be alive."
"Yes, you should!" Hera reached out to take his hand again, feeling salty tears sting her eyes, sticking for a moment to her lashes and distorting her sight before rivuleting down her cheeks. "Yes, you should, Zeus. Or we would never be here and now you and I. And I believe... Athena..."
"No, please, don't cry, Hera. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lamented like this. I shouldn't have given you my fathomless despair. You didn't need to hear..."
"Zeus!" she put her hand to his lips. "It's all right. Or better yet – it's going to be. No one is going to tamper with time anymore, and we'll all get the chance to heal. Then Athena will come to be. One way or another. I know that, dear!"
Hearing her, he sighed deeply and took her other hand holding them hard.
"I've lost Metis. In this time-world I've never even had her. I cannot ask her to return to me because according to her we have never been together."
"Don't despair, Zeus! The sun will rise soon," she nodded her head towards the eastern horizon, where the sky was slightly brighter and where the largest of the three moons was rapidly making its way towards its highest point in the sky, showering the world in its white gold light. "Look, a new day will begin. Now, all those people around here will be needing someone to guide them, to take control, to make things happen, since there's no real enemy to fight, save for some lost, leaderless Titans. I can only speak for the group I lead, they will follow me. Your people, Zeus, they will ask for you to be strong. Just like the incandescence on the horizon, a new day is breaking. And you will have to be the sun."
For the first time in hours she actually saw a smile play upon his full lips.
"I've never been much of a sun god," he answered her. "But if we can do this together you and I, Hera, then I'm certain we can perform miracles."
"That sounds like a plan! People are starving for miracles these days."
¤0¤0¤0¤0¤*
There they were, all those people starving for miracles. Dreaming of Greek gods. Kostas had been right; it was a jamboree of caravans and tents, however unexpectedly disciplined. Hannah remembered the Facebook site, she had probably chatted with a quite few of those gathering here. Crazy people, had been her first thought before she had scolded herself. Look who's talking! She, who was so convinced of being the goddess Hera that she had come all this way from Sweden to look for a dream beloved and a blue crystal. She if any should be in a straightjacket.
Instead she was right here by the foothills of Olympos in Greece, striding past all those gathered people without stopping, dressed in a wind jacket and with hiking boots on, water bottle and energy bars in a backpack together with cellphone, GPS, a first aid kit and some other more or less necessary items. A few people called out to her when she passed, telling her this and that about the Greek Gods, wanted to sell her stuff or just having her stopping for a chat. But she just smiled at them and waved, pretending to not understand.
Soon she had left the motley gathering behind, ascending a dirt road where she even met cars, some of them honking their horns, but she didn't bother with them either. She just kept on walking, enjoying the early spring landscape, filling her lungs with fresh, forest-smelling air, rich with oxygen. Yesterday's drizzle had been replaced by sunshine from a clear blue sky, almost warming her back. For some reason the skydome appeared to be even larger, higher up than it should be, and with a deeper shade of blue.
Olympos lay ahead of her like a challenge of beauty and mystery. Blue-gray, snow-clad and cone-shaped, like a Fuji without crater opening, immaculate white hills of snow contrasting to the blue sky beyond. The mists which had shrouded the peaks yesterday were gone as if the mountain had lifted its veils to better behold her. It felt almost as if it was awaiting her, holding its breath for what was to come, knowing things were bound to change.
As she kept ascending her steep, meandering path Hannah was going over and over again this latest dream. The talks with Zeus which had begun during her afternoon nap yesterday and continued in the night after a solitary meal in a restaurant down the road, the little place which Kostas had recommended.
Not a meal to remember, however she had been hungry enough to not be overly picky. What had left an impression though had been the handsome young man sitting with a cell phone a few tables away. When Hannah was halfway through her meal had he called somebody and talked silently in some to her unknown language. It felt as if he had been eyeing her more than once during the talk. And wasn't his features somewhat conversant, hitting a string of remembrance in the back of her mind?
No, imagination. These dream sequences were getting to her and more often than not did Hannah wonder what she was really up to. Upon embarking the plane to Greece had she almost turned around to go back home. At the same time she knew that if she did, if she let 'common sense' rule, she would never learn what all this was really about. She had to go the whole way. She had to know the truth. Or at least, she was willing to give it a week. Her return ticket to Stockholm was next Friday, and if she hadn't learned anything of value then, she had promised herself that she would go home and forget all about it.
She passed a small place named Prionia where a few more "Greek Gods Tourists" were climbing out of a bright red Nissan van. Italians this time, sounding everything from overexcited to annoyed. Then again Italians always sounded everything from overexcited to annoyed, so she passed them by without further notice.
At the next turn of the serpent road, she found a small impromptu altar upon a boulder. Created by hands more pious than resourceful. There were prayers written on sheets of paper and weighed down with stones, some coins and candles which had gone out, some faded cut flowers and photocopied pictures of a few of the gods.
Then there was...
Reaching down she plucked up the circular pedant laying her eyes upon a heart wrenchingly familiar symbol. Two crossed thunderbolts encircled by a wreath of laurel. Although the altar lay in the shadow of the high, thick spruces, the small golden thing seemed to reflect sunshine and it felt oddly warm against her fingers. As if someone had just taken it off. Thousands of emotions flooded through her as she held on to the charm, and she swallowed against tears.
My family crest. Aegis of Olympos. Zeus' voice echoed through Hannah's mind and she clasped her hand around the pedant, refusing to let it go, although she had no right to take it. It had been given to these gods, whose worship people had suddenly revived.
It had been his – hadn't it? Or at least it looked like it.
Opening her hand again, she scrutinized the charm once more. Yes, it looked exactly like the one in her dream, the one Zeus had worn. The one Zeus always had worn. So many times had she toyed with it between her fingers, so many nights had she fallen asleep in his arms and woken up with it imprinted upon her cheek.
And now it was here – why?
"Hera?"
That voice? An echo from her dreams. Could it be something more than imagination this time?
Slowly, bracing herself for disappointment, she turned around.
"Zeus? Zeus!"
It was really him! Standing there resting against a pine trunk, dressed like a modern day man in black jeans and a worn leather jacket, however it was doubtlessly him. That oblique smile as he formed a heart with his hands. She would've recognized him anywhere. Everywhere.
"Zeus!" he was there, he was real, he was taking a few long leaps, reaching out – and then she was in his arms, repeating his name over and over again. Holding her, he almost squeezed the air out of her lungs.
"Hera," he whispered, his voice the trademark blend of solemn and playful which she remembered so clearly now. "Hera, Hera – why did you have to do that? Disappearing?"
"I don't know," she whispered into his chest, surrounded by his warmth. "All I know is that I want to be with you now and forever."