Before you begin this story, if you haven’t read the first half of this series, click the link here
*
Spring came around again and brought statues. First they started as pearlescent bulbs, monotonous, foreign. Then they began to grow their own identities; the arrows of the twins, the rolling waves of hair from Aphrodite, and the broad shoulders of Ares. The statues never stayed the same, shifting like the seasons, thawing out of their marble winter.
Apollo and Artemis, now stood at the far corners of the courtyard, baring their bows toward the sea in warning, with Aphrodite poised in the center, a threat laced into her lips as she smiled out to the sea, eager to wade in god’s blood again. Ares took her right side, aligning her sentiment, with his sword drawn in readiness. As Aphrodite and Ares’s visage warned onlookers, Meden stood directly behind the baring couple, her hands outstretched to the city of Troy, smiling upon the bruised legion.
A monument for a minor goddess.
At night, when Troy went to sleep, Meden crept through the quiet to the courtyard, circling her visage, winding past the bodies of Pantheon members to take in every cell, every scar, every fragment of marble, as if in an instant this monument for the minor goddess would dissolve. This night, she plucked the petals from flowers her patrons had given her in the day, breathing in the yoke of wild flowers, assured by the bittersweet, that these were real, these were kind offerings from the children who plucked them on their ventures, who stole them from their mother’s open hands, and bolted to the courtyard, to Meden.
A wave rippled over her, knocking the wind out of her lungs. She buckled to her knees, clutching her beaded brow in her hands, panting. She winced at the throng of pulse pressing against her throat, the dizziness spinning through her temples.
She looked at her hands, gleaming in the moonlight with sweat. She braced herself to stand, but her muscles weighed her down, tendons aching as they pulled obediently, churning against bone. Meden wilted, her heavy breath kicking up whirls of soft earth.
“What is happening to me?”
Meden looked at her statue. The carved face smiled. The moon shifted through the clouds, shrouding her face in darkness.
Meden dug her hands in the earth. The filth pinched against her skin, pushing against her beds of flesh. Meden drove the heels of her hands against the earth, gritting her teeth as her arms shuddered, as if she were Atlas, struggling with the world.
She closed her eyes, taking in the air through her mouth and out her nose.The ache in her muscles lessened. She exhaled, the filament of dizziness evaporated, hanging in the peripheral of her mind. Meden braced again to rise, her body electric as she balanced her shoulders above her hands, shifted onto the back, her toes tensed, ready to stand - a shadow intersected her skin.
“Full of yourself, goddess of gaps?”
Poseidon chuckled, grinning down at the goddess.
“I can help with that.”
*
Tucked away in Hades’ office, sat the god, weighing out the dead. He sat slouched in his humble throne, a sella made from an olive tree. To the side were his adored scales, the meter of which he measured the balance of the Underworld, depositing drachma to the opposing sides, tipping eternity to the sinner’s benefit, before saving it from its heaviness. A baker - Elysian. A murderer - Tartarus.
Elysian was outweighing Tartarus when a chill sliced through Hades. He tensed, a drachma in hand, its fate suspended as the god anticipated another churn of senses. Another pang, this time, sharper than the first.
Hades rose from his chair and looked around. He was alone. But there was a haunting in the room. He rose, listening for the source, filing through the whimpers and screams of Tartarus, the whispers of Elysian, tuning into slivers of silence - gaps.
Gaps in the Underworld.
“Meden,” he gasped.
He tore out of his office, bolting down the tunnels, weaving past his underlings, running down the depths of his domain, hearing Meden say over and over, know that you have tried.
*
The trident head reflected Meden’s pale face. Poseidon chuckled, his raspy voice as dark as smoke. Meden bristled as he twisted the trident into the earth, digging deeper and deeper into the earth.
“Do you really think you’ll be remembered, Meden, do you truly believe that your name will carry weight when you are gone?”
Meden met his gaze, the color of sea waging shipwreck, gray and calculating.
“You can’t kill me, Poseidon,” she hissed between her teeth.
Poseidon chuckled. He bowed his head as a thought passed over his face, washing his face devoid of anything outside of pride. He clicked his tongue. He retracted his trident and picked the dirt from the tines.
“Even though you want his - sweet release, you could say ,” he said. His grand chest rose and fell. Meden’s eyes widened. She snarled at the god. “I have better ways of dealing with maidens and rock.”
Bile slicked Meden’s throat. She looked him over with a snarl. He was a large man, Poseidon, adorned in muscle as he was armor. He had broad shoulders and a large jaw and strong hands - the perfect assets to have as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“You make me pity you, Poseidon.”
“You do, eh?”
“Yes. Cursed by your own pride!”
He swung his trident to his side, squaring with Meden. He looked down his nose at her. A horrible smile rose on his face. His eyes shone in the moonlight.
“Cursed?”
Poseidon took a step forward. The earth shook again.
“At least I am not weakened by my own power.”
“What are you talking about?”
Poseidon snorted, he shook his head at her, his lips pulled back into a snarl.
“Fix my mess? You had no grounds for speaking about me, especially with him,” he said. He slammed the but of his trident into the earth. It hummed to life, burning in the night like fire. “You are condemned by your own actions, sweet Meden. No, foolish Meden. By fixing my mess, you have defiled the means of your divinity, and thus -,”
“I am weakening myself,” gaped Meden.
Meden’s stomach twisted. She could feel the ground shift under her feet.
“Am I the Cursed One now?”
Poseidon reached his free hand behind his back and tossed a shovel at her hands. His eyes flashed like a tempest.
“Pick it up,” he spat.
Thunder rolled under Meden’s body, she gripped the shovel, staring at the crack in the earth that was beginning to bleed through.
She looked up at Poseidon, who hadn’t changed at all, his eyes glowing down on her.
“Pick. It. Up.”
Meden forced the shovel to push her up, leaning into the handle, panting at Poseidon.
“You are cleaning up my messes, you say? Allow me to clean up yours.”
*
“Clotho! Lachesis! Atropos!”
The Fates sat close together in their cavern, rocking this way and that in their chairs, bumping an elbow with one another as they toiled over their work. Clotho took a ball of wool - which flashed in the dark like lightning - and twisted it into a string, the life of a human. She passed it onto Lachesis, who noted the length, notching plot points of the man, before Atropos cut with her shears, condemning the soul to its end. This process took not even a minute for mortal lives are multiple in body, but small in the grand scheme of things.
Clotho looked up from her spinning, wide eyed with a hole in her head, smiling a gummy grin.
“You’ve come for consol, lord?”
Hades exhaled, he steadied himself in the threshold, he leaned in to listen again, the quiet was still there growing larger, “Yes, yes, immediately,” he said.
The three crones tilted their heads synchronously. Atropos, not wanting to miss her mark, continued with the last string she had passed.
“Who’s sorry soul do you search for?”
Atropos said this, the shared eye squinting at Hades while the sisters cackled, a cacophony similar to a murder of crows.
“Silence!”
The Fates gaped at Hades.
Hades brushed his hair to the side. He swallowed, silent until his breath relaxed.
“Meden,” he said, looking at the three.
Clotho tilted her head to look at Atropos, Atropos looked her over, she bared her teeth at her sister, horrible canines shined in the darkness.
“Don’t you look at me, you hag,” she hissed at Clotho.
Clotho didn’t falter. Hades imagined an eye digging into Atropos as she squared with her in her seat. Lachesis shifted in between their tension, turning her head from Clotho to Atropos.
“Tell him what you did,” Clotho hissed.
“Did what?”
Hades took a step forward. The Fates turned to him. Atropos bristled, her eyes lashed with pride. She raised her head and looked down at Hades from the peak of her hooked nose.
“I was doing as tasked, my lord, the Pantheon holds more weapons then your empty threats -,”
“You speak too freely,” Hades warned. A chill sifted into the cavern. Clotho pulled her shrouds closer to her body. Lachesis’s teeth clattered, Atropos glared. Hades lowered his chin. He pulled his lips back into a tight snarl, mist peeled through his teeth, and rose to his brow, dampening his skin with the chill. “For someone who borrows an eye.”
“Atropos!”
Atropos shot up from her seat, a horrible escape from her lips as she hissed at the god, her eye shining in hatred she said, “She was a mark on your name, your highness.”
“A mark on my name -”
Atropos stepped forward. Her sisters pressed against each other, huddling for warmth, and to shrink away from the eyes of Hades, who towered over the Fate.
“Want to know the marks?”
Lachesis tensed, “Atropos, you can’t.”
Hades turned his eyes on her. Lachesis froze under his gaze, her hands pressed to her lips. Clotho placed a hand on Lachesis’s shoulder. With a nail, Clotho traced something into Lachesis’s skin. Lachesis nodded and snapped her finger, revealing a brilliant string in her hands. Lachesis exhaled. Clotho addressed Hades, bowing her head to him.
“My lord, we cannot defy the Styx, please ignore my sister, her tongue is sharp and her hunger to cut worsens when she has the eye,” Clotho said gently. “She was going to show your thread to you, everything you have and have not done.”
Hades flexed his hand. He looked at Atropos, who grinned at him still, her breath infested with decay. The pupil of the eye dilated to a sliver. He disregarded her, and addressed the other two.
He looked at the thread, it was the color of copper, winking in the darkness, fading away little by little.
The silence of Hades was still stagnant with a sense of knowing. He flexed his hands. He wished to dig it out of his mind, he wished he could hide it away, have the damned cries of Tartarus eat it away. But the silence was strong, because he knew that it was Meden, and he knew he would not - could not reach her.
Tears welled in his eyes.
Hades bristled. He clenched his teeth. Ice glittered in the dark as ice veined the carved walls.
“Then whose is that?”
Lachesis rose from her chair and padded to Hades, holding it so carefully, draped over her hands. Tears spilled down the god’s face, burning his skin. Lachesis bowed at his feet, stretching out her knobbed hands to him. The thread winked, dulling another degree.
“It is Meden’s,” said Clotho.
Atropos hissed, turning heel and stomping back to her seat.
Hades exhaled.
The silence bled through, down into the cold damp cavern, enveloping him.
He reached out then tensed, he looked to Clotho, who now had the eye. The woman nodded to him, urging him to hold the thread.
“Is she dead?”
Clotho shook her head. A polite smile passed over her face.
“No, my lord, she is hidden,” she said.
Hades fretted, “Hidden?”
Clotho nodded, the eye withholding emotion. She nodded to the thread again.
“Hold the thread and feel the notches, you will understand,” she assured him.
Hades took the thread and tensed as a faint pulse kicked against his palm. Hades clenched his jaw. He closed his eyes. He saw Meden, looking up at him with her golden eyes, smiling at him sweetly, taken from the moment she had first met the god of death.
The ache in his chest singed his sternum.
“Oh, Meden,” he whispered.
With his eyes closed he wandered down the line, and with every notch he came upon he saw more of her life. The day they had met. Her wandering the quiet of pillaged towns. Her showing him her cave, her following him along the beaches, her footsteps pressed into his, their first kiss watching the sun go down, their rendezvous in the dark, her shape in the moonlight, the silence that first winter with Persephone, the way she pulled away when Spring came again there after, the Trojan War, Hades meeting with her, and Poseidon coming upon her at the foot of her statue. How the god offered her a shovel to thwart him, how she had tried, how she never had a chance, and how the earth opened up and consumed her and her likeness in an instant. How Poseidon pushed her like a dagger deeper and deeper until it no longer mattered, the goddess was gone, erased inch by inch of earth from the minds of the Trojans.
Leaving behind gaps, that were weighing him down.