EPISODE 14

IN WHICH HERMES MEETS THE CYCLOPES

Previously: Thanks to Pausania, Hermes has gone back into the past in order to understand the origin of volcanoes. He has discovered that hundred-handed Giants were confined underground.

In this world at the beginning of time, Hermes went from one discovery to the next. Hermes had been journeying for a long while when he came near a black mountain. A cave had been dug into the mountainside, similar to the one in which Hermes had seen the light of day. Red and orange flashes of light escaped from this cave, followed by showers of sparks. Hermes approached quietly. The more he approached, the more he could hear muted and regular noises. Pang! Pang! After each noise a shock ran through the mountain. The little god felt very uneasy, yet his curiosity was greater than his fear. At long last he reached the entrance of the cave. Now that he was fairly near, Hermes could also feel waves of burning heat coming forth. He looked inside and what he saw made the hair on his head stand on end.

Three powerful Giants, their bodies half-naked, were bustling about before a gigantic forge. The first was blowing onto a great fire. The second held pieces of metal in the flames with great pliers. The third, armed with an immense hammer, was striking at the metal, which became malleable once it had been heated. His blows were so violent that the mountain quaked. Each time his hammer struck the metal, great showers of sparks spouted forth. The three Giants were sweating.

“Blow harder, Brontes!” cried one of them in a deep voice.

“Clench your pliers more tightly, Arges!” shouted the other.

“Strike harder, Steropes!” yelled the third in the midst of the racket surrounding them. The fire glow lit up the cave walls. Little by little, the fiery metal took the shape of a shield.

It was at this point that one of the Giants lifted his head in order to mop away the sweat running down his face. And Hermes discovered to his horror that he had but a single eye in the middle of his face—an enormous and monstrous eye which seemed sharp enough to see things very, very far away. “These are the Cyclopes, also the sons of Gaia and Uranus,” murmured Pausania.

Suddenly there was silence. Steropes had paused his work. With one gesture of his hand, he had signalled to his brothers to stop working as well. The Cyclops began to sniff at everything, probing everything with his gaze, every nook and cranny of the cave. “I sense a strange smell,” he rumbled, “a smell I do not recognize. Someone has come in here.” Hermes was trying to make himself really small so that he might avoid detection. The Cyclops went towards the cave entrance where Hermes was hiding. His solitary eye swept across the tiniest crack in the rocks. Nothing could escape his gaze. Hermes was caught in a corner. When he discovered Hermes, the Cyclops let out a roar and pounced on him.

“What are you doing here?” he cried, seizing him between two fingers. “I shall roast you in our furnace for having dared to come here and disturb our work!”

Hermes shut his eyes for an instant. Then he mustered all his courage and, choosing his words with the utmost care, he gave the following reply:

“Dear and venerable Cyclops, I have come to admire your prodigious work. I have come so that I may tell everyone of the wonders that you create. I have come so that I may sing your praises everywhere in the universe.” These flatteries, however, seemed to have no effect on the Cyclops, who was holding Hermes precariously suspended over the fire, ready to drop him at any moment right in the middle of the flames.

At that instant a thick fog invaded the cave, enshrouding everything in a grey veil. Taken aback and feeling anxious, the Cyclopes began to whimper like babies. For once deprived of their sight, they become fragile and defenceless. Steropes had set Hermes down on the ground once more, and he was desperately rubbing his eye so he could see something, anything. Suddenly a formidable force lifted the Cyclopes up in the air. They let out a great scream. The earth split open, and they were hurled to the bottom of a hole, together with the fire of their forge. Steropes, Brontes and Arges had just gone to join their brothers, the hundred-handed Giants, in the Tartarus.

Uranus, for it was he once more, had stopped his three other sons from causing damage on earth. Satisfied, the god of the Sky left the Cyclopes’ cave. The fog melted away.

Hermes approached the chasm. There was but a narrow crack left. Hermes now understood that the red lava coming out of the volcanoes came from there. And that this lava arose from the fury of the Giants and the Cyclopes, who were shut up below the earth. He had had the answer to his question; he could now leave the past and return home.

 

To be continued…