IT WAS A MEMORY, really, though it took the form of dream.
It was my sixteenth year. I had left the straight path and wandered far into the depths of a dark wood on the slope of Mount Parnassos. I held a wooden pike in my hands—a spear I’d made from a beech sapling when I was a child. Argos was with me. We had drifted away from the rest of the hunting party—a loose band of uncles and cousins who seemed more interested in making noise than actually hunting. For my part, I was determined to come home with a kill, so when Argos found a trail that led away from the others, I left them and followed him instead. He had a good nose, that dog, a deep longing for the kill, and all the best qualities of a Molossian tracker. He never barked when he caught a scent, so I guess that’s why my uncles didn’t notice when I loped off in the other direction.
I followed Argos pretty far into the woods that day. Followed him through streams and through scrub and down gullies and winding game paths, over fallen trees and running water and into a thick tangle of brushwood where a wild boar had made its lair. And I knew I was in trouble the moment I saw it. This was a grand and ancient beast. It had dark, fiery eyes and a neck so thick with bristle and brawn, it might have lifted a cart with its tusks. Grand and ancient, but not noble. I’ve killed animals for food and sport, and for some of them, I mourned a little when I watched them fall. But not this thing. It came charging out of the brush with nothing in its face but rage and brute hatred. Its two yellow tusks, sharp as iron daggers, swung left and right as it ran. Argos leapt out of the way, but I wasn’t so lucky. I had just enough time to lift my spear before the tusk tore into me, ripping a hole in my thigh just above the knee. I cried out, and Argos answered with a howl. The boar spun around to face him, and when it did, I thrust down with the spear. Caught the beast just behind the right shoulder. The point passed straight through and out the other side so that the boar fell mutely in the dust. The life just spilled out of it.
And when my cousins found me, drawn by the frantic howls of my dear Argos, they found the three of us—man, beast, and dog—huddled together in the clearing, a pool of bright blood spreading out in a circle around us. My blood and the blood of the boar mixed together in the dirt.
I nearly died that day. The wound was deep. The hike home took what little strength I had left. But somehow I pulled through, and my grandfather had the tusks of that mighty beast set into a helmet of silver and gold. He commissioned a bard to put the story into song, and soon, there was no one in Achaea who had not heard the tale of Odysseus and the Parnassian boar.
I woke with a start, ripped from my dreams by another childhood memory—a certain nursery tale my mother had told me about a shape-shifting magician named Proteus.
“No!” I shouted, but the word came out in a garbled groan. I was awake, but only in spirit. My whole body felt like it was pinned under a great weight. I struggled to open my eyes.
“Calm down, Odysseus.” Diomedes’ voice seemed to float to me from across a great void. “Helen said the magic might make you sleepy, but we’ve got everything under control.”
I lifted one arm, heavy as a sack of sand, and cast it in the direction of my sword. Nothing.
“Relax, old horse. We’ve got a plan.”
I rolled onto my side, and the weight seemed to lift a little. I pried one eye open and looked up the beach. Helen stood before the iron gates—wearing Diomedes’ armor and carrying my sword and bow.
“Wha—” was all I could manage.
“I said, don’t worry,” Diomedes said, rolling me onto my back. “Helen’s got a plan. We’ll be through those gates before you know it.”
Just then, a voice erupted from behind the iron wall, a piercing scream that rattled the thoughts in my head. The voice dropped off, and a second took up the cry, then a third, high and sour—a shrill, screeching singsong. Then all three took up the chant, grating one against the other in bitter dissonance. I heard Diomedes rise to his feet.
Then there was a cracking thud as of a bolt in an ancient lock, and I rolled back onto my side in time to see the gates grind open.
With aching slowness, they swung apart, releasing a great miasma of fire and steam. And there, in the glowing aperture amid swirls of smoke and ash, stood the Erinyes. Such horrors are better left undescribed, for even the memory of those hideous creatures unsettles my stomach. They hissed and screeched and flailed their withered arms. Through the blur of my half-closed eyes I watched them stagger forward, oozing blood from their eyes, snakes writhing in their hair.
It was shock enough to pull me out of my lethargy. I knew these women from the stories of my youth. These were the triplet goddesses of vengeance, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera, whose special privilege it was to punish oath breakers and murderers.
They were no farther than fifty paces off when they stopped, lifted their hands, and chanted in unison.
Come, Medusa. Hear our cry.
Change these men to stone!
No one leaves the depths of Hell
But Theseus alone!
Facing them, and looking somewhat like Athena herself in Diomedes’ shining helm, Helen stood, armed for battle. For a moment, I thought perhaps my fears were misplaced, but then she bowed and placed our swords on the ground before her.
“What is she doing?” whispered Diomedes nervously. “Why would she do that?”
“She wouldn’t,” I groaned, working my tongue loose in my mouth. “She wouldn’t do any of this. She wouldn’t have fought the Siren. She wouldn’t have stabbed Cerberos. And she certainly wouldn’t have forgotten my scar. Diomedes,” I said, “we’ve been duped.”
I looked on as “Helen” unbuckled her armor, stepped back from the weapons, and stretched out her arms. The air filled with an odd, pungent smell—the same fishy odor that Diomedes and I had noticed back at the hurricane and again near Cerberos. She turned her head left and right as though working a kink in her neck. There was a sound like the snapping of bones. Then she stomped her feet and shook out her hair. And with every move, the contours of her body seemed to dissolve a little—lose their shape and flutter, as though I were viewing her through a curtain of silk—as though the frame beneath her flesh had lost its substance. Her body seemed to melt into itself over and over until all that was left was a lump of flesh. Then it shook and bubbled up and twisted and pushed and molded itself into the form of a serpent, then a seal, then a lion, an ox, an ape, and finally, an old, old man with long sea-blue hair. A tattered green cloak hung from his shoulders.
Diomedes gasped and sank to his knees.
“Proteus,” I said. “The Old Man of the Sea.” The fortune-teller, the shape-shifting wizard of Egypt. We should have figured it out sooner. There was only one man in all the world more famous for disguises than he.
He spoke. “Kaire, sisters! Alecto. Megaera. Tisiphone. I come bearing gifts.” He lifted my golden bow over his head with both hands in a gesture of magnanimity. “I, Proteus, Son of Oceanus, aged one of the watery waste.”
“Kaire, Proteus!” they screeched together. “Kaire, shapeshifter! And well met!”
“You will forgive me for bringing these fugitives, ladies.” He looked back at us and sneered. “I found them wandering through the land of the lustful and thought I’d follow them out. The weather never did agree with me there.”
“Clever. Wicked. Wicked and clever,” they answered. “But you’ll have to bring your case before our judge, our queen.”
“I understand, great daughters of night. I plan to offer her these living souls, and also this golden bow.”
I was awake now for sure, and as I stumbled to my feet, I cast about in my mind for some strategy—some plan of attack that would enable us to kill Proteus, retrieve our weapons, face down the Medusa without actually facing her, and fight through the Furies. Then the ground began to tremble, and a sound like the grating of stone on stone echoed from behind the gate. I looked again at Diomedes. He had a face like a snared bird.
“This is my fault,” he kept saying, over and over. “This is my fault.”
It was up to me to come up with one of my famous strategies. I closed my eyes and racked my befuddled brain as the sound grew louder and closer. An idea. Something. Surely the Parthenos would not bring us this far only to let us perish at the hands of a Gorgon. There must be a way out, I thought, some hidden weakness. I turned back to Diomedes, and shouted the first word that came to mind: “Run!”
Together we launched into the black river—he sprinting like a man on fire, I stumbling like a three-day drunk. Even now, the Styx had several feet of inky water running its course, and by the time I caught up to Diomedes, we were up to our waists in it. But Diomedes was no longer running at all. Instead, he was standing stock-still, a look of rapt fear fixed on the horizon. Looking up, I saw it: a shadowy figure making its way toward us through the air.
A pair of wings, black against the distant mist, shuddered and flapped like cheerless flags. We stood together side by side and stared. At our back, the towering Medusa screamed; but before us, some unspeakable demon was winging its way ever closer. “Now what?” cried Diomedes. With every moment of hesitation, the terror before us and the terror behind closed in.
“If Theseus could do it, so can we!” I shouted, and charged back toward the shore. At last, I knew what I had to do. Always choose the enemy you know, I thought, and swinging my fists over my head, I plowed up the beach and out of the oily surf. My only plan was to die fighting.