Selene watched while Theo slept through the flight to Turkey. He slept through the wait at baggage claim. He slept through the long cab ride from Izmir. Either he got no sleep last night, she surmised, or he just doesn’t want to talk to me. Probably both.
She would’ve appreciated a nap herself. Yet the thought of her father lying close to death left her too agitated to rest.
An hour after they left the airport, the taxi’s hum finally lulled her into a light doze. She popped back into wakefulness as they made an especially sharp turn on a hillside. The red roofs of modern Selçuk spread across the valley below her. The blue Aegean gleamed in the distance. Farther inland, she could see a large archaeological site. Broad marble streets, a wealth of crumbled buildings, a massive Roman amphitheater.
“Is that Ephesus?” she asked the cabdriver.
“Yes,” he replied. “You must see. Very beautiful.” He slowed the car and pulled into an overlook.
She considered waking Theo, but decided he needed sleep more than sightseeing. She stepped into the glaring heat and stared down at the ruined city below. A memory pricked at her consciousness, but the town had changed too much over the millennia to evoke anything specific. Yet there was something about the theater especially that looked familiar. She stared at it a moment longer.
“Artemis.”
She spun at the whisper of her old name. But Theo was still asleep, and the cabdriver had eyes only for his cell phone.
“Artemis! Artemis! Artemis!” Not just one voice. Thousands. Their gathered cries both a furious roar and a barely heard murmur. The chant came from within her own mind, yet as she turned back to the view, Selene felt sure it rose from the theater far below, the sound climbing up the mountainside like fog lifted with the sun.
The voices dissipated. She returned to the taxi. When she closed the door, Theo finally awoke.
“Where are we?” he asked groggily.
“Almost there.”
He straightened his glasses and peered at her. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” She was surprised he noticed her distress—even more surprised he seemed to care. Unsure how to deal with it, she leaned forward to speak to the cabbie instead. “Drop us off at the Artemision.” She turned back to Theo. “The Temple of Artemis was the heart of the ancient city. That’s where we should start looking for Athena.”
“I was there a few years back. The temple hasn’t exactly fared well,” Theo said cautiously.
“Are you worried my feelings will be hurt?” Her words came out more disdainfully than she’d intended. “I’m used to looking at ruins.”
Theo only shrugged and turned to stare out the window.
The cabbie let them out on the side of the road. A single, bedraggled souvenir vendor stood at the site’s entrance. They walked down a narrow, weed-covered path into what seemed at first glance to be a swamp.
The great Temple of Ephesian Artemis had been one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. One hundred and twenty-seven columns, each the height of ten men, had supported a building longer than a football field.
Theo was right to warn me, Selene realized, swallowing hard as she stood before the ruin.
Only a single column remained erect. The broken bases of a dozen others poked above the marsh grass in a rough rectangle.
Selene stared. “I don’t even know what I’m looking at.”
“The standing column is from the enormous temple built in the fourth century BC,” Theo said gently. “The earlier building—the one commissioned by our favorite King Croesus—was still huge, but not quite as big. It was burned down by an arsonist the night Alexander the Great was born three hundred miles away across the Aegean. Do you remember that?”
She shook her head. The story didn’t sound familiar.
Theo went on. “There’s a legend that Artemis, Goddess of Childbirth, was off in Macedonia helping Alexander’s mom in her labor that night. Otherwise, she would’ve been here protecting her temple better.”
A groan escaped her lips.
“Selene?” There was more concern in his voice than she deserved.
“I couldn’t protect it. I couldn’t protect anything or anyone.” She gestured helplessly at the ruins. “They abandoned me. I knew that already, but to see it …”
“But look.” He pointed to a large nest perched atop the lone standing column. The head of a baby bird peeked over the edge, cheeping plaintively. From the west, a wide-winged stork soared toward the nest with a strip of fish in its long bill. It landed on the column and bent to feed its chick. Only then did Selene notice all the other birds in the swamp. Large orange-footed geese waddled at the column’s base; black swallows looped through the air; tiny sparrows trilled merrily in the undergrowth.
She closed her eyes for a moment, listening. She heard a snake slithering through mud. A large turtle trundled down the footpath. Cicadas buzzed in counterpoint to the birdsong. The wind whistled among the reeds as merrily as any tune played on Hermes’ pipes.
“Potnia Theron,” Theo said quietly. “Mistress of Beasts. Your oldest epithet. If mankind no longer worships you, at least the animals still do.”
An ungainly bee hummed its way toward her and landed on her bare forearm. It crawled there for a moment, searching for nectar, before lumbering back into the air.
“The bee …” she murmured, grasping at a memory fluttering just out of reach.
“The people here embossed their coins with bees,” Theo offered. “A symbol more apt for Artemis of the Ephesians than Artemis of the Greeks.”
Artemis! Artemis of the Ephesians! The distant chant echoed once more in her mind. And somehow, this time, the thought of the bee brought the memory flooding back.
She placed a hand beneath her ribs and ran it down her stomach. “I had bees here, on my gown,” she said. “And a necklace of pinecones. Here.” She tapped her collarbone. “Deer. Griffins. Bulls. All standing in neat rows down the front of my skirt. Lions standing proud on my bent arms, like those that guarded the Magna Mater’s throne. Three strings of bulls’ testicles hanging pendulous like breasts around my neck.”
Her voice grew wistful as the memory returned. “They were warm, soft, heavy against my chest. My worshipers would cut them from the bulls and throw them on the lap of my statue—just like the Magna Mater’s priests did when they castrated themselves.” She touched the top of her head. Dimly, she knew the sun had turned her black hair hot, yet she felt cool ivory beneath her fingers instead. “I wore a crown carved with more animals,” she continued. “Bordered by flowers and bees, topped by a columned temple stretching heavenward.” She remembered the crown’s weight on her skull not as a physical sensation—she wasn’t even sure she’d ever actually worn such a thing—but like a heavy dream. “The night Alexander the Great was born I couldn’t have left the temple, because I carried it always on my head. That sounds silly, but I know somehow it’s true.”
“You’re describing the statues of Artemis made here in Ephesus,” Theo said, his voice hushed with awe. Whatever anger he still harbored toward her seemed to have dissipated with the return of his customary fascination with the ancient world. “The people of Asia Minor had an original Potnia Theron of their own—a prehistoric Earth Goddess not unlike Cybele, the Magna Mater. Then the Greeks brought Artemis the Huntress, and the two goddesses merged into one. Did you only just remember that?”
She nodded, as confused as he was. In Greece, so Hera had explained, it was Selene’s grandmother, Rhea, who had taken the Great Mother’s worship for herself. Selene had completely forgotten that across the Aegean, Artemis had earned that honor instead. “When Saturn placed me beneath the bull’s blood, I felt the Magna Mater take root within me. But after the Underworld, her spirit left me. I didn’t remember we’d ever been joined before—I usually only remember my Greek incarnation. Occasionally the Roman one. Homer, Ovid, Aeschylus—theirs are the versions of myself I know.”
“You were created by the poets,” he said softly. “I forget that sometimes. If the Ephesians ever wrote hymns to their goddess, they didn’t survive. Even the image of you with your animal-studded gown isn’t well-known anymore outside of Turkey—the Ephesians may have molded you of marble and silver, but their goddess was too mysterious, too bizarre, too eastern, to catch on in the rest of the world. The bulls’ balls especially were a bit much. The Greeks preferred their lithe huntress; the Romans liked their moon goddess.”
“You said the Ephesians molded me of silver,” she said. “I remember rows and rows of silver statues, no more than three inches tall, at the silversmiths’ booths in the marketplace.”
“You saw those?”
She nodded. “When I came to hear a man named Paul preach.”
“You mean Paul the Apostle?” Theo asked, his eyes bright with curiosity. She knew he could barely refrain from whipping out a pen and paper to write down her words.
“Yes.” She understood now why the bearded Jew whom Saturn had spoken of in Ostia had seemed so familiar. She’d seen him in Ephesus, years after that fateful day on the road to Damascus. The man had taken his god’s commandments to heart. He’d spread the good news as far as Artemis’s holy city.
“Saint Paul talks about preaching to the Ephesians in the Bible,” Theo prodded. “You were actually there?”
“I was everywhere,” she said slowly. She started walking away from the swamp and back toward the road, letting the memory of a different walk unfurl as she went. “I traveled up the marble street from the harbor, disguised as a mortal man. A merchant, with grain to sell. It was night, and oil lamps lined the colonnade along the street, gilding the marble. A great crowd streamed ahead of me, and I followed them into the theater. Thousands, tens of thousands, filled the benches. A bearded man stood in the center of the orchestra, his face lit by torches. He looked like a madman, ranting about how I was an instrument of the devil, and Christ alone could save them.”
“You must’ve been pissed.”
“No … I thought it was funny. I had no idea how dangerous it was. I thought of punishing the man, of course—he shouldn’t be allowed to show such disrespect—but I didn’t have to. My people did it for me. A silversmith stood up in the middle of the theater, holding aloft his icon of me with my towering crown, and yelled, ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’ The whole crowd took up the chant. All twenty thousand of them. And then they streamed down the aisles like an avalanche and descended on the preacher. They beat him half to death.”
Theo chuckled uncomfortably. “One of the great moments of Christian persecution and you’re smirking.”
“They didn’t actually kill him,” she retorted defensively. “The Roman soldiers stopped the riot. But they eventually sent the apostle into exile. Meanwhile, my city stayed my city.” She stood by the souvenir stand now, and the grizzled vendor stared at her blankly. To him, she was just another American tourist. “At least for a little longer.”
“The Ephesians never really forgot about you,” Theo said. “When Christianity finally took over, they buried your cult statues; they didn’t destroy them. The one in the museum here in Selçuk is in perfect condition—temple crown, bull balls, and all—except the arms have been broken off at the elbow.” He reached for a figurine on the table, a six-inch copy in white soapstone. “Like this, see?”
The vendor perked up. “Twenty lira, but for you, fifteen.”
“Oh.” Theo reached into his pocket. “I only have dollars.”
“Fifteen dollars, then, no problem.” The man grinned broadly.
Selene thought about telling Theo that three Turkish lira were one dollar—she’d seen the exchange rate posted at the airport—but decided the vendor needed the money. Besides, a statue of Artemis should be worth at least fifteen dollars.
While Theo paid for the figurine, Selene examined the other items on the table. “What’s that?” She pointed to a small clay model of a veiled woman standing in the exact same pose as the Ephesian Artemis statue. Even her arms had been broken at the same place.
The vendor’s eyes brightened as he smelled another sale. “That’s a copy of the statue of the Blessed Virgin.”
“No, it’s not,” Selene retorted. “Artemis never wears a veil.”
“No, no, the Blessed Virgin. Mary, Mother of Jesus.”
Selene stiffened. Could they have been interpreting the prophecy wrong? Theo turned toward her, looking alarmed, and she could hear his silent question. Was Mary the “wise virgin” who could save Zeus?
No, I refuse to believe that, she decided. Mary isn’t even a goddess, just a long-dead mortal woman. Bringing her into my sacred shrine is nothing but an insult.
“Why are you selling Mary’s statue here?” she asked.
“Because this is her home.”
Selene rested her hands on the table and leaned toward the man threateningly. “Is the word Artemision so hard for you to translate?”
The man reached hurriedly for a pamphlet on his table. “Here, see? The House of the Virgin Mary. It’s only twenty minutes away.”
Selene snatched the pamphlet before Theo could. The cover photo showed a small brick chapel surrounded by olive trees. Walking quickly toward the road with Theo beside her, she read aloud: “Ephesus is considered to be the last home of the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of Jesus Christ.”
Theo leaned closer, reading over her shoulder. The pamphlet explained how Mary had supposedly left Jerusalem after Christ’s crucifixion and lived out her days in Asia Minor even before Saint Paul made the journey.
Theo, annoyingly reading faster than she did, pointed to the end of the first page. “The Council of Ephesus, in 431 AD.” He sounded awestruck. “It took place right inside your city.”
“So?”
“That’s when the leaders of the Church officially declared that Mary was the Mother of God, and therefore not just a woman or even a saint—but actually divine herself.” He laughed shortly. “Catholicism has been bending the knee to the Holy Virgin ever since, all because the people of Ephesus so loved their goddess that they decided Christianity wasn’t complete without her.”
“I see,” sneered Selene. “They’re monotheists, but god is three in one and one in three and has a mother who’s basically a goddess. Sounds like a whole damn pantheon to me. They even made their statue of Mary look like their statue of Artemis.”
“You know, if you’d stuck around Turkey after the Diaspora, you might have retained some power.”
Selene rolled her eyes.
“Listen to this part,” Theo went on. “‘The Orthodox villagers, the descendants of the ancient Christians of Ephesus, passed from generation to generation the belief that the Assumption of Mary occurred in this place.’”
“What’s the Assumption?”
“It’s when Mary dies and gets sucked up into heaven in a beam of light to take her place next to God and Jesus.”
The rest of the pamphlet included a long list of scriptural and historical justifications for why the little brick house in the middle of nowhere might actually be the final home of Mary. Selene snorted. “Their obsession with presenting the evidence only proves the Christians know it sounds far-fetched.”
The last paragraph seemed the most absurd of all, describing how a nineteenth-century nun who’d never left Germany received detailed visions of the hills of Ephesus and the house of the Blessed Virgin. When a scientific expedition journeyed to Turkey, they found the brick house, miraculously identical to the one in the German nun’s visions.
“I’d bet my whole damn quiver that this is why Athena’s here in the first place,” Selene grumbled. “She couldn’t stay in her own city of Athens—our father specifically prohibited it when he sent us out of Olympus. So she stole my city instead. She could never be a Mistress of Beasts, so she took Ephesus by setting herself up as the Virgin Mary: a protector of mortals, a holy virgin, an intercessor on behalf of the cities of men—all the things the Gray-Eyed Goddess embodied in the old days.”
“That’s awfully conniving.” Theo looked more impressed than dismayed.
“Styx. She might even have been Mary in the first place. Maybe not the one in Jerusalem who gave birth to Jesus, but the one who showed up on this mountainside in Asia Minor claiming to be Jesus’s mom.”
“You think she’s been here that long?”
“Why not? For all I know, even before the Diaspora, she was sneaking off to set up a nice little retirement plan, just like Saturn. She convinces the local Christians of her ‘assumption’ and enjoys their reverence for a while. Holy Roman Emperor Theodosius prohibits worship of the Olympians in the 390s—that’s when we all left Greece and Rome to wander the world as mortals.
“But it only takes my sister another forty years to get herself deified—again—at this Council of Ephesus. She’s sitting pretty for another thousand years, at least, hanging out as the local saint. Then finally, when the rest of us are really starting to lose our powers, she sends a vision to that nun in Germany, or poses as the nun herself, or maybe just shows up in a bedsheet in the middle of the night at the foot of her cot and pretends to be an angel. Then wham, just like that, her little house in Turkey becomes a site of international pilgrimage.”
She stepped into the road and hailed a passing taxi. When the driver pulled over, she slapped the pamphlet against his window.
“Take us here. Now.”