The room was utterly still. I heard nothing but Telegonus’ breaths and the blood in my veins.
“I need no shadows.” The voice sliced the air. “And it is not for such as you to question my purposes.”
She struck the room, tall and straight and sudden-white, a talon of lightning in the midnight sky. Her horse-hair helmet brushed the ceiling. Her mirror armor threw off sparks. The spear in her hand was long and thin, its keen edge limned in firelight. She was burning certainty, and before her all the shuffling and stained dross of the world must shrink away. Zeus’ bright and favorite child, Athena.
“What I desire will come to pass. There is no mitigation.” That voice again, like shearing metal. I had stood in the presence of great gods before: my father and grandfather, Hermes, Apollo. Yet her gaze pierced me as theirs had not. Odysseus had said once she was like a blade honed to a hair’s fineness, so delicate you would not even know you had been cut, while beat by beat your blood was emptying on the floor.
She extended one immaculate hand. “Give me the child.”
All the warmth in the room had fled. Even the fire popping beside me seemed only a painting on the wall.
“No.”
Her eyes were braided silver and stone gray. “You would stand against me?”
The air had thickened. I felt as though I gasped for breath. On her chest shone her famous aigis, leather armor fringed with golden threads. It was said to be made from the skin of a Titan that she had flayed and tanned herself. Her flashing eyes promised: just so will I wear you, if you do not submit and beg for mercy. My tongue withered, and I felt myself trembling. But if there was one thing I knew in all the world, it was that there was no mercy among gods. I twisted my skin between my fingers. The sharp pain steadied me.
“I would,” I said. “Though it hardly seems a fair battle, you against an unarmed nymph.”
“Give him to me willingly, and there need not be a battle. I will make sure it is quick. He will not suffer.”
Do not listen to your enemy, Odysseus had once told me. Look at them. It will tell you everything.
I looked. Armed and armored, she was, from head to foot, helmet, spear, aigis, greaves. A terrifying vision: the goddess of war, ready for battle. But why had she assembled such a panoply against me, who knew nothing of combat? Unless there was something else she feared, something that made her feel somehow stripped and weak.
Instinct carried me forward, the thousand hours I had spent in my father’s halls, and with Odysseus polymetis, man of so many wiles.
“Great goddess, all my life I have heard the stories of your power. So I must wonder. You have wanted my child dead for some time, and yet he lives. How can that be?”
She had begun swelling like a snake, but I pressed on.
“I can only think, then, that you are not permitted. That something prevents you. The Fates, for their purposes, do not allow you to kill him outright.”
At that word, Fates, her eyes flashed. She was a goddess of argument, born from the bright, relentless mind of Zeus. If she was forbidden something, even by the three gray goddesses themselves, she would not simply submit. She would set about parsing the constraint down to its atoms, and try to eke a way through.
“So that is why you have worked as you have. With wasps and falling pots.” I regarded her. “How such low means must have galled your warrior spirit.”
Her hand glowed white on her spear-shaft. “Nothing is changed. The child must die.”
“And so he will, when he is a hundred.”
“Tell me, how long do you think your witcheries will stand against me?”
“As long as they need to.”
“You are too quick.” She took a step towards me. The horse-hair plume hissed against my ceiling. “You have forgotten your place, nymph. I am a daughter of Zeus. Perhaps I cannot strike directly at your son, but the Fates say nothing about what I can do to you.”
She set the words in the room precisely as stones in a mosaic. Even among gods, Athena was known for her wrath. Those who defied her were turned to stones and spiders, driven mad, snatched up by whirlwinds, hounded and cursed to the ends of the world. And if I were gone, then Telegonus…
“Yes,” she said. Her smile was flat and cold. “You begin to understand your situation.”
She lifted her spear from the floor. It did not shine now. It flowed like liquid darkness in her hand. I stepped back against the woven side of the crib, my mind scrambling.
“It is true, you might harm me,” I said. “But I have a father too, and a family. They do not take lightly the careless chastising of our blood. They would be angry. They might even be stirred to action.”
The spear still hovered off the floor, but she did not heft it. “If there is war, Titan, Olympus will win it.”
“If Zeus wanted war, he would have sent his thunderbolt against us long ago. Yet he holds off. What will he think of you destroying his hard-won peace?”
I saw in her eyes the click of counters, stones tallied on this side and that. “Your threats are crude. I had hoped we might discuss this reasonably.”
“There can be no reason as long as you seek to murder my child. You are angry with Odysseus, but he does not even know the boy exists. Killing Telegonus will not punish him.”
“You presume, witch.”
If it were not my son’s life at stake, I might have laughed at what I saw in her eyes. For all her cleverness, she had no skill at concealing her emotions. Why would she? Who would dare harm the great Athena for her thoughts? Odysseus had said she was angry with him, but he did not understand the true nature of gods. She was not angry. Her absence was only that old trick Hermes had spoken of: turn your back on a favorite and drive him to despair. Then return in glory, and revel in the groveling you will get.
“If not to hurt Odysseus, why seek my son’s death?”
“That knowledge is not for you. I have seen what will come and I tell you that this infant cannot live. If he does, you will be sorry for it all the rest of your days. You are tender to the child and I do not blame you for it. But do not let a mother’s doting cloud your sense. Think, daughter of Helios. Is it not wiser to give him to me now, when he is barely set into the world, when his flesh and your affections are still half formed?” Her voice softened. “Imagine how much worse it will be for you in a year, or two, or ten, when your love is full-grown. Better to send him easy to the house of souls now. Better to bear another child and begin to forget with new joys. No mother should have to see her child’s death. And yet, if such must come, if there is no other way, still there may be recompense.”
“Recompense.”
“Of course.” Her face shone bright upon me as the forge’s heart. “You do not think I ask for sacrifice without offering reward? You will have the favor of Pallas Athena. My goodwill, through eternity. I will set a monument for him upon this isle. In time, I will send another good man to you, to father another son. I will bless the birth, protect the child from all ills. He will be a leader among mortals, feared in battle, wise in counsel, honored by all. He will leave heirs behind him and fulfill your every maternal hope. I will ensure it.”
It was the richest prize in all the world, rare as the golden apples of the Hesperides: the sworn friendship of an Olympian. You would have every comfort, every pleasure. You would never fear again.
I looked into that shining gray gaze, her eyes like two hanging jewels, twisting to catch the light. She was smiling, her hand open towards me, as if ready to receive mine. When she had spoken of children, she had nearly crooned, as if to lull her own babe. But Athena had no babe, and she never would. Her only love was reason. And that has never been the same as wisdom.