“To Heracles. What did he say when you told him it was you he was after?”

  Some part of me seizes up, and I fold my arms at this impetuous cloud. “Why would I talk to him? A mortal couldn’t understand what a god goes through.”

  “You were afraid you’d be misunderstood?” There is the faintest hint of slyness in her voice. Any more than that, and I’d show her what a real storm is like. “You send omens to mortals all the time. No god sends a clearer message than the queen.”

  She inhales deeply, and I grab hold of her, to cease the gale before it blows. The men below have fought fate enough for now.

  I ask her, “Why are you messing with him?”

  “I have no fight with Heracles,” she says, and then waits too long to follow up. “The other one is a personal project of mine.”

  Her entire endeavor as a storm has slowed Heracles in chasing the man. I thought Heracles might kill him, but already my dipshit husband’s son is building a fire for them both. He’s making a cozy spot in the miserable wilderness, witless that a god may dump a maelstrom on them in a moment. How dare he be cute in a time like this?

  “You don’t recognize him?” Artemis says, like she’s skeptical and I’m feigning confusion. “That was the darkest thing that ever happened on this mountain. But it was just a blink of the eye in your schedule? I am glad I’m not the queen.”

  “I remember coming here. It’s how I met my personal fury.”

  “Yes. You stole her from me,” she says, and I can hear her sucking on her teeth that don’t exist. “There was a time when I fed a great boar until it was the largest that any mortal had seen. People mistook him charging for Poseidon rising out of the seas and shaking the earth. He was one of my favorite critters. He could eat half an armored legion if they trifled with him.”

  It doesn’t take much to give away how that story ended. Watching the man swaddled in the enormous boar skin, wearing an enormous boar-skin helmet, I say, “What made you let your boar die?”

  “I didn’t mean to. But there was one hunter who was too damned clever. He used his wife and kid as bait, then pounced on the starving boar when it came to eat them.” She growls like she might flatten the mountain in the next moment, just to wipe away the memory. “You were pissed at him, too, for doing that to his family. Didn’t say a word against me when I demanded the fury go avenge my boar. She whined and kicked for me to not make her do it.”

  I don’t remember any of this. Granny struck madness into a man who sacrificed his family for glory? And I was here, losing my mind at what the hunter did to his family? Too much has happened since. History is a fog I can’t clear.

  Sounding defensive, Artemis says, “You were there the whole time, you know? I thought you were going to intervene and fight me. I sweated blood at the thought of it.”

  “I wouldn’t harm you.”

  Not today, I wouldn’t. But depending on how much weighed on me at the time . . . ?

  Artemis says, “Instead you waited until the work was over, and the family was avenged, and the man wasn’t himself anymore. Until he was babbling and broken, and sure he was something else. He was so good at surviving, too. At playing the boar. The legend of the Boar of Erymanthos has never waned, for all the time it’s been about him. He’s no longer my victim. Now he’s another of my creatures. I look after him, sometimes. Know that if Heracles harms him, I will step in.”

  I should put her in her place. Threaten her until she remembers it is me stepping in that everyone should worry about.

  But my gaze surveys the mountaintop, begging for someone who isn’t here to come out.

  “Did I take care of Granny? That day?”

  “You stepped right in,” she says. “You put your cape around her shoulders and did the flying for you both. She was immediately smitten with you. It wasn’t just soaking up the retirement being in your entourage provided, either. I could tell.”

  I look this waning snowstorm in the face. “What do you mean?”

  “I always assumed she liked you because you kept families safe.”

  “Fuck.”

  Without meaning to, my expletive sends a shelf of snow falling over a cliffside. I could dissolve into my own weather pattern for the rest of the week, tearing out my hair and weeping lightning.

  Artemis says, “I thought you wanted King Zeus, or the hero down there. You’re looking for Granny?”

  “Of course I am. I did worse to her than you did, because I should have known better.”

  “Well, let me answer your prayers. Because that fury has been a pain in my ass for several seasons now.”

  “Wait,” I say. “You know where she is? Is it in that boar man’s head?”

  “She’s not in any human being’s mind. It’s not a human’s mind at all. If you promise to leave the boar-man alone, I’ll show you her hiding place. But I warn you, she’s not in a social mood.”

  Heracles 21

  Logy warns me, “Whatever he is, he knows the mountain like no other. Don’t take this place lightly.”

  Logy is a cold-blooded hydra and cannot make the ascent, and Purrseus will simply attack the man again if I bring him. I leave them all below in the brambles on the mountainside. The Hind follows me just long enough to keep pointing me after the man, as though I could doubt her. Following is the only purpose I can hold onto right now.

  New snow falls as I climb, flakes sticking under my fingernails. The man’s tracks are obvious, a trench in the snow bluffs. He’s not stopping to fight again. He’s spooked.

  “I’m not here to hurt you. I seek the Boar of Erymanthos. And the furies. Do you know the furies?”

  In this pathetic, slow chase through walls of snow, we find the apex. It’s all flatness and false contours, hiding the real edges of the top of the mountain in high drifts of snow. The man is a dark blur in the whiteness, and I try to warn him. As my mouth opens, he stumbles, footing unsure, all the snow hiding where it is safe to run. He won’t stop running.

  “Slow down. Please. Who are you?”

  I scan the apex for any other living creatures, expecting something to waylay us both and send us toppling off the mountain. He’s moving so frantically that he’s inviting the attack.

  But what stops him is his own body. Eventually he stumbles again, and the hide cloak on his shoulders flaps like a flag in the winds up here. Falling snow immediately gathers on that cloak and his exposed back, and his head bows with strain. His snorting is rapid; he is desperate for more air.

  Whereas my father’s gifts would let me knock this entire mountain over if I craved it.

  I lower one shoulder and force the snow away, until it furls up into a wall ten times our height. I force the whole embankment up against that north wind. It’s the beginnings of a shelter.

  The man stares up at me from under the boar’s-head cowl with an animal fear. Gray hair is thick, sprouting from his chest, shoulders, and cheeks, those few bits of him I can see beneath his boar hide. His face is so lined with age that it should have come apart long ago. The fear keeps willing him to move, and all he can do is flinch. If there is a goddess of despair, then this man is her favorite son.

  I’ve been desperate before. If I weren’t desperate, I wouldn’t have chased him up here until I couldn’t feel my toes. Let’s be desperate together.

  I uproot two trees, shaking the snow off of them until they are relatively dry. Then I strike them together, trunk against trunk, with enough force that the claps send the snow flurrying off the man’s cowl. In a few more strikes, the sudden friction sets both trees ablaze. I use them to build a fire for us both, under the embankment.

  I crouch on the opposite side of the burning trees from him, gesturing for him to join.

  He pulls the boar pelt closer to himself and shuffles closer to the fire, while still squatting at an angle. His posture threatens that he’ll bolt whenever he likes. He may only be warming up enough to flee.

  I’ll make do with that.

  “I’m sorry that I scared you. Your pain is my fault. You’re welcome at my fire for as long as you want.” I gesture to the gap between myself and the fire; I won’t even get to close to it. “Many people call me Heracles.”

  He doesn’t like it enough to call me it, or to call me anything. Dark eyes, as pitch as the sea itself, study me. His arms vanish inside the boar hide.

  I ask, “What do people call you?”

  “Boar.”

  That’s his entire answer. So I try again.

  “And what is your name?”

  He says, “Boar.”

  I look up to the matching pair of dark eyes on the boar-skull cowl of his garb. “You are a boar?”

  “I am Boar.”

  He looks at me dubiously, like I’m a foreigner who doesn’t speak the local language. My mother taught me to be considerate to folks who don’t have a common tongue with us. I try to pull myself toward that family ideal.

  “All right.” I put a hand to my chest. “I grew up with two names. Alcides, and Heracles. You can call me either. Do you have multiple names?”

  “I am Boar.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “Boar is tired. Need to warm up.”

  I snap a limb off one of the trees and toss it onto the center of the fire. It’s the best gesture I have. I’ll collect more firewood as necessary.

  I regard the hide wrapped so snugly around his human form. He’s a burly man, nearly as hairy and unkempt beneath the boar hide as above. I think of Logy bringing up the legendary Bull of Crete earlier. That divine bull impregnated a human woman and sired the Minotaur. He is a monster so powerful he bent reality around his lust. Could there be other such creatures? Could this man actually be part boar?

  It’s worth asking. “Was one of your parents a boar?”

  “Both of Boar’s parents were boar. Obviously.”

  Obviously. How silly of me.

  “I’m the son of a human woman,” I say, rubbing my hands over the fire, less to warm them, and more to show they need to be warmed. “And the son of an Olympian. You never know what children unusual couples will make. Do you have any children, Boar?”

  Dark eyes cut at me in the firelight, like he suspects I’m suggesting something. “No. Boar has no children. Never had children.”

  “I see,” I say, to calm him. My own heart starts hammering, and I don’t know why.

  The man doesn’t calm down. He leans his head backward, so that more of the face under his boar helmet can stare at me. His face is streaked with grime and scabs.

  He asks, “Do you have children?”

  “Yes.”

  I say it before I think, and my heart is going harder. The reason I’m upset hits me like a club upside the head, and I have to hold onto myself as I shake. The cold is overwhelming, sudden, like I had shut it out until now. It coats my legs, like so many small hands grabbing onto me from out on the mountain.

  “No,” I correct myself. “I once did, and I keep trying to forget the loss. As though forgetting would help anything. I had three beautiful sons. Therimachus, Creontiades, and Deicoon. One of the Olympians became angry with me. I still don’t know which one, or what I did. But the god sent the furies to drive me mad, and under their influence, I . . . hurt my boys.”

  I want to cover my eyes and shut the world out, but I don’t allow myself to. I will not weaken. My boys deserve better.

  With my eyes open, I see the other man’s eyes growing darker in the firelight. They are deep brown, so deep they are mistakable for the black pitch of the sea. So too they are moist, as though sculpted from thawing ice. The only thing on this entire mountaintop melting is his attention.

  I tell him, “I’ve been trying to find the fury that did this. That made me do this. I thought you might know something about the furies. But it led me to scare you and drive you out here. I’m sorry, Boar.”

  Snowflakes catch in my eyelashes. I rub at them until they melt. Wind shrieks its mournful song to fill the world after I run out of words to say. It’s the only sound I expect to hear until I descend the mountain.

  Then the man speaks. “I know about furies.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. A long time ago, they saved Boar.”

  I lick my lips, and the saliva instantly freezes on my skin. “They helped you? You met them?”

  I’ve never thought about furies helping anyone. That’s not in the poems. Logy never mentioned such a story.

  The man says, “There was a wicked hunter from Aegea who wanted to become king. He was clever and cruel. He brought all his traps and his wife and his son to my mountain. He thought to kill me, and skin me, and wear me as a trophy. He would inspire fear in all who saw him, and return home a king.”

  I force a neutral expression to stay on my face, striving to look as though I’m just listening, and not judging what I’m hearing. I try not to look at either of his two faces too intently, the man or the boar cowl. I can’t risk offending either of his selves.

  He says, “After weeks of failures, the hunter used his son for bait. Starved Boar, then drew Boar out when Boar was hungry.”

  He stretches his arms out at the wrists as though something is trying to dislocate them. The physical memory of being captured in a snare.

  Then he draws a thumb down, to the left side of his throat, as though preparing to slit it.

  “His kingdom was in his grasp when the hunter had a delusion. An old woman with wings and flesh of leather descended on him, and made him think he was claiming his prize. He slit a throat, but not Boar’s. It was something he should have treasured more than crowns.”

  He swallows hard, and he covers the dead eyes of his boar cowl for a moment. His entire cloak trembles. His mouth opens, then closes, then shudders open again like he’s wrestling with the words.

  “He was a terrible man. It is good he died that night.”

  I’ve wrestled with enough words. I put my hand halfway to his, offering to steady him. He doesn’t need to share more with me.

  I say, “So the gods made the hunter destroy his family and himself. And now Boar lives safe in the mountains, where no one hunts him any further.”

  He stares at my offered hand. His fingers tremble like he wants to take it. He doesn’t.

  But he does pull himself to sit closer to me. He may not believe he has hands to take mine, so he sits closer.

  He murmurs, “Boar is safe. Boar never hurt anyone.”

  Please don’t judge me too harshly, Hera. I know you are the protector of families, and we are two men who destroyed ours. You may despise him. Try not to despise me for weeping with him.

  Too many snowflakes have fallen in Boar’s pelt. The right eye of his cowl is completely clotted with snow. His shivering is not only from grief. A part of me comes to despise the cold for existing. The winds of the world could lay off a poor man for one hard night.

  I rise, saying, “Let’s get off this mountain. It’s warmer below. I can carry you, if you want.”

  When he tries to rise, his legs buckle. He refuses my hands, instead climbing onto all fours, snorting in the direction of the nearest slope. “Boar would like to be warm.”

  “Are you sure you’re good to walk?”

  “Boar has walked plenty of times,” he says, again, like I’m a fool. Maybe I am. Then he adds, “You have two names. Alcides and Heracles.”

  It makes my ears tingle, hearing someone call me both those names. I say, “Yes. They’re both me.”

  “Which do you want me to call you?”

  I don’t need to leave the snow anymore. Not with the warmth that question gives me.

  “You can call me Heracles.”

  “Hello, Heracles.”

  “Hello, Boar.”

  Hera 22

  Artemis guides me through Arcadia’s plains, down a dwindling and rocky stream, where the grass gets patchier and patchier, until it terminates into the swampy remains of an abandoned farm. Empty homes with caved-in roofs wait in a crowd of rotting barley. Egrets and herons shy around ponds, poking about for food beneath the darkest cloud to never thunder. It casts an impressive shadow over the swamp, making the waters seem black.

  The cloud undulates, swirling up in the sky. Strands swirl off from its body and dive back in, and whenever they do, they are revealed to be lustrous as polished bronze, rather than dark at all. It is so dense a cloud that I think they must be insects. But these things are too large.

  Artemis tells me, “Each one has the wingspan of an adult crane. Their beaks and talons are made from a shiny chitin the like of which I’ve never seen elsewhere. It can punch through a bronze shield when they’re hungry enough. Those talons are attached to enough muscle that they can wrestle a wolf to the ground with one foot. They love the taste of wolves.”

  For want of something better to say, I give her, “Impressive fowl.”

  “Their feathers are definitely some kind of metal fiber, but thin enough to let them fly. How the whole creature is light enough to fly is one of those things Athena is never going to figure out. Because who is going to catch and dissect one of these?”

  “You bred these birds?”

  “Ares did. Then he got bored with them after they ate the generals he intended to have use them in war. After he abandoned them, I adopted them.” She leans on one end of her bow, smiling beatifically at the beasts. There’s a shine that could replace the moon in her eyes. “I love an unloved animal.”

  Such a cloud of creatures could block out the sun while diving at their victims. Ares had a good idea; they’d make amazing weapons of war. I say, “I don’t imagine they need much protection.”

  “They don’t,” she says with a hiccup of a laugh. “I only inspire hunters to come here if I want them humbled.”

  I’ve had enough giant creatures for this age of humanity. I can’t regard the cloud of murderous birds without thinking how many children they have stolen from loving homes.

  I ask, “These birds serve Granny? They’re protecting her lair? She never mentioned keeping pets.”

  “Not exactly,” she says. “Any one of these birds is just intelligent enough to be a pain in the ass. Roughly as smart as a fox, but with the social instincts of birds. Which means they have enough of a mind for . . .” She trails off, waggling her fingers for me to come along and finish the idea.

 

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