Thrice Born Read online

  And as Persephone hadn’t come looking for her; that could only mean that she hadn’t escaped.

  She might be alive, but she’d obviously been abducted.

  But why hadn’t her friends, the daughters of Okeanos, tried to help her?

  As they failed to save her, they can at least help me search for her, Cybela fumed.

  Give them wings – yes, even the bodies of birds – that they might search everywhere for her. They can keep their pretty faces; but only so they can continue their enchanting singing, which might bring them some relief from their task!

  She glanced with equal irritation at the scroll she held in her hand.

  And was everything that had happened to them all down to this ridiculously unimportant scroll?

  She peered at the inscription, frowning irritably when she saw it had been scratched to a point where most of it was unreadable. Even so, it was plainly nothing more than yet another history: this one written by someone one whose name seemed to be something to do with ‘Philos’.

  Why would this scroll and all those other histories be deemed so dangerous to the mob that they had descended up on the temple and the procession so murderously?

  Placing the torch in a nearby stand, she opened up the scroll, scanning over its text quickly in an effort to see why anyone might think what was written here was dangerous.

  There was nothing here about gods, as far as she could see.

  It was just the history of a man, albeit a man of peace, who preached forgiveness and goodwill. Despite his gentleness, it seemed, he could still rage at the authorities for any evil or injustice he believed they were committing.

  It was a man who dressed simply in white linen, who went around either barefoot or wearing sandals of bark, not leather. He left his beard and hair uncut.

  And yet accusations were made against him.

  He was brought to trial on the testimony of an informer.

  Strangely, it seemed, the accuser himself bore a scroll, one containing proof of the accusations made against this modest, mildly mannered man; and yet when the accuser unrolled the scroll, it was miraculously seen to be completely blank.

  *

  Chapter 6

  For eleven days, Cybela searched amongst the labyrinthine tunnels for any sign of her sister.

  Any lesser person, of course, would have died from thirst or starvation, but she was sustained wholly by her need to find Persephone.

  On the twelfth day, she realised she needed help.

  She emerged from the dank embrace of the catacombs at the dead of night, when the darkness of one blended seamlessly with the other, such that there seemed little real difference in her surroundings.

  Forcing the base of the torch into the soft ground so that it was capable of standing on its own, and placing the scroll alongside it, she withdrew from her gown the Iynx disc.

  Slipping the fingers of each hand into the loops of purple thread that came out from either side of the disc, she began to spin the disc, twisting the threads together until she reached a point where the twisted threads themselves would power the spinning.

  And as it spun, it breathed, breathed with the rushed inhaling of lovers.

  She closed her eyes, closed off all thought of other things.

  When she felt ready, she eased off the disc’s spinning.

  Placing the disc on its edge on a nearby, reasonably flat-topped stone, she twisted it sharply, so that it spun like a top.

  On one side of the disc there was a serpentine maze of three sections, a spiritual fire burning within its centre.

  On the other, it was the iynx bird, portrayed as if we are looking down upon it, its wings and tail also forming a three-sided image.

  And so as the disc spun, the iynx appeared within the centre of the coiled serpent. And here it became the firebird, calling on the Moon, on Devine Phoebe.

  Cybela stretched her arms out to the stars.

  ‘In the deep stillness of the midnight hour, O Night, O Mother of Mysteries, O all the golden Stars who with Phoebe succeed the fires of day: O divine Three-Formed Goddess – knowest all my enterprises, and fortify my arts of magic!’

  And so of course, the Moon came on her calling, blushing red with embarrassment.

  *

  ‘How many times must you disrobe me with your incantations?’ Phoebe complained. ‘Making the night moonless, so that you might practise your beloved arts undisturbed!’

  ‘Have you seen my sister?’ Cybela demanded bluntly. ‘Has she been taken?’

  ‘Yes; I heard her voice,’ Phoebe replied, adding with an irate frown, ‘I couldn’t see who took her, as you were calling on me yet again.’

  ‘But your brother; he must have seen, yes?’

  Phoebe smiled.

  ‘What does the Sun not see? Helios told me that it was Polynomos of The Darkness of Lower Earth who took your sister, fooling the serpents who guarded her by taking on their own form.’

  Cybela lowered her head in shame. It dawned on her that she had suspected this all along; it was nothing but her own self-denial that had kept her from accepting it to be the most likely reason for both the sudden appearance and then the abrupt disappearance of her sister.

  There was a clattering of metal against stone as the disc’s spinning came to an end and it toppled across the flattened top. The flames of the torch lashed at the dark sky as a fierce wind whipped through them.

  The stars had vanished, the sky an apparently deep and endless black. Thick clouds were gathering everywhere, scudding hurriedly across the sky, veiling in parts even the closely hovering Phoebe.

  The wind whipped at her flesh, drawing from it the most glorious foam, a glistening juice that spread out across the fields, the trees, the plants.

  ‘Polynomos is angry,’ Phoebe warned Cybela. ‘I must go.’

  ‘No: not yet! You haven’t told me–’

  Her voice was drowned out by a wind that abruptly increased in its already tremendous force. It brought with it a pummelling rain, the drops so heavy they tore at the earth.

  A flash of lightning struck a tree, sending it bursting into richly red flames.

  ‘Polynomos seeks his revenge,’ Phoebe cried out as she continued to retreat back up into the heavens. ‘He’s lost his son, the son only recently born to him.’

  ‘Which son?’ Cybela yelled.

  ‘Why, the Child of The Darkness of Lower Earth: the one your sister gave birth to, of course.’

  *

  Chapter 7

  Cybela’s torch was doused by the heavy rain.

  Yet the tree continued to burn, the bloody light of its soaring flames transforming the torrents of plummeting water into what could be a hail of fire.

  The golden disc rattled under their constant pounding.

  Underneath all the thunderous noise, however, there was a hint of the most glorious melodies, as if the most wondrous songbirds had taken wing in this most terrifying of storms.

  And indeed, as the source of the enchanting songs drew closer, there was a fluttering of great and powerful wings.

  Leukippe.

  Phaino.

  Elektra.

  Ianthe.

  The daughters of Okeanos alighted one by one, close by Cybela.

  Yet they were no longer as Cybela remembered them. She imagined instead that they must have been formed into these creatures, more bird-like than maiden, by some ill-cast spell.

  ‘Have you seen my sister?’ she asked.

  Each siren shook her head sadly.

  ‘And yet we have heard that she gave birth to a son, Zagreus,’ Leukippe said.

  ‘And I’ve heard that my nephew is already dead,’ Cybela replied bluntly.

  ‘Polynomos raised him to be king…’

  ‘But others were envious…’

  ‘The Titans…’

  ‘Their faces cunningly smeared with disguising chalk…’

  ‘Bearing presents…’

  ‘Toys that would distract him�
�’

  ‘A mirror.’

  ‘A puppet; a doll of moving limbs.’

  ‘An apple, the gift of lovers, of wisdom, but also distraction and selfishness; as Atalanta, transformed into a lion, found to her cost.

  ‘A tuft of donkey hair.’

  ‘A top, a wheel that spun, mingling bird and serpent in its divine whirlings.’

  ‘A sphere, the universe in microcosm.’

  ‘And a pine cone; which some call our third eye, a means of contemplating the beyond.’

  ‘So while he contemplated his changeling countenance – man, lion, eagle, bull – reflected in the mirror…’

  ‘They tore at him with an infernal knife.’

  ‘Firstly, he was a young and crafty Man, then aged and heavy-kneed.’

  ‘Secondly, he was a curiously formed babe again, then a Youth once more with the flower of first down, yet still a mere puppet of fate.’

  ‘Now he became a powerful Lion, his invulnerable fleece as golden as the Apples shepherded by the Hesperides, Daughters of Night; yet their gift of immortality, alas, is only for the gods.’

  ‘Next in his transformation was the Horse, a transporter of the soul.’

  ‘Then came the hissing serpent, guardian of the soul on its journey through darkness; or, as some would portray its rising, winged form, the Eagle, a bird offering communication with the gods.’

  ‘His sixth form was that of a Leopard, its fur a universal map of stars and gods.’

  ‘And seventh, the Bull, whose horns tore back at the Titans, even as he accepted this sacrifice of his own death.’

  ‘So into seven pieces they tore him…’

  ‘Tossed him into the boiling cauldron…’

  ‘Ate him…’

  ‘Leaving only the heart, the seat of thought, still palpitating…’

  ‘Secreted away in a basket…’

  ‘Preserved as the sap of the pine preserves the young god’s wine.’

  ‘And it is as a drink of this bull’s heart that Polynomos, he of The Sky Above The Moon, hopes to implant a new son into a proudly beautiful yet unsuspecting Zemele.’

  ‘A one time Earth Goddess of darkly fruitful, subterranean soil – now fallen to that earth, and made mortal.’

  ‘This child,’ Cybela forcefully interrupted them, ‘is my sister’s child: where can I find this Zemele?’

  ‘That we don’t know.’

  ‘As we don’t know if she already bears the child or not.’

  ‘But we’re sure the child has not yet been born.’

  ‘Otherwise, why would Polynomos still be so angry?’

  A brilliant flash of the brightest white light abruptly lit up everything around them, the raindrops glistening like innumerable falling stars. With an ear-splitting crack, a streak of energy raggedly severed the night itself apart.

  There was another ominous crack as the bolt struck the flaming tree once more, this time shattering its aged trunk. With the sickening shriek of ripping fibres, the tree listed, its bonnet of flames still briefly continuing to reach upward; but then, with a resigned sigh, the trunk split completely, the roaring ball of fire toppling into what had become the deep waters of the swiftly flooding field.

  There was a last agonised, spluttering hiss as the flames faltered then died, their final flickering of light revealing the overwhelmed and broken riverbanks.

  With the dousing of the flames, there was no light at all.

  The darkness was complete: it could have been endless; it could have stretched no farther than an arm’s length away.

  *

  Cybela couldn’t be sure when the Sirens had decided to fly away and leave her to her fate.

  It was not only too dark to see their departure; the furious shrieking of the wind would have drowned out even the thunderous beat of their great wings bearing them away.

  What had now become a heavily rolling sea also voiced its incredible anger, its pitching waves roaring as they gradually yet remorselessly tore down any trees still standing in their path.

  Cybela was not immune to the immense power of these pummelling waves, of the riving wind. Lifted off her feet by the swiftly rising waters, she was as callously tossed around by them as any pitiful animal might be.

  She might have drowned, had she not spotted amongst the darkness the glow of spluttering flames devouring the sole surviving branch of what been the burning tree.

  There was enough left of this once great branch to cling to and float relatively safely on top of the still irately frothing waves of the dark abyss. The screeching wind tore at the flames, threatening to entirely expunge them, but their tiny sphere of flaring light continued to act as a replacement for the burning brand Cybela had had to leave behind.

  Gone, too, was her Iynx disc, her means of charming the Moon.

  All she had managed to save was the scroll, perhaps the least important of her belongings; and yet she sensed that she held a means to understanding the birth of beliefs men cling to, in hope of surviving their confinement in a chaotic world.

  *

  Chapter 8

  The shore she was eventually, exhaustedly, cast upon was unremarkable bar the littered blocks of the recently ruined temple.

  The circular lumps of smashed pillars; the angled chunks of viciously destroyed porticoes; the blithely smiling faces of gods and goddesses blissfully unaware that they had been torn down and riven limb from limb.

  The followers of the apostle had been here too, it seemed, accepting no belief but their own as the truth, the route to salvation.

  Thankfully, the storm no longer raged, but the darkness was still almost complete in its cloaking of the land.

  Cybela wrenched off one of the weaker, smaller stems from the much larger branch that had safely brought her here. Its tip was still burning, this crude torch and the glow from Hesperos the Evening Star lighting the way as Cybela made her way across the darkly misty beach towards what seemed to be the nearest equivalent to a house around here.

  It wasn’t a large building, yet in its centre there was at least a table, at least a chair to rest upon. At the table’s heart there was also a cup, one full to its lip with the most tantalising of drinks Cybela had ever seen, its colour that of the reddest, most delicious berries.

  She hadn’t drunk, or eaten, she realised, in ages.

  She had seen neither stream nor fountain on the most recent part of her journey, despite the tumultuous rain cast down upon the earth by the darkly swirling clouds of a furious Polynomos.

  It could have been the Cup of Tantalus that stood before her, she was so tempted to drink from it.

  Obviously, this drink hadn’t been prepared for her; and yet she could see no one else around who it might have been set out for.

  The whole area appeared deserted.

  And so she took up the cup; and, whether it might be deemed wise or not, drank heartily from it.

  *

  Chapter 9

  ‘Whither goest thou?’

  ‘To see the stripling!’

  The scroll told of the birth of the man. Some said he had sprung from the loins of a divine father and the womb of a human mother, amid gracious portents and supernatural sightings.

  And yet this man of peace had suffered crucifixion, hanging upon a cross until unconscious.

  He had then lain within his coffer for three days, a time when he had toured the realms of the dead.

  And after he had vanquished death, he had returned from the underworld and risen from his coffer, proclaiming that life is eternal.

  Cybela had heard of this mysterious event many times before, of course. And so she couldn’t quite understand why setting it down as a history within the scroll could be deemed so dangerous.

  The sickly child that had peacefully lain asleep while she had read now stirred.

  Putting down the scroll, Cybela moved to tend to him. She had agreed to stay on and nurse the child in recompense for unthinkingly taking the drink that had bee
n specially prepared for the child’s mortal mother, Zemele.

  A mortal mother. An immortal father.

  Hence the child had been called Demophon, ‘killer of men’; for it was his mortal body that made him so sickly.

  The milk Cybela nourished him with was suffused with sleep-inducing poppies. It was midnight, a time when all should be asleep.

  With the sickly child safely nestled deep within her lap, Cybela stroked him three times, uttering three spells, including the words that could be his new name, Triptolemus; He who Pounds the Husks.

  And then she buried the child's body in the hearth's living embers, to purge his human husk and free the grain.

  *

  The child’s cries, the smell of roasting flames, woke the mortal Zemele from the charmed slumber Cybela had placed her under.

  When she saw what was happening to her child, she could think of nothing but that she must save him, regardless of any danger to herself.

  But the heavenly fire that so wondrously washed the limbs of her child set her own body aflame, the flesh burning as readily as the fields that are cleared of dead wheat.

  Yet even as she saw her own fiery end, she who had once being so haughty of her appearance actually rejoiced in this childbearing death; for as her body perished, she caught glimpses of the Birth Goddess Eileithyia and Himeros, God of Desire – and it dawned on her at last that her child was about to be reborn, godlike.

  Of course, Cybela herself couldn’t escape being transformed by those miraculous flames, such that some would later refer to her as the darkly desirous Misa, a twin of the reborn boy.

  And so she took it upon herself to care for her newly resurrected brother, concealing him from the watchful gods by stealing him away in a winnowing-basket, a serpent wound about it for protection, bearing it all upon her back as readily as any ass.

  Outside, it was still dark, the remnants of the storm still veiling the gaze of the Moon. Cybela put aside the urge to take up a torch, as she used to search for her sister: seeking out her sister would have to wait awhile, at least until she had taken the boy to somewhere far from the gaze of either Phoebe or her brother Helios; for although she trusted them implicitly, everything they saw would risk endangering the boy, for news might get back to Hera, the jealous consort of Polynomos.