When sculptors shape their stone, they shape it after him.
“Is that what they say of me?”
“Of course. Zeus is sure you’re brewing poisons against us all, you and your brother both. You know how he frets.” He smiled, easy, conspiratorial. As if the anger of Zeus were only a light jest.
“So you come as Zeus’ spy then?”
“I prefer the word envoy. But no, in this matter, my father can do his own work. I’m here because my brother is angry with me.”
“Your brother,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I think you’ve heard of him?”
From his cloak he drew a lyre, inlaid with gold and ivory, glowing like the dawn.
“I’m afraid I’ve stolen this,” he said. “And I need a place to shelter till the storm passes. I was hoping you might take pity upon me? Somehow I don’t think he’ll look here.”
The hairs stood on the back of my neck. All who were wise feared the god Apollo’s wrath, silent as sunlight, deadly as plague. I had the impulse to look over my shoulder, to make sure he was not striding across the sky already, his gilded arrow pointed at my heart. But there was something in me that was sick of fear and awe, of gazing at the heavens and wondering what someone would allow me.
“Come in,” I said, and led him through my door.
I had grown up hearing the stories of Hermes’ daring: how as an infant he had risen from his cradle and made off with Apollo’s cattle, how he had slain the monstrous guardian Argos after coaxing each of his thousand eyes to sleep, how he could pry secrets out of a stone and charm even rival gods to do his will.
It was all of it true. He could draw you in as if he were winding up a thread. He could spin you out upon a conceit until you were choking with laughter. I had scarcely known true intelligence—I had spoken to Prometheus for only a moment, and in all the rest of Oceanos’ halls most of what passed as cleverness was only archness and spite. Hermes’ mind was a thousand times sharper and more swift. It shone like light upon the waves, dazzling to blindness. That night he entertained me with tale after tale of the great gods and their foolishness. Lecherous Zeus turning into a bull to lure a pretty maiden. Ares, god of war, bested by two giants, who kept him crammed in a jar for a year. Hephaestus laying a trap for his wife Aphrodite, hoisting her in a golden net, still naked with her lover Ares, for all the gods to see. On and on he went, through the absurd vices, drunken brawls, and petty slapping squabbles, all told in that same slippery, grinning voice. I felt myself flushed and dizzied, as if I had taken my own draughts.
“Will you not be punished for coming here and breaking my exile?”
He smiled. “Father knows I do what I like. And anyway, I break nothing. It is only you who are confined. The rest of the world may come and go as we please.”
I was surprised. “But I thought—is it not the greater punishment to force me to be alone?”
“That depends on who visits you, doesn’t it? But exile is exile. Zeus wanted you contained, and so you are. They didn’t really think about it further.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I was there. Watching Zeus and Helios negotiate is always good entertainment. Like two volcanoes trying to decide if they should blow.”
He had fought in the great war, I remembered. He had seen the sky burn, and slain a giant whose head brushed the clouds. For all his lightness, I found I could imagine it.
“Tell me,” I said, “can you play that instrument? Or only steal it?”
He touched his fingers to the strings. The notes leapt out into the air, bright and silver-sweet. He gathered them into a melody as effortlessly as if he were a god of music himself, so that the whole room seemed to live inside the sound.
He looked up, the fire caught in his face. “Do you sing?”
That was another thing about him. He made you want to spill your secrets.
“Only for myself,” I said. “My voice is not pleasing to others. I am told it sounds like a gull crying.”
“Is that what they said? You are no gull. You sound like a mortal.”
The confusion must have been plain on my face, for he laughed.