The Beloved of the God of War

5 - Listening

I always belonged.

That was something I never doubted, not for a second. I’d known for as long as I remembered that I wasn’t one of them, but I knew my place in the world. It was here. Right here. And even if there was no one quite like me, I had never felt alone. No matter where I went, I was always home.

So it didn’t matter when in my girlhood years, my mother told me she had plucked me from a dream one night after sleeping under the stars. She didn’t remember anything else, just that she had awoken with a naked infant in her arms. For a long time, she had wondered if she was crazy, if she was simply imagining it all in some fantastical delusion. And then she had wondered if she had somehow lost her memories in a freak accident, memories of a husband, perhaps, and memories of a swelling belly with me inside it. But she knew all along deep down that it wasn’t so. She had never even thought of making a family, much less having children.

But she hadn’t been opposed, either, and she hadn’t trusted the system to take care of me. She was a rancher, experienced in animal husbandry, and she used what knowledge she had to raise me the best she could. And as I grew, she taught me how to speak without words, how to listen when the silence spoke, how to understand the things of the heart and the soul with nothing more than the touch of warm hands, with ears ready to hear even things unsaid.

My mother could not speak, but through her, I learned to listen to the world. The tongue may be silent, but every heart beats its truths: she taught me how to listen even when one did not want to be heard. 

But how does one listen to a heart that does not beat at all?

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Ares’s grip on my forearm never slackened, not even after several hours of my constant stumbling as he dragged me behind him. He walked in a straight, unswerving line for some destination unseen: he never wavered, never turned to follow any paved or beaten paths. I didn’t know where he was going - but at the same time, I did. There was only one place he would ever take me, after all. The place I feared most.

“Please don’t,” I said. They were the first words I had spoken since he had taken me away from the township. My voice sounded cracked and dry, as if I had been silent for days instead of just a few hours. “Please let me go.”

He didn’t even slow down. If anything, his pace quickened, and I tripped over an unexpected depression at the very top of the hill we had just crested. He caught me before I could fall, but when he righted me, he didn’t even turn his head to look.

And still he said nothing.

My mind raced, trying to remember any of the old titles that Ares possessed, and then I remembered that he wasn’t known for his vanities. Unlike Hermes and Aphrodite and all the other gods who weren’t shy about advertising their favorite titles and splendid feats, Ares had no favorite name, no epithet he took special pride in. I had as much of a chance of appealing to his ego as I did of plying granite.

As far as anyone knew, at least. I had never met anyone in my life who had crossed his path willingly to test the truth of that. The gods weren’t what they once were, including Ares - but he was still the most feared of them all. Zeus might have been the head of the pantheon and the most powerful, but Ares was still the purest embodiment of violence and destruction on our plane.

I was desperate. I didn’t know what else to do.

“Ares, please,” I said again. “They’ll kill me.” My heart pounded so hard in my chest that I thought it might burst. My mother was still back at the township. Had anyone told her I was missing? Did she know what had happened?

Would I ever see her again?

I had no choice, I thought. Even if he killed me for it, I had to try. “Ares, you owe me a debt,” I insisted, and finally, finally, he reacted. He drew to a sharp, sudden stop, and then turned around to stare down at me.

I thought I could see his red eyes darken, and I cringed at the blow I thought he would lay upon me. Had I gone too far? Of course I had. But what choice had he left me? It was this, or letting him drag me off to the other gods who would kill me as soon as they realized what I was. Either way meant death.

“What did you say?”

I swallowed past the stubborn lump in my throat that refused to disappear no matter how desperately I tried to churn up the courage that hid where I could not reach. “You owe me a debt,” I repeated. “And the Ares I’ve heard of -”

My voice broke, and I knew he could hear my fear in the half-breath I struggled to take. With the last of my resolve, I somehow forced the rest of the words out before my tongue was ready.

“- the Ares I’ve heard of settles all his accounts.”

He didn’t say a word for a long moment, and I stared up into his unyielding glower. Would he strike me? Would he kill me himself, here and now, instead of taking me to the others?

“What else have you heard of me?”

His voice was gravelly, rough, but I couldn’t hear the rage that I had been expecting. Even so, the smoldering intensity of his glare was enough to drive me into a terrified silence.

His rough grip tightened around my forearm, reminding me that he could crush and pulverize my bones into dust if he wished it. “I said, what else have you heard of me?”

I couldn’t speak, and I felt a sudden, supernatural heat that radiated from his body in what could only be the manifestation of his anger. He pulled on my arm with an insistent tug, and I could tell from the clenching of his jaw that his strength was only just barely restrained. He waited.

And yet I still could not speak.

Finally, he turned away with a disgusted scoff. I felt a burning breath trickle back into my lungs when he released me from his all-consuming gaze, but before I could piece together my scattered senses, he began pulling me forward again. This time, I followed without a single protest.

“Hestia, bring me home already!” he snarled, and I only allowed myself a single glance at the side of his face before ducking my head. “Hestia!”

No one answered, but still he stomped forward, his stride never slowing, never stopping. And then, suddenly, as if we were entering a fog, the world blurred around us. With every step we took, the horizon faded into a fine mist, and when I looked over my shoulder, I saw a thick grove of trees directly behind us that we had not passed through.

When I turned to look forward again, I jumped - where were we? We had been walking through the tall, untamed grasses of a meadow just seconds before. Now I was on a rocky path that led high into the sky, disappearing past a curtain of wispy clouds. I looked around and gaped at the steep drop far below us and the hint of green grass even further beyond that. I could do nothing but blink, stunned at the realization that, somehow, we were now close to the peak of a mountain despite never having climbed a single ledge to get here.

“You took your time, Hestia.” Ares’s voice was low and dark, nearly growling, and I swiveled my head around to see who he was speaking to. I hadn’t seen anyone at all, but now I knew: it didn’t matter what I had seen or had merely thought I’d seen. It didn’t matter that we had crossed impossible leagues within seconds, and now stood under towering pillars lining the path. The path that was suddenly even wider than it had been two eyeblinks ago, the path leading up into the peaks that shone like the sun had perched atop them.

None of it mattered, because this was the old gods’ domain.

This was Mount Olympus.