And then one day, shortly after Jes-Jer’s arrival, Hermes encountered a man on Elysium’s dock. He was near six feet with a compact, lithe build, closely-cropped hair, and the kind of silvery eyes that looked almost detached from his face.
“I’m the new Hades,” he said. “What can you tell me about his place?”
Hermes told Hades what he’d learned from Merc, who had already departed Olympus: how the dead took a boat once a day to Hades’s realm after paying a toll; how the realm had different areas, including a place where monsters emerged. He said nothing about his own duties to the god of the dead, though Hades figured out those.
Hades moved the violent dead off Elysium to a nearby island. By that time, Olympus was using Portland, Maine for its blueprint—a “new start,” Jes-Jer proclaimed—and Elysium was Peaks Island. Hades started to map the underworld, including the parts that led to other possible worlds. He recruited dead soldiers to corral the monsters.
These days, Hades sent food to feed the monsters, which kept them off the mainland and freed up Ares’s soldiers for duties other than monster-killing. It was a way for the dead on Elysium—who helped raise the food—to help the living.
“I can’t stop the monsters coming,” Hades said once without apologizing because Hades believed in letting the world function as it was designed. “But they do have a shepherd.”
Hermes had met the shepherd. He was about to meet him again.
* * *
The “shepherd”—Humbaba—sat beside a gate (built by Hades) at the end of the narrow path that split from the main underground corridor. Humbaba had a man’s barrel-chested body and a huge bull head with the requisite curved horns and a large snout. Pointed teeth showed when he smiled. “A minotaur,” Hermes said the first time he saw Humbaba, but Hades said no, said Humbaba’s tradition was older. “An aurochs bull,” he said. “But later myths—the Cretan bull, the Minotaur—may be related.”
Hermes didn’t ask if Humbaba was that old or if Humbaba had borrowed the name from legends, like most of the gods in this world. Hades had been a Catholic priest once upon a time before he became a god and got himself a boyfriend. He had ideas about connections between religion and myths and God. But Hermes didn’t go in for metaphysics.
At Hades’s request, Hermes drove the golf cart to Humbaba’s gate. He disembarked and unloaded bags of meat from the attached trolley. Humbaba bellowed without leaving his low, curved seat. Two serpents as round as sewage pipes glided between the open grills. They snagged the bags with their tails and dragged them away.
“Anything for me?” Humbaba shouted despite Hermes being only a few feet away.
Hermes was no fool. He handed over high-end truffles to Humbaba—the non-chocolate variety from the other world. Humbaba sniffed them and seemed to grin wider. Hermes deliberately didn’t wince.
He stayed a few feet away, casually leaning against the smooth rock wall. The tunnels “copied” over when Olympus changed cities. Perhaps they were smooth due to time, the stones worn down from various large creatures moving through the tunnel over millennia.“You have dog-like monsters in there?” Hermes said, using his chin to point beyond the gate.
“Hellhounds?”
“Sure.”
“No. The mainland has wolves.”
“These would be hounds from mythology—like Actaeon’s friends.”
“Ah—that version of the tale. There are so many. In the oldest I know, the dogs were never human but poor beasts forced to turn on their master.”
“Killers,” Hermes said, trying to imagine Humbaba as a rescuer of dogs fresh from blood sports.
Not that Humbaba would tame and coddle them. He would set them on any monster who broke Humbaba’s code of conduct. Humbaba was like Hades. He controlled the monsters rather than changed or eliminated them.
No Xanax in this underworld.
“Did you know Actaeon’s dogs had names?” Humbaba said. “Arcas. Melampus. Syrus. They mourned Actaeon’s death. Goddesses are so cruel.”“Goddesses like Artemis?”
“She’s a parvenu. Older goddesses turned men into beasts. Aruru. Ishtar.”
“Sumerian mythology.”
“Did Hades teach you that?”
Hermes shrugged.
“No dummy, that man,” Humbaba said. “All gods and monsters must be based on the mythology that crosses between this world and the other. It’s one of the rules—the real rules, the unbreakable ones that Eros made, the ones not even your so-called head gods can alter.”
“I knew that,” Hermes said, not entirely lying.
Eros’s original rules were basic: Gods couldn’t steal each other’s offerings. Hermes was the only god who could pass between worlds and not forget Olympus. Gods’ roles couldn’t be usurped. And Zeus-Hera couldn’t invent new ones.
If they could create their own gods and monsters, they would have done so long before they had to appoint Kouros to his current position, long before they had to go searching for a replacement for Adonis.
Hermes said, “You say a Sumerian goddess transformed a man into a beast. What type of beast?”
“Enkidu. Aruru formed a beast-man man to befriend King Gilgamesh. But Ishtar or one of her priestesses extracted from Enkidu a promise that he would kill the king instead. Gilgamesh had insulted Ishtar in some manner.”
“Dead king.”
“No,” Humbaba said, his voice soft, incongruous with the face’s mass of muscle and bone and teeth. “Enkidu befriended Gilgamesh. So she punished him.”Hermes didn’t shiver. He didn’t show weakness around anyone except, occasionally, Ven. But he reminded himself, Here is why you always watch your back, you never give anyone an opening, why you prove yourself indispensable. The gods could be random, untrustworthy, cruel.
Humbaba said, “After Enkidu and Gilgamesh traveled together, fought my namesake together, after all that—”
“Ishtar killed him.”
“Worse.”
Hermes frowned. A respect for myth was (another) shared interest between Kouros and Hades. One or the other had told him about Enkidu. Or Ven had during one of his rambles on sex and love in the ancient world.
He said, “The boar of heaven gored Enkidu, didn’t it?”
“And Gilgamesh mourned his friend’s death. He roamed the world—he even met the original man with the big boat—until he discovered the entrance to the underworld. He called Enkidu forth.”
A search for the underworld sounded to Hermes like a dozen stories people had told him over the years. He nodded.
“In some versions, Enkidu was unable to fight free of the underworld’s hold. In others, he and Gilgamesh exchanged gossip about where their friends ended up. Is he happy? Is she happy? All versions agree that Gilgamesh didn’t get the answer he ought. No version tells the entire truth. Ishtar was not pleased that Gilgamesh was able to find Enkidu. She exiled him.”
“Can he be found?”
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Cord |
That boy was Kouros. Hermes had to agree about Kouros’s single-mindedness, the desire to do one job very well.
Hermes said, “You don’t think Eros—the previous Eros—left behind any memories?”
“Would that boy care? Grain yields. Manure. Even when he last delivered food last time, he asked me about monsters’ dung.” Herme’s tone was exasperated and impressed.
“And Eros—the Eros who left—wouldn’t remember?”
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Ven |
“You know better,” Humbaba said. “They all forget except you. But they are still drawn to Olympian matters. They still dream of us.”
“But would the Eros who went back dream of where Enkidu is in this world?”
“You won’t find Enkidu here. The goddess exiled him for sure. For real. Worse than any wilderness or underground passage. She sent him to the other world.”
Humbaba was right. Exile to the other world was worse.