I started this novel over ten years ago. The initial version focused on Artemis and Hermes whom I kept in this version with more or less their prior relationship and personalities. I also kept the world's underlying theology.
I made a major change to the setting at the suggestion of my editor, Eugene: the novel still takes place in an alternate, though connected, world, but the landscape is recognizable. I've lived in Portland, Maine for over 20 years. It is very useful!
This novel continues the trilogy that begins with Cupid in Captivity and continues with Ithax's Offspring on Mars. The novels are related thematically, not by characters (although one character from the prior books does show up in this novel by another name). Cord or Kouros's book is far more complex since it involves "rules." Fantasy and sci-fi writers, always remember: you must have some clue how your world works, no matter how exasperating those workings are to keep in order!
Below is the first version of Chapter 1.
Cord thought for a moment that the man lingering outside the group home was waiting to proposition him.
Foster kids got propositioned—and approached about drugs—and conned into petty crime. It was part of the profile. They were desperate for love, for affection, for attention.
Something about Cord’s face and stance kept manipulators at a distance. He wasn’t large, being 5’10” at age seventeen with a wiry build and what a foster sister once told him admiringly was “Aidan Turner” hair. They had sort of dated since she would come into his room some nights and snuggle. She would talk about how they would be together “forever.” That lasted until she got pregnant by another foster brother and the slack-ass foster parents threw them all out.
The point was, Cord was cute enough or whatever. More importantly, he had attitude--though so did every foster kid he knew, a kind of world-weary exhaustion that identified idiots at a distance.
The weary-world foster kids were still vulnerable. Cord knew kids who sneered at parental figures and group home leaders and high school teachers and television politicians and rich kids and activists and religious do-gooders—and still went off and stupidly got conned into letting someone else use their stuff, eat their food, and “borrow” their money.
That desperate-for-affection thing was a real bitch.
Cord didn’t make those kinds of mistakes. He wasn’t going to get a girl pregnant, but he didn’t lead any of them on either. Or any guy. Or anyone. About anything. He never encouraged the foster sister. He could admit, having someone to talk to at night was nice.
The lingering guy was good-looking, lean, a little taller than Cord with similarly dark hair, only more close-cropped. “Corduroy Whitsun?” he said, and Cord immediately demoted all his assumptions into a pile of nothing.
Assume nothing was the easiest way to deal with life. It was impossible for Cord to entirely turn off his brain, to not make assessments, to not try to figure out people and situations, but the house of cards never stood for long.
Yet the stupid brain couldn’t help throwing out analysis. This guy knew his full name. Cop? Undercover cop? Some friend of an ex-foster sibling who was pissed about something? Cord stayed out of people’s way. They sometimes got pissed anyway.
“Yes,” he said and got ready to retreat.
“I’d comment on your name,” the guy said, his eyes on his phone. “But I’m not in a position to be snarky.”
He put his phone away then, which faintly impressed Cord. Most of his peers acted as if their identities and their phones were the same. Put away my phone—you can’t see me anymore!
Cord didn’t own one. He couldn’t afford it.
“Hermes,” the guy said.
“Dude!” Cord said before he could stop himself. Then he flushed, embarrassed that the guy, Hermes, managed to surprise him. Or, rather, that Hermes got Cord to show his surprise.
Hermes flashed a smile, bright teeth against a tan face. The tan didn’t look artificial even though it was early spring in Maine. Hermes also didn’t look Greek or Mediterranean. Cord never talked about people’s origins. It was a good way to get beat up since “offense” was the kind of thing that parental figures excused. Anything that smacked of anti-something-or-other deserved a good beating in their book. Cord kept his mouth shut.
But he’d read Greek myths. And Roman ones. And this guy looked like a yuppie in one of those really old John Hughes movies that one of Cord’s foster moms loved. He even had the same expression of slightly sarcastic confidence. Not exactly Ancient Messenger Guy--except for the expression.
“I’m not the first Hermes,” Hermes said, as if he could read Cord’s mind.
But then Hermes said, “You wouldn’t be the first Persephone. Obviously.”
This time, Cord didn’t say, “Dude!” He was used to crazies. They seem to gather in the area around the group home and the soup kitchen and all the other resources for poor people. The drunks screamed abuse, and the mentally ill called Cord by a dozen different names.
They didn’t usually look so slick.
Hermes said, “You want to get a cup of coffee?”
Cord hesitated, the rational side of him telling him to leave, walk away, get out, go to work. Work was at a nursery in South Portland where he heaved things around on carts and answered customers' questions.
The other part of him shrugged. Coffee at a coffee shop would be safe. He had another hour before he had to catch the bus. And if the guy paid—
He jerked his chin. Hermes cocked his head, then grinned. He walked ahead of Cord up Preble Street to Monument Square and across the square to the coffee shop. He only looked back once, just to see if Cord was still following, and he didn’t try to talk.
So Cord was more than faintly impressed. He didn’t show it. And when they entered the local café—not Starbucks or Dunkin’ although Cord would have gone there too—he stood back and let Hermes approach the counter. If the guy wanted to talk, fine, but he had better pay. Cord wasn’t going to waste his money.
Money. Everything came back to money. Where to sleep that night since the kids in the group home wouldn't shut up about marijuana. Cord didn’t care about the politics, and he was sick of the offers and the endless discussions: “Dude, I’m going to have my own dispensary one day!”
Laundry and bus fare cost. Most nights, for food, he went to the soup kitchen. Forget school or school supplies. Cord stopped going months ago and nobody there was looking for him.
When Hermes turned back with two cups of coffee, Cord almost walked away. If he sat down, if he listened to this smooth talker, he might not have the willpower to stand back up and get on with life.
He edged backwards and sat at one of the tables near the outside window. Hermes sat across from him and slid over the coffee. He raised a container of creamer but Cord shook his head and poured in three sugars.
Hermes said conversationally, “I come from an adjoining plane of existence. It split off from this world during the act of creation or evolution, whatever you want to believe in. The gods in my plane of existence desired more order.”
“Gods?”
“Yup. They make everything run. A god for day and night. A god for rain. A god for love—”
“Aphrodite.”
“Sure. We use the Greek and Roman names. Persephone. Kore. You’d be in charge of flowers, growth, springtime, that kind of thing.”
“And you don’t already have one--a Kore?”
“We did. They come and go. You would be the, uh, let’s see, five-hundredth-or-so Persephone. Most of them have been women but not all. It’s a position. So what do you say?”
And Cord proved he was just as gullible as any of this foster-siblings because he said, “Sure.”
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