King of All These Ruins

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! You have given me a lot to take in and I am glad I have a few days to reread. Kybernets seems like a very interesting character. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

IN A TRIP TO ATTIKA, JOCASTA SETS OUT TO MEET A PRINCESS WHILE MANAEN'S MOTHER HAS A THEOLOGICAL DISPUTE WITH A POET



“It is as the poet said, ‘Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros, Love, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night; but of Night were born Aether and Day, whom she conceived and bare from union in love with Erebus.”
From high above, Jocasta pushed back the curtain to look out of the window at the streets below. Here, women, veiled, moved about the narrow streets, carrying jugs while slaves pulled loads. There were many slaves in this city, plenty of servants. The wealthier women were, like her, secluded on the higher floors of their houses, either having what was called women’s talk, or hearing stories.
“And Earth first bare starry Heaven,” the poet said, “equal to herself, to cover her on every side, and to be an ever-sure abiding-place for the blessed gods. And she brought forth long Hills, graceful haunts of the goddess-Nymphs who dwell amongst the glens of the hills. She bare also the fruitless deep with his raging swell, Pontus, without sweet union of love. But afterwards she lay with Heaven and bare deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire.
“And again, she bare the Cyclopes, overbearing in spirit, Brontes, and Steropes and stubborn-hearted Arges , who gave Zeon the thunder and made the thunderbolt: in all else they were like the gods, but one eye only was set in the midst of their fore-heads. And they were surnamed Cyclopes because one orbed eye was set in their foreheads. Strength and might and craft were in their works.”
Jocasta’s eyes strayed to their agora where temples as white and grand as those in Thebes, though certainly not grander, rose, but none of them were as high as the city’s acropolis, its own citadel with its long temple to the strange virgin goddess Jocasta could never quite believe in.
“For of all the children that were born of Earth and Heaven, these were the most terrible, and they were hated by their own father from the first.And he used to hide them all away in a secret place of Earth so soon as each was born, and would not suffer them to come up into the light: and Heaven rejoiced in his evil doing. But vast Earth groaned within, being straitened, and she made the element of grey flint and shaped a great sickle, and told her plan to her dear sons. And she spoke, cheering them, while she was vexed in her dear heart:
“My children, gotten of a sinful father, if you will obey me, we should punish the vile outrage of your father; for he first thought of doing shameful things.'
So she said; but fear seized them all, and none of them uttered a word. But great Cronos the wily took courage and answered his dear mother:
‘Mother, I will undertake to do this deed, for I reverence not our father of evil name, for he first thought of doing shameful things.'
So he said: and vast Earth rejoiced greatly in spirit, and set and hid him in an ambush, and put in his hands a jagged sickle, and revealed to him the whole plot.
And Heaven came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Earth spreading himself full upon her.
Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father's members and cast them away to fall behind him.
“What a vile tale, said one of the women with them.
“It is a noble tale,” the poet said, who was no Anticlea, and who could not even play the harp. “If it is vile to you then that is because it is beyond women’s minds.”
“A foot in your ass and a reminder to learn respect isn’t beyond a woman’s mind, though,” Phocis reminded him.
Well, yes, that was a thing Grandmother would not even threaten, but do. In this great chamber, full of veiled women, the only ones who were not veiled, were the Theban women, and the man seemed to take Phocis’s words quite seriously, and cleared his throat from where he sat on the stool in the middle of the room.
“But Rhea was subject in love to Cronos and bare splendid children, Vesta, Demeter, and gold-shod Teleia and strong Dis, pitiless in heart, who dwells under the earth, and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker, and wise Zeon, father of gods and men, by whose thunder the wide earth is shaken. These great Cronos swallowed as each came forth from the womb to his mother's knees with this intent, that no other of the proud sons of Heaven should hold the kingly office amongst the deathless gods. For he learned from Earth and starry Heaven that he was destined to be overcome by his own son, strong though he was, through the contriving of great Zeon
“Therefore he kept no blind outlook, but watched and swallowed down his children: and unceasing grief seized Rhea. But when she was about to bear Zeon, the father of gods and men, then she besought her own dear parents, Earth and starry Heaven, to devise some plan with her that the birth of her dear child might be concealed, and that retribution might overtake great, crafty Cronos for his own father and also for the children whom he had swallowed down.”
The Attic women only nodded, though Jocasta noted, some were frankly not paying attention. The Lady Aspasia was paying more attention to the servant painting her toenails than to the story.
“What comes next?” Phocis said.
It was because of grandmother they were here. Grandmother had noted for weeks that the King in Thebes was dying, and that he had appointed no heir, that the Great Families would be jockeying for power.
“But there is already an heir, living in Attica, the Princess Terpsichore, the only remaining daughter of Oepidus and there is her neice, Harmonia.”
Even Father had felt the need to point out that Thebes would never receive a queen as ruler.
“They did in the days of Iocaste, when she reigned with Creon as her deputy, and when no one knew who Oedipus was. The only reason he was king was because he was her husband.”
Manaen had assented to this. It had been two years since the disgrace in Cyra, and Thebes seemed on its way to another disastrous war, again joining with Attika as well as Taurs, and this seemed the perfect cover for Phocis to take her—as she pointed out—marriagable granddaughter to Attika.
“I want to get a look at these princesses. I had though Polyneice’s daughter should be queen because Terpsichore never had it in her. If only Antiope had bent. If only she had not taken her life. She was a fierce woman. She would have been a marvelous queen. The council might have forced Creon down, and she might be queen even now, and we wouldn’t be running off to a losing war every few years.”
And this was why they were in the house of Aspasia listening to this poet, and why Phocis asked the poet, bored, “What comes next?”
“Why the old gods fail,” the poet said. “Everyone knows that. The Titans are overcome by Zeon and his brothers and sisters. Zeon comes to rule the world, splitting it between himself as his brothers, Pos Eidos the Lord the Sea, the Earthshaker and Dis Aidon the King of the Dead. The Goddesses bow the will of the Gods. Zeon becomes the father of gods and men as he is now.”
Phocis seemed unimpressed.
“Lady, in Thebes you have never heard that truth.”
“No, Thebes is ruled by men just as is Attika, and everywhere in Ellix where men live they love the tale that poet Hesiod spun on Evio three hundred years ago. The poet who said women were invented as a curse to men, when it is so clear,” Phocis looked around the room, “that it is the other way around.”
Here Aspasia threw back her head and laughed. The Princess Terpsichore smiled quietly, but Harmonia clapped her hands together.
The poet stood up incensed.
“I speak holy words.”
“Your words are a load of old shit,” Phocis declared, “But I will say nothing more, for I am on a mission of good will between our cities, and the Gods know I have accumulated such bad will in my own.”

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an interesting story within the story! Great to get back to this story. This world just gets more fascinating! Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

The action was a little halted by the storytelling, and of course we're away from Manaen this time around, so I wondered how interesting that would be.

 

[ChrisGibson]

PHOCIS SPEAKS MYTHICALLY!

“You are so free!” Harmonia said.
“I am old,” Phocis said. “Being old can seem a lot like being free.”
“Lady, I know why have you come,” Terpsichore said. “Or at least I think I do. My uncle is dying.”
“He is not long for this world, let us say,” Phocis noted as they walked along the arcade of Aspasia’s house. “Someone will replace him.”
“Yes, that’s a sure thing. And when that happens we will be in Attika.”
“My Lady—Princess—” Phocis began. “When that happens you could just as well be in Thebes.”
“I will never return to Thebes,”
Phocis nodded.
“That is the place of my great pain. My family all died at the gates of Thebes.”
“I thought you would feel that way,” Phocis said, “and I do not blame you.”
“Lady Phocis, I am not as strong as you.”
“Strength has nothing to do with it. You saw far more than me. Lost far more than me. Have more to risk than me. I did not truly expect you to come back and fight for the throne of a city that has done you so much wrong.”
“You were thinking of Harmonia.”
“She is young, and only knows that there is a city that rules a kingdom and that kingdom could be hers and that city is full of men who have done her wrong. Such a thing could play in a girl’s imagination.”
“It would play in a girl of Argo. I brought Harmonia here to Attika.”
“Where the women have no aspirations.”
“Aspirations have been crushed out of the women of Attika for centuries,” Terpsichore said.
“That is not why I brought her here, though,” the tall woman with an aureole of brown hair hanging above both shoulder said. “At least, it is not the total reason. It was here Father came after he blinded himself. To a town near the shrine of the Two Goddesses, and it was the King of this city who gave us shelter. So it always seemed like the place to be. The things that you see… as short comings, I did not. Everything in Thebes had already taught me not to be a woman of ambition. Attika is home.”

“What is Thebes like?”
“Well,” Jocasta said after a moment, “it’s hard to say. It is my home.”
“Is it fairer than Attika?”
“To me,” Jocasta said. “Because it is home. I love it. All of it. And I miss it. And I miss the freedoms. I think Attika is more marble and Thebes is more stone. The stone is golden like the sun has filled it. And we have our seven great bronze gates, the seven gates, the Tydeon, the Capaneon, the Adrastion, and out of the southwest part of town where I live, the God Gate, and then Hippomedon, Parthenopeon, named for Semele the mother of Iacchus, the Gate Amphiaraos, and lastly, closest to the palace, the Cadmaen which leads to the Cadmea, our citadel with its temples, long halls, the great many storied palace and its high towers. That all would be yours I suppose, if you were queen.”
“Do you think I should be?”
“All I know,” Jocasta said “is that my grandfather died fighting for your father because he thought he was the rightful king, because he was, and now old Creon is dying and there will doubtless be some battle between lesser men who want to put a crown on their head. I honestly don’t know what you should do, or how you would do it. It is my grandmother, remembering her husband and the support she gave your father, who wants you to be the queen. But the truth is, I cannot say what you should do
“I think,” Jocasta added, “that a woman is so very often asked to do what she should, what someone else tells her she should do, that she must find, at last, what it is that she wants to do.”
“And what is it that you want to do?” Harmonia asked Jocasta.
“I don’t really know. I know Grandmother wants me to marry. I know I don’t want to. Not now. I know I want to be married to someone of my choosing, and I haven’t met that choice. I know that I want to be free. And freedom is… a sticky business. It’s hard to describe.”
“You Thebans are so strange”
“But Princess,” Jocasta reminded her, “I am named after the Queen, your grandmother. You are a Theban.”
“I do not mean it as an insult,” Harmonia said. “It is a good strangeness.”
“Well,” Jocasta said, at a lack for words, “it is your strangeness.”
“Do you tell the stories of Hesiod, the Evio poet. Your grandmother said…”
“Grandmother says a lot.”
“Do you all know Hesiod?”
“Its not the story I learned Those aren’t the gods I know. The gods your Hesiod said are dead or irrelevant are the gods we worship in my house. But then, my family is from Axum and the priests of Axum have the old faith, the faith of the first people who lived before the Danaans swept down.”
“These things you speak of are strange to me.”
“Some of them are strange to me.”
“Tell me the story.”
Jocasta spoke, as if she was hearing it from her Anticlea.
“It did not start with Chaos and all of that business,” she said.
“In the beginning, De Meter, The Goddess of All Things, rose up out of Chaos, but found no place to rest her feet and so she divided the sea from the sky, dancing lonely upon its waves. She danced towards the south, and the wind set in motion behind her seemed something new and apart with which to begin a work of creation. As she spun about the winds became the Great Serpent, the Father of Serpents. Thus is she called the Mother of Serpents. Together they twirled, becoming warmer until they curled one about the other, and so the Mother was got with child. The Father became the Serpent and she the Dove, brooding over the waters, and thus, in time, she laid the Egg which opened to pour forth all creation. The Sun, the Moon, all the Stars, and the very unformed earth came from this wave, for Olodumare, who is the Great Serpent, coiled seven times about this egg, until it hatched and split in two.”
“Out tumbled all things that exist, her children: sun, moon, planets, stars, the earth with its mountains and rivers, its trees, herbs, and living creatures. In his seven times twining with the Egg and with his Queen, Olodumare brought fourth the seven Eldest, the Titans. The first man was Arcas and some say he sprang from the soil of Arcadia, but all know that the first men came from the east, in the gardens south of Babalon where the four rivers join together. Arcas, if anything, was the first of the Pelasgo, the ancestors of the ancient people of the south and of Axum. He taught men whom followed him to make huts and feed upon acorns, and sew pigskin tunics such as poor folk still wear in Evio and Phocis.”
When Jocasta stopped talking, Harmonia said, “Does the story go on?”
“Oh yes,” Jocasta said. “Anticlea would say the story never ends and continues even to this moment, when I am telling it. But for, now, that is all I can do.”


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! This story is so different but I still love it! Exploring the history is very interesting. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, tomorrow we return to Manaen and Mykon and all of our friends in Thebes. Less history and more.... action. Action of every sort.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WE CONCLUDE THIS CHAPTER OF KING OS ALL THESE RUINS....


“As the musicians played long into the night, men in turbans beating their drums, the bareheaded flutists sending shrill music high into the air along with the sparks of fire, they watched Mykon and the others free of weary battle link arm and arm, kicking their legs out, now and again some of the men like Tucides or Oiklos stepping out, crossing their arms, kicking their legs out as far as they could, squatting as low to the ground as possible. Marophon, who had sat out for a while and was gnawing on a great joint of ox, motioned to the wagon that had brought more wine. Pyramus came out of the dance to him, holding out his hand.
“Come on old man, you’re not as old as you think.”
Marophon threw back his head and laughed. He rose, surprised by how unsteady mixed wine had made him, and entered the dance. All along the beach he saw fires burning and further back, lost in the darkness were their ships, long and slender turned on their side for the night. Tomorrow they would reach the harbor of Plateia and then ride on to Thebes.
“I can’t entirely feel my legs!” Marophon shouted.
“That’s how you know you’re drunk enough!” Mykon shouted.
Though he was certainly a man now, and there was a day’s growth of beard on his face, he was young enough to have the sweet quality of a boy. But Marophon’s mind could not retain sweet memories, and so he lost his footing, but caught himself gloriously on one foot. Dyklos thought this was intentional and clapped, shouting, “Dance!”
At once the other men in a line cried, “Dance! Dance!”
And Marophon went to the old movements, legs out, going as low as possible. Lysander came out to catch his hand and then Mykon’s, the three of them twirling, coming apart, coming back together as the flutes gave way to heavy, insistent drumming and the swaying musicians began a low singing somewhere between moaning and the swarming of bees. Beyond, the dark sea washed lazily against the beach under a moonless sky.
“Thebes is restored!” Lysander shouted out embracing Chiton.
“Fuck Thebes!” Mykon cried out, taking a skin of wine and squirting into his mouth, and then over his head. “We are restored.”
“We’ve been restored,” Marophon said, staining his chiton, the white of it plastered with sweat.
“No, we had begun to be restored,” Mykon told him. “Now we truly are.”
Marophon looked at the young man stretched across the sand.
“General,” Marophon said to Mykon, “you think like your father.”
Mykon winked at Marophon and said, “I will take that as a compliment. However it was meant.”



Unlike the great acropolis down south in Athene, the Cadmea was of golden limestone and Thebans thought the southern city vulgar, hard to see at noon with all of its unnecessary white stone, with all the glinting silver of its mines and the gold and lapis they bought with that silver. Trying too hard was the general judgment of a Theban. The Cadmea did not rise as high, for it was built on a flattened hill, and not that granite rock it took a day to climb up, and unlike the acropolis dedicated to that strange hermaphroditic goddess they worshiped or, more likely, made up, the Cadmea was dominated by the great, many pillared and porticoed palace. Manaen had always thought that, elegant as it was, it resembled so many long and short, flat gift boxes stacked across each other. Many hidden courts were in it, but the great public flagstone court was open to all. Here was the great statue of Herakles, the true god of the city, the strong one and the conquerer, the fighter, manliest of men. Down below, toward the agora was his temple beside the temple of Apollyon and then, above them all the twin temples of the Mother and the Father. Outside of the city was the shrine of Iacchus, the great and terrifying who never dwelt well in city walls.
This morning Manaen and Clio stood, hands folded before the delegation of somewhat hostile men who were coming to him out of the main door of the palace. Clio looked to her uncle. He nodded to her. He looked at them, and then looked away, up to the solid Fire Tower to his right, to the Assembly House, to these men again.
“There’s no need to blink and stare and pretend you don’t know who I am,” Manaen said.
“I know exactly who you are,” the oldest man said. “What I don’t know is why you have intruded on my house? Or why you have brought this woman.”
“This woman is Clio daughter of Memnon Arabatitus, wife of Colonel Lysander Coread, a priestess of the God. As for this being your house?” Manaen laughed. “the Cadmea is the house of the whole city, and the gods know you’ve intruded on my house enough. You and Cyron were first to call for my father’s head.”
“He was a traitor,” the old man grumbled.
“Careful,” Manaen said. “The difference between a traitor and a king is who controls the armies. Here you stand, Creon, one of many men who had not a king for father or grandfather or even great grandfather, who by pretended loyalty to the city and scheming, took the crown twice and has held it ever since you oversaw the slaughter of both your nephews and your niece.”
“This is treason!” Cyron cried.
“It is treason,” Manaen said, “if truth is treason. And if truth is treason it is a sad day in Thebes. But truth has been treason before, like when your poor niece and son died in a cave and you—you took a deep breath—because you could sit on your throne a little longer.”
“He is our king!” Cyron said.
“Yes, but how much longer? There is no heir. He has chosen no one. Standing on order his whole life, he is content for the Fifty-Five families to descend into chaos at his death.
“Or,” Manaen said, lifting his finger, “is it true that, like me, you look to what is left of your family, your two nieces?”
“A woman cannot rule Thebes,” Cyron said, but Manaen turned to the King.
At this Clio cleared her throat, and Manaen touched her hand, lightly.
“Your sister did, and through her ruled Oedipus, for no one knew his true origin. Through her, for that matter, so do you, Creon.”
“You can leave anytime you want to,” Cyron said beside the King.
“Yes,” Manaen said, looking around the high buildings that made the court of the palace. “This is true. You’ve always been quick to remind me. But I think I’ll walk around a little longer.”
As Manaen bowed and hurned his back, his black robes sweeping the floor, the King called out, coughing and clutching his chest as he did, “Why are you here?”
“I haven’t seen it up close in twenty years,” Manaen turned to the King, “and now with things the way they are, it appears I’d better get used it.”
As they walked through the Cadmea, Clio said, “And now they’ve fallen into your hands.”
“Niece, they’ve fallen into our hands,” Manaen said. “And all because we waited.”
He stopped, for outside of the palace, on this great court where the council building, the old Temple of Harmon and the great statue of Herakles stood, he could look over the city, four districts spread toward four of the great, twisting and turning walls. How different his city looked from here. From here it looked, at last, like his city.
“Patiently. Bit by bit, brick by brick,” Manaen said. “And now, though the city guard is strong and this citadel is filled with my enemies, they do not dare attack because the armies returning from the coast, the armies that once set out against Cyra and failed, and are now covered in glory, are ours.”


MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

An excellent conclusion to the chapter! Great change is happening and it is nice to see. Good for Manaen. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

There will be more Manaen tonight, because I need to take a step back and work with Russell and Nights in White Satin.

 

[ChrisGibson]

MONSTER: derived from the Cyran Monstum, meaning: Great beyond belief, divine, terrifying, divine omen, portent, sign; abnormal shape, prodigy, a wonder. Its correlating Lower Ellixian word is Τέρας (Teras), related to terrifying and meaning alternatively monster, freak, prodigy, or abortion.

from –The Fifth Alexandrian Dictionary of Ellixian.

“Of the same other were born both Gods and Monsters, for they are one.”
-Photonikos of Clamirrae
-





CHAPTER SEVEN

LYING WITH MONSTERS

Τέρας



AS THEY RODE CLOSER to the city, further in land, their hearts were light, but there was something stearn and soft inside of Pyramus. He turned to young Mykon. He loved this one, perfect soldier he was, already a magnificent fighter before he had agreed to enter into the fierce training of the battle school. It seemed to Pyramus that he himself had just yesterday he had been a such a youth. This year he turned eight and twenty, by no means an old man, but neither was he the boy he had been when he came, eager, to the armies, when he decided he would be part of the Sacred Band.
He had seen the troops marching in the city, and he had seen, above all, Marophon Cleomanes, strong and handsome, eyes flashing, leading the troops to victory. His family had been knights of the city for years, with a house here in the capital, but their true estate in Eteka toward the mountains. They were all bronze haired, for long ago the Aktade clan had come from the north and moved gradually south. His great-great grandfather Nestor had fought gloriously in the Dakan wars, and been granted land and a noble daughter of an Agea family. All of Nestor’s sisters had married into Aegi families as well, upping the status of the Aktade and so, though not one of the leading families, they were a respected one ,and part of the citizenry. Pyramus could trace himself through three Aegi families and by his mother, through one of the Sparti. The Aktade name must be covered in glory and so, when he was fifteen he had come to the Citadel to study at the battle school.
It had been the winter his sister Syntache had married. The days were given to lifting weights, to weapons practice, to running until others about him began to drop, until he dropped, barely clothed, over humps of the worst snow, for it was the worst winter in a century. He boxed and was boxed until his eyes were blackened and despair rose to swallow him up. Then he tamped it down. They made blood sacrifice to Herakles, the bowels of bulls splattered on them.
One day they stood outside at attention half the afternoon, not allowed to sit or shift legs while the wind whistled, and grey snow snapped against them. A soldier rode back and forth, looking down on them through the slits of their helmets, but another came up, smacking him down.
“Get off your horse!” he shouted, pulling off his fierce helmet, “we are all in this together. If a boy can do this so can you.”
And this was the first time he’d seen the blue cloaked Marophon up close. In the snow, the unshaven young general turned to Pyrramus, catching the boy’s eye, and before he could look away, Marophon winked.
For the rest of that grueling training, Pyramus determined he could do anything, and at the battle practices when young soldiers fought with the older troops, Marophon picked him.
“I like your spirit,” Marophon roared while they clashed swords.
Catching his breath, concentrating on fighting and not knowing what to say, Pyramus stammered, “Thank you.”
In those days there were real campaigns to fight and the army, headed by the Sacred Band, never lost. This was before they made compact with Attika, when they remembered that Attika had sided with the wrong prince and Thebes was steadily reasserting its power of the scattered land of Phocia. The Battle of Annacite, where they had taken ships, but not fought on the ships, was a victory for Thebes, but it was marred by the loss of Actaeon and Narcissus, two members of the Sacred Band. By the sea that night, they sang:

“You Castor and Pollux,
who race over the wide earth and the
whole sea
On the backs of swift-footed horses
Easily rescue men from shrill death…”
Holy Muse, sing the Twins of Zeon,
Whom fair Leda, mixed in love!”

Back then they built the pyres high. and Pyramus thought how the victory fire on the beach only a few days ago was like this pyre that night. The flames licked the night, where they had celebrated another victory and remembered deaths as well, they sang.

“Help! He is gone. That wild boy,
Love, has escaped!
Call on the Twins with prayer and vow,
Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow.”


As meat and bread were thrown on the roaring pyre, and it burned hot against Pyramus’s face, suddenly, Marophon lifted up his head and sang:

“Oh, my friend,
For I am not safe—
I lie like a curling vine
Flung in the fire
before you send
My ashes under earth
pour in strong wine,
Then on the drunken urn write,
“Hades, know
Love sends this gift to death”—
And bury me and go!”


The fire burned a little longer before General Aktakos poured wine over it and the night gathered over them.
It was that night, while he was drifting to sleep under his great cloak that Marophon came to him. He knew what it was. He opened his cloak to him. In the night, after they had given themselves to love, Marophon whispered, “When I join the Sacred Band—”
“But how do you know?”
“I know,” Marophon said with certainty. “When I join, will you join with me?”
“Yes,” Pyramus said. Tomorrow, when he looked back on it he would be ashamed of the joy he felt in Marophon’s arms, planning a future based on the deaths of two men, but tonight, held in his arms, after love and going toward love again, he felt only joy.
And so they had gone from strength to strength and joy to joy right up until the ill fated Cyran campaign where all oracles had been bad, and the wind had been bad and, above all, Marophon’s predictions had been bad. But in the end the city had sent them and so they went and when they were disgraced the city abandoned them, returning to that beach there was only a small party led by a small man, one whom Pyramus had always despised but was suddenly amazed by. And so it was, in his worst place, that Pyramus Aktade met Manaen.



In those first years when he joined the army, the winters were hard and cold. Pyramus remembers being at Marophon’s side, the two of them high stepping their horses through heavy snow under the dark pines. It was during these troopings around the city that Marophon began to talk about his life, about his wife, about his first love.
“He is the son of the traitor, isn’t he?”
And though Marophon had agreed, Pyramus was not completely happy with his reluctance to agree.
This was the same time that Marophon had introduced Pyramus to Charis.
“She looks like you,” Pyramus teased, “only pretty.”
Marophon and his father seemed to be of a mind that it would be best for Pyramus to marry the girl, and the next winter, in the main room while candles were lit all about and two flower crowns were put on their head, the priest made a circle about them. They next circled each other seven times and were wed. While the dancing and singing went on outside, Pyramus, whose main home was three days out of the city and always remained in Marophon’s townhouse anyway, was lead through the old courtyard and to their new room filled with flowers and lit lamps.
“I am nervous,” he confessed, the flower crown still on his head. “I have never been with a girl.”
Charis was dark haired and laughing and she kissed him quickly on the lips and took his hand.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I will show you. I have been with several.”
Pyramus was shocked by this, but didn’t show it. He wondered how much Maro or Maro’s father knew about the girl, but then why shouldn’t women have lives of their own? And wasn’t the purpose of the husband and wife something altogether different from romance? After all, surely he was going back to Marophon’s bed.
Dimming the lamps, Charis laughed low in her throat while she took down her gown and he found himself rising, cock hard at the sight of her breasts, firm and little like apples, the curve of hips, the dark v of hair between her thighs, the musk rising from there as she closed her eyes and touched herself, as she touched him. Charis hummed to herself and sang:

“But come here, if ever before,
when you heard my far-off cry,
you listened. And you came,
leaving your father’s house.”

“What in the world?” he said breathlessly.

“A poem,” Charis said, later, as they lay together in the darkness, “by a woman from the islands. She loved women,” Charis said, running her hand over Pyramus’s stomach, “and she loved men too. Like me sometimes. Like you.”
While he lay half awake, Charis added, “I know Maro passed this door twice, full of lust and full of envy. Go to him, lie in his arms. Tell him what it was like to be with his sister.”
Then Charis, her nails on his breast, looked up at him.
“And what was it like, Pyrs Aktade, to lie with his sister?”
“Different,” Pyramus said “Strange. Wonderful,” he added.
He did not add that it felt a bit like cheating.
But Charis was his wife after all, and a lusty woman, and what was strange for him became common to the result of a child after a year He disguised his joy, for Maro had lost a wife and two children, and when it had happened, Pyramus had mourned with him but felt a secret triumph that Manaen, this man he talked of in the past, had not come, as he had not come when the whole city learned the rich merchant’s wife was dead. And then, in the house of the Dione, the second wife of Manaen had died and several people had gathered, and Marophon said, “I have to see him.”
It was true, in Thebes sex and love were not so hoarded as in other places. Pyramus loved his wife and yes, he lay with her as often as he lay with Maro. He’d known that before they had come together, Maro had known other men as he had too. His first time with a boy was when he was eleven, wrestling in the bath house. But for some reason, knowing that Marophon had slept with Manaen—though he never said it—knowing how much time Marophon spent out of his town house, away from Pyramus and in Manaen’s bed, stung. In Thebes, indeed among most of the people of Ellix, relationships bled into each other. As a member of the Sacred Band, he and Maro were lovers, and this love produced mighty soldiers, victories in battle. But such a love made no children, and so they both were wed, another union. There was all manner of unions.
In Athene, to the south, there were rules, a man took a boy for a lover for a few years and then the boy became a man and married, that was the end of it. Women and their doings with each other were completely ignored while they were guarded zealously from other men. But in Thebes, there were no definite rules, and the lack of rules had not prepared Pyramus for his feelings when Maro went back to Manaen.
There were boys for the taking, and Pyramus took them, but when the war to Cyra was announced, though Marophon denounced it, Pyramus admitted now, if only to himself, that he had not denounced as strongly as he might have. He had wanted Maro on the sea, among the troops, with him. He had prized lying with Maro every night and having him away from Manaen and away from that boy Manaen had whom Maro apparently also had some sort of feelings for. This jealousy had gotten them only defeat and the end of the Sacred Band.
And so he was unprepared for that day on the beach when, though forsaken by the city, Manaen’s delegation had come to meet the soldiers, and he had spoken for once with this man he hated. How ashamed he had been, and how in awe of him, smaller man that he was, his eyes wise, head shaven, completely in control of himself, so at ease with who he was he welcomed his lover’s lover into his home. Despite the depression of those days, there was also excitement. Manaen had drawn up the list of people coming to greet them, and Maro’s mother and Charis were among them along with the children and his own siblings. Charis and Syntache were outraged at the shame dealt to the city, and his brother, Euxides declared that false King Creon should be beheaded. In those days, traveling back to the city of their disgrace, Pyramus, who had always found comfort in being the city’s man, found comfort in rebellion, in being part of something that did not find its source in the city, but in justice, and in survival.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to learn some more of the characters history! I really enjoyed this portion! Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Tomorrow night we're back to Rossford.

 

[ChrisGibson]

The night of the great feast he had danced drunkenly with Charis swinging from his arm, a little drunken too. The children were back in the large house across town, and Charis said she was too tired and too drunk to travel back.
“I will show you a room,” Phocis said. “We have many rooms.”
Except for the poorest houses, which were one or two room affairs, most homes were a few rooms about an often dusty courtyard where work was done. Wealthier houses had a second story and then a balustrade going all around so that one could walk from room to room on the second story. Houses wealthier still, did without the balustrade and had corridors and rooms on each side, a full upper floor. The stones walls were finished in white or golden stucco. This was the home the Anaxionade had. But when one entered it, they came through the gate, through the original courtyard which had been made into a garden, the servants quarters removed elsewhere, and upon entering what would have been the main room, saw it was an anteroom opening up to a lavish atrium and a second square courtyarded structure behind the first. So, yes, there were many rooms in the house of the Anaxionade.
It was while he was on this parapet, looking at the moon, wondering about his life, thinking of going back to the sleeping Charis, that he had been surprised by Manaen and then, suddenly, he was naked and solid and dark in the night, and Pyramus was kissing him hard on his mouth, pressing himself close to him, spending himself in the night, under the moon, surprised by his need, by the loudness of his voice when his body arched and he cried out in the triumph of orgasm. They had made love two more times, giving themselves to every position, experiencing no shame and absolute need, and as they passed into sleep, Pyramus’s thigh draped over Manaen’s, he knew his life had changed again.




The day they had lost command of the armies, standing in the square of the Cadmea, the Sacred Band had, for the first time in one hundred and fifty years, been disbanded. Pyramus thought, “The purpose of a man and woman in marriage is to make children, the purpose for a man and a man coming together in the Sacred Band is to make war. We are like a barren couple. We have no purpose.”
They had gone to the whore house furthest from the Cadmea, where in the midst of the dark tavern men drank, and off to the sides, against walls, men fucked. The morning after he’d made love to Manaen for the first time, Mykon had come into the room, naked and half asleep, and Pyramus had seen how lovely the boy was. Later, when Mykon had come into the bed where he and Maro and Manaen slept, the boy had snuggled closer to him, their snuggling becoming fooling around, and when Manaen had left, he and Maro had shared Mykon, initiating him into sex, exhausting themselves though they had thought there could be no more exhaustion. Now they got him a whore and while Pyramus watched his buttocks flexing as he pumped her against the wall, Maro took him by the and and upstairs, side by side, they plowed their own whores. When they were done and the women gone, Mykon had come and they had resumed sex with each other, all three of them again. It had been an indulgence like drink, hoping that at the end of it they would not still feel bruised and deflated, and it had been thus they had come back to the house of Manaen and he had told them they would be going down to Chio. Down to Chio where music played all night to the great god Pan, and healing was given for brokenness. Now Pyramus found himself in this strange relationship where he and Marophon were both the older lovers to Mykon, and he was falling as much for the boy as he had for his father. Manaen was not part of this though. That night he had been with that witch priest, and those days in Chio, with the witch priest he remained. They abided in Chio for three weeks, and all through those weeks more of the household, more of the army and more of the Sacred Band joined them.
Then, one morning, the witch priest Kybernets left, and Manaen called Pyramus into his rooms. Manaen looked dignified and there was an aura upon him, something like the first time Pyramus had known him, or even the first night when, though naked, he seemed clothed in a type of strength. He was in a black robe and mantle hemmed in gold, and he was writing at his desk.
“We have found ourselves in a mess,” he said, at last, “like Chaos at the beginning of things. And if it is to remain Chaos this will not truly be the beginning. We must sort it out. We must sort it out as Hesiod says it was sorted out. Do you remember the old story?
“A little,” Pyramus said wondering, “Why am I so nervous? Why does he make me so nervous?”
“The first thing to arise out of Chaos was darkness and night but then, when creation started—”
“The first thing was love,” Pyramus concluded.
“Ah,” Manaen turned to him, lifting a finger, “Yes, love.
“And you remember, in the city, all the various relationships. Maro your lover when in the Sacred Band, but my lover from childhood, but all three of us wed and keeping faith with our wives, all of these wheels moving at the same time. And I had intended to give Maro to Mykon, which worked well enough, and then there was the matter of you.”
“I must have complicated things.”
“We complicated things,” Manaen said. “I didn’t understand I wanted you, or that I would want you again. Want your arms, your kiss, your hunger, want your mind, to know about you, to pick your general’s brain, be curious about you. It seems fitting that Maro should remain with Mykon, and you with me.”
“Then will we sleep together for now?”
“If you would have me. Now and all the time,” Manaen said. “I want the both of you. But it must be organized, and I do not really want you both with my son at the same time, but he is a man now, and my feelings don’t really matter there. I do want you both with each other, though, for that is the way of the Sacred Band.”
“The Sacred Band is dead. The city destroyed it.”
“No, no,” Manaen shook his head. “I have decided. Do you not see all the people you know who have come down to this village? I have counted, one hundred twenty-nine plus one of the old Sacred Band remain. Of those of the army, you and Maro can see who is fitting and raise them up. Partner one of them with Mykon. He shall be a member as well. The Sacred Band is not called the Civic Band. It is Sacred. You will be concsecrated here, in Chio, to the oldest of Gods. Chio will be your headquarters.”
While Pyramus looked on Manean shrewedly, he said, “And you will be our governor. You will be our patron?”
“Yes,” Manaen said, “and when the army of Thebes under Cleomanes fails, and it will, they will have to look to me and to the generals of the Sacred Band, and we will be waiting, and then we will triumph.”
Pyramus’s face was close to his.
“How can you know, though?” he said.
“I know,” Manaen whispered, shaking his head. “All we have to do is wait.”


MORE NEXT WEEK

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well some decisions have been made and I am still enjoying this story. I look forward to reading what happens next in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

There's another decision about to be made: and its a whopper

 

[ChrisGibson]

WE RETURN TO THEBES WHERE OUR FRIENDS ARE REVIEWING HOW THEY GOT FROM THEIR POINT OF DEFEAT TO THEIR CURRENT TIME OF VICTORY“


The Sacred Band is dead. The city destroyed it.”
“No, no,” Manaen shook his head. “I have decided. Do you not see all the people you know who have come down to this village? I have counted, one hundred twenty-nine plus one of the old Sacred Band remain. Of those of the army, you and Maro can see who is fitting and raise them up. Partner one of them with Mykon. He shall be a member as well. The Sacred Band is not called the Civic Band. It is Sacred. You will be concsecrated here, in Chio, to the oldest of Gods. Chio will be your headquarters.”
While Pyramus looked on Manean shrewedly, he said, “And you will be our governor. You will be our patron?”
“Yes,” Manaen said, “and when the army of Thebes under Cleomanes fails, and it will, they will have to look to me and to the generals of the Sacred Band, and we will be waiting, and then we will triumph.”
Pyramus’s face was close to his.
“How can you know, though?” he said.
“I know,” Manaen whispered, shaking his head. “All we have to do is wait.”
Six months it took to re establish themselves. Two years they spent roaming the country as a private army, defending Manaen’s mercantile enterprises and fighting for neighboring kings, policing territories where they were called. On the third year they covered themselves in glory, and every year, aside from the Sacred Band, they gathered more men to themselves, six hundred by the time Megacles Cleomanes the elder lay on his deathbed, after Karbantes was so soundly defeated, and the city of Thebes called on the Assembly to restore the Sacred Band to its proper place. Cyron had cried out against it and many others, for by then, like the increasingly debilitated Creon, he knew that to hand power to the Band was finally to take it from the hands of the Assembly, and even from the King.
There was a great funeral for Megacles the Elder, and now Marophon was the head of the House of Cleomanes, but by this time Marophon was no longer the chief general, Manaen had held a ceremony in his house in winter to officially make Pyramus Mykon’s lover and, though several times a week Pyramus lay in bed strategizing with Manaen, the other nights he did so with his son who was now the youngest general of the Sacred Band since Akkileus the Golden.
“We will come back,” Mykon Axionaides had declared, “if we are granted command of the army of Thebes. We will not be the highest army. From now on the entire army is ours,” he turned to Pyramus.
Manaen was not present. He did not have to be. He was, to Cyron, some black spider, weaving in the corner, for if Pyramus and Mykon were in control of the armies, then by long agreement the generals were under the command of Manaen. Cyron said so.
“Manaen is my father,” Mykon said. “Manaen is the head of the Anaxionade. I, as a citizen am also the head of the Anaxionade. Everything he has is mine and the other way around. There is no difference between Manaen and me. If you have seen me you have seen Manaen. Manaen and I are one.”
And so it was. And so, by the Anaxionade, Thebes was finally won.


“That,” Phocis noted, “is a tall and handsome man.”
“Most handsome,” murmured her lady servant Nausicaa.
“That is Prince Theon,” Jocasta noted. “I saw him this morning.”
They were walking down the women’s arcade beneath the Acropolis, for only on certain days did women ascend the the rocky plateau, and Phocis, beside the Princess Terpsichore, noted, “What a lovely young prince he is, Th fashion in this city is different from Thebes. I have noted they tend toward trousers.”
“Your Graces,” the Prince with the sword at his side, genuflected to Harmonia and nodded to Terpsichore, “and your ladyships. Greetings”
“Prince Theon, I am pleased,” Harmonia gestured for him to rise. “How may I serve?”
“I wish only to walk with you. I had searched for my lady, but not found her.”
“If one wishes to find a lady,” Jocasta noted, “there are only so many places in this city she can be.”
Theon raised her eyebrow, “Lady…”
“Jocasta.”
“Ah, yes, a face to the name. Do the rules of Athene chaff your free spirit?”
“In Thebes the only places women cannot go are the places no women wish to go,” Jocasta said. “That is all.”
“And where would go in Athene?”
“Everywhere,” Jocasta said, “but I see that almost every where is shut to me.”
She added, “At any road, you were paying court to my lady the Princess Harmonia.”
“Princess,” Theon said, though his eyes were slow on leaving Jocasta, “You have spent your entire life in Attika. Do you find the rules of our city as hard to bear as your friend?”
“I was used to them,” Harmonia said, “but of late, I am seeing things in a new way.”
He held out an arm for her to slip to slip her arm through.
“If I may accompany you,” he said, “perhaps we can talk about this.”
She nodded, “Perhaps we can.”
Phocis cleared her throat and clasped her hands, straightening the veil that hung from the bun she had made of her tea colored hair.
“We will walk ahead of the others.”
As they walked ahead of them, hands clasped—Jocasta made sure to clasp her hands like a lady, and smooth her veil—her grandmother continued, in that same voice, “Now a prince has come to court our lady.”
“I imagine it’s a good thing.” Terpsichore said.
“Has he ever done it before?” Phocis asked.
“To my knowledge no.”
“And with all the passion of a table leg,” Phocis nodded.
“Princes do not court out of affection, Lady,” Nausicaa reminded her. “You are highborn, and you know highborn people marry from duty and convenience.”
“All marry from duty and convenience,” Phocis said, “do not be fooled. And when I married your grandfather,” she turned to Jocasta, “it was a matter of duty. Still there was love. When your father married your mother, though you may not remember that marriage, he loved her. Why…” she murmured, “the Prince he paid more attention to you.”
“The question is why he pays so much attention now,” Phocis continued, “and the answer is dreafdfully simple. Creon is dying and now it seems like we are doing exactly what we are doing—they have finally seen through to it—which is sussing out a new monarch, and they know your brother is general of the armies of Thebes. His father, for I cannot imagine that half drawn boy walking behind us thought of it himself, had sent him to court the next queen.”
“Then that’s an army for us,” Terpsichore said.
“No, Princess,” Phocis said, “that’s an army for them. If the Prince of Attika becomes the King of Thebes, then Thebes will just be a city added to Athene, and the once noble Phocia will become a territory of Attika. We will be absorbed into Attika, and that I could not abide.”
“If you could not abide it,” Jocasta said, “then neither could the Assembly.”
“True, Granddaughter.”
“If she married him and returned to Thebes with him as her prince, it would be the quickest way to a civil war.”
The gallery darkened as they passed through the columns, and Terpsichore wondered, “Well, then what do we do?”
Phocis remembered the Princess Antiope, and she had never thought much of her sister. Terpsichore had made no impression upon her. Journeying to this city she thought to learn something of her. The fact that she was very plain looking meant nothing. This might make a woman harder, less reliant on her good looks or the pleasure of men. But this woman was lacking in all manner of wits, and her niece did not seem much better. She had tried to maintain the respect due to a princess of the blood, but now she placed a hand on Terpsichore’s wrist and said, “Do nothing until you hear from me.”

All in white, at the head of his household, Manaen arrived in the great square of the Cadmea to greet them, young Alexandra trailing behind him, that eternal frown on her face. Most of them time when he looked at her he thought, “I should never have let her live with Merope for so long,” but today, as the soldiers rode to the house, even she could not ruin his day. Mykon dismounted. He was magnificent, black cloak trimmed in gold tied back to reveal his leather cuirass, his bronze helmet with its red horsehair plume perched on the top of his head. Manaen opened his arms to his son, and in the presence of the Assembly, he went to one knee, and then rose, kissed him and embraced him. Pyramus was dismounting to the cheers of the city, and Marophon was as well, but Mykon, his green eyes fierce, the sun shining red on his unshaven cheeks, smiled on his father and continued to hold him.
“My son,” Manaen crooned, “You are safe. You are home.”
“I cannot wait for home and a bath!” Mykon declared.
“Can you wait a little longer?” Manaen said. “I wanted us to get out the city. I wanted us to all stay in Chio.”
Mykon looked about the square full of the people of Thebes, full of the members of the Assembly, and the folk of power and he said:
“Yes, Father. You have the right of it. I can wait long enough to make tht five mile trip.”





“When Telemachus heard his father thus
mentioned he could not restrain his tears,
and while Menelaus was in doubt what to
say or not say, Helen came down, dinner
being now half through, with her three
attendant maidens, Adraste, Alcippe,
and Phylo, who set a seat for her and brought
her her famous work box which ran on wheels,
that she might begin to spin.
. He was no longer general…”

“I have never cared for this song,” Manaen murmured as his wine cup was filled.
“Apparently neither does Anticlea,” Mykon smiled, looking to the young man who was singing tonight, “since she could not be bothered to recite it for us.”
Manaen murmured, “It’s too long she says.” He clearned his throat. “Makes her throat dry.”
Mykon grinned, He wore a white head band over his hair and a short chiton that exposed his buttocks, But he was young and beautiful, a general even before his prime, and while he stretched out on the couch beside his father, Manaen reflected the man once a boy, with the strength of a panther, could do as he wished.

After a little while Pisistratus complimented
Menelaus on his great sagacity,of which
indeed his father Nestor had often told him,
and said that he did not like weeping when
he was getting his dinner; he therefore
proposed that the remainder of their
lamentation should be deferred until next morning.
Menelaus assented to this,
and dinner was allowed to proceed.
Helen mixed some Nepenthe with the wine,
and cheerfulness was thus restored.

Mykon leaned over and took his father’s cup. He drank from it as when he was a child, smiling at him, and then he laid his head on his father’s lap.
“Father?”
“Yes,” Manaen looked down on him.
“Let me be a child. Tonight at least. Put your hands in my hair like when I was a child.”
Manaen was about to say, “But you are man.”
But he placed his hands in the thick, springy curls of Mykon’s hair, marveling at their softeness and strength, at the softness and strength of the long tall boy, grown into a man, who stretched out beside him.
Across the room, under the lamplight, Marophon, who had been making eyes of love at him, had fallen asleep, and Pyramus lay in Charis’s arms half awake himself. Ah, but they had been traveling. It was Manaen who had been here all the time.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion and some big decisions were made! This was an exciting chapter to read and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes indeed. Have a good rest of the day, and thanks for reading.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WHITE IN ATHENE, JOCASTA SEES THE STRANGE TEMPLE OF A MYSTERIOUS GODDESS, BACK IN THEBES, MANAEN IS SURPRISED BY A LOVER HER NEVER SUSPECTED.




In silence they walked down the dark gallery. It was very thin and very high and now and again white blue moonlight shone through, and then Harmonia gestured to her and Jocasta followed around the corner.
As they crossed one path, moonlight shone all around it and Jocasta looked down on the entirety of the city, and then they were back in darkness. Harmonia shuffled forward in the darkness, and now a golden light bloomed.
“Oh, my,” Jocasta marveled. Then she said, “And you’re sure no one will come here?”
“No,” Harmonia shook her head, clasping her hands as she looked up at the image. “This is the center of the Acropolis. This is the oldest part from days before things were the way they are. Only the most devout come here, and most have forgotten that there is a secret way.”
Most of its head lost in the darkness, sat a reclining figure, heavy breasted, her hands resting on the sides of a throne. On her wrist perched a great owl, but when Jocasta looked on her face, she gasped.
“The men of Attika tell that the owl is wise because it belongs to Pallas, their Goddess, the ever virgin, and that she who is a warrior and a virgin and an enemy to women, who lives like no woman, born from no woman’s womb, had a priestess by the name of Medusa. In this very temple she was raped by Eidon, the God of the Sea, but as if this was her doing, Pallas was so offended she turned Medusa into a great snake headed monster. As you can see, that is a corruption of the tale.”
In the Acropolis square, the beautiful virgin goddess, all in battle armor, bore a shield, and on that shield was the head of the ruined Medusa, but here, when Jocasta looked up, the goddess was nothing less than the hag mouthed, snaked haired Medusa Herself.
“Mea Deusa,” Harmonia murmured, touching the Goddess’s knee. “My Goddess.”
“A monster?” Jocasta said with wonder, a new respect filling her, and she could not tell it if it was for the Goddess or the girl who had led her here.
“Yes,” Harmonia said, faintly. “Yes, she is. All gods are truly. A monster is something huge, something too large, to threAtheneng. That which is monstrous is… unimaginable. It is a Cyran word. Monstrum.”
“Which means divine,” Jocasta said. “It is their word for something divine, too beautiful. An omen.”
“And that which is monstrous,” Harmonia said, “is like some strange jewel. It fits all those meanings depending upon under what light and what side you turn it.”


“Yes, yes,” Manaen murmured as he heard feet approaching on the other side of the curtain, “I’ve bathed for you. The lamps are lit for you.”
The warm wind blew the thin curtains and he said, “I knew you would come eventually.”
He could hear Maro’s footsteps on the other side of the curtain, pushing the curtain back, and now he said, “I even sent the servants away. A lover needs a lover to turn back the bedsheets and prepare the bed for him.”
As he rose and turned back the bed, Marophon’s hands rested timidly on his hips.
Manaen felt his lover’s chest pressed against his back, inhaled the smallest bit of sweat and his musky perfume, and now he placed his cheek against Manaen, closing his arms about him.
“My love,” Manaen murmured, closing his eyes to savor him, to enjoy his feathery kiss. He turned around to kiss him.
“Myka!”
It was Mykon holding him and Mykon still holding him.
“Let me hold you a little more,” Mykon said. “I missed you. I longed for you.”
Manaen said nothing, his penis wilted, his world tilted and the ground was gone from beneath his feet for a moment. Anything he said, “What is this?” “This is unseemly.” Sounded insincere, sounded like someone who was not him,
Mykon parted from him, holding his hands..
“Do you remember that night you gave me to Maro? Do you remember how you undressed me, undressed us both. Kissed us both tenderly, and then left us? And later, when wewere in the midst of it, you came back and you watched. When I was coming your hand was on my head. You kissed me so gently. And then, the next morning when I came to my room and you were with Pyramus, and when I came to the bed, you all left. But later when I came to your bed, you left me with them. Why did you leave?”
“Because it would have been improper for me to stay.”
“What is proper?” Mykon demanded. “Is anything proper? Or is it proper that we have the same lovers, that one goes from you to me, and yet in that circle we never have each other?”
Manaen shook his head, suddenly back to his senses.
“Where is Maro?”
“Asleep,” Mykon said. “And he will not wake. The wine is strong. He’ll sleep through the night.”
“You did that?”
“I had to try, Father. I had to make my case.”
“This is…. Unnatural.”
“But even the word unnatural does not come naturally to your lips,” Mykon said, looking down on him, yes, seductively. The way he had been doing for some time, Manaen realized.
“When did this idea come into your mind?” Manaen said.
“Slowly. Bit by bit,” Mykon told him. “As I rode about the two kingdoms fighting in the Sacred Bands, hearing the old stories. Ouranos the heaven ate his own children, but the one who survived castrated him, and then Kronos ate his own sons. But Zeon survived to ruin him. And then Zeon raped women, raped his sisters to produce sons he threatened. Fathers with the power of life and death over their sons, sons striving against their fathers. I heard other soldiers speaking of how they could never live up to their fathers, never really knowing if they were loved and never loving. And all I could think was, ‘But I love my father. He loved me. He was father and mother to me, so tender to me. He could take what he wanted, but he never would.’ And I began to think, though at first it terrified me, I will give him everything. I must give him…. Everything.”
The whole time, Mykon spoke in a very soft voice and now, he slipped out of his chiton and stood naked and long muscled, golden and beautiful.
“Everything I have is yours,” his lips landed on Manaen’s, still speaking, “and everything you have you have given me.”
He did not struggle from Mykon’s arms, or remove his lips, though he did not imeediately respond. When the boy was born, it would have been perfectly legal for him to be exposed on a rock and even now, by the law, he held power of death over him. Every reason for not letting Mykon kiss him, for not letting a man so close to him, so lovely to him, remove his gown and take him to the bed, every reason for not letting Mykon blow out two lamps, and then, by the light of one, link his body to his, melted away in the reality of this moment. In the end it was not enough to be kissed, to be stroked, to be caressed, he had to do the same. He longed to do the same.
Since the boy was fifteen and becoming a man, part of him had longed not only to stroke the hair, put to touch the back to experience the body. Since the night he had seen Mykon fucking Marophon, seen the hunger in the naked boy the morning after, he had wanted to give Mykon the satisfaction of that hunger and satisfy his own hunger too. It was like a wall was falling. He knew this now. Marophon had always been a stand in. Tonight, as their voices rose in the fulfillment of long denied passion, mouths pressed, tongues linked, limbs binding bodies together, nothing separated them.

MORE TOMORROW