Chapter 1: Chapter 1 – In Which A Woman Meets A Goddess

Wandering off the path in the Greek woods might not, in hindsight, have been the most sensible of choices. Compass and map notwithstanding, there were things there that a biochemist was not qualified to deal with. So, following the glimmers of mist along the tiny creek as I hiked upstream towards the tinkling music of a waterfall? Probably not the path of wisdom.

There was no way I wasn’t going that way, though. I’m an absolute sucker for the way that morning mist dances as it burns off, and I’ve never seen a waterfall that I didn’t want to stop and admire. And it wasn’t like I had somewhere in particular to be, a particular path to take.

It was just me, the woods, a week of vacation, and a hiking pack with five days’ food left and enough iodine to purify a month’s worth of water. It was my break from the humdrum of what passes for science in academia, from pipettes and flow cytometers and centrifuges, from exhausted, desperate postdocs trapped in the cycle of abuse and their publish-or-perish PIs. Exploring to find the small places of sublime beauty was why I was there in the first place.

The quiet snuck up on me. My feet crunching against the leaves and the snap of twigs sounded almost overwhelming as the birdsong, frogs, and other critters faded into silence, and it wasn’t long before the only things I could hear were myself and the water. Even so, by the time I noticed the song, I was coming around the bend and could see her through a break in the trees.

She was astonishingly beautiful. I don’t know how to convey the extent of it, how to put it into words. Slender, with this incredible Olympic Heptathlon physique and stunningly perfect skin, she lounged in the crystal-clear water of the pond with her head and shoulders pillowed on a mossy rock and her arms scratching the lowered heads of two enormous dogs that were lying there in perfect stillness. And that—or the weaponry—should have been a warning sign, but my mental inertia kept my feet going into the clearing, and when I almost tripped over a branch and had to step hard onto the friable ground to keep my balance, her eyes snapped over to me.

Hi, I wanted, or maybe should have wanted, to say. Sorry for disturbing you; I can go. But do you mind if I stay? It’s beautiful here, and if I wouldn’t be intruding, I’d love to sit by this pond and watch the waterfall. My name’s Sophie, and I appreciate your forbearance.

“Holy shit,” I said instead. “Are those javelins? Are they your javelins? Because oh my goddess do you ever have the arms for them.” I blinked a few times, seeing her eyes narrow, and took a very small, careful step backwards, flushed with embarrassment and a sudden nervous fear as her dogs’ heads came up. “Sorry, sorry, my mouth gets away from me, you’re beautiful and your gods look—I mean your dogs look great and I’ll just go now.”

A moment later, I turned back towards her, away from the impossibly thick brush and the needle-looking spines that barred what was previously a clear path. They ran all the way to the water, and a little more besides; there absolutely was no way I was getting through them, and no way I got through them in the first place.

“Or… not, I guess.” I tested one of the spines with the tip of my hiking boot, wincing as it went through the leather with ease. “Was there… I know there’s no way this was like this when I walked through.”

“Approach, child.”

I’d taken four fast steps towards her by the time my brain caught up. There was an unbelievable degree of command in her voice, and I’ve always been an absolute sucker for a pretty girl telling me to come nearer to her, so it’s not the fact that I obeyed that throws me for a loop. It was the fact that I was on unsteady, uneven ground, taking long steps at practically a running speed, and I didn’t fall on my face or my ass; and that broke whatever effect it was and I almost slipped, catching an easy smirk on her face.

“Okay, that was weird. This is weird.” I looked more closely at her, and at what was strewn around her. Notably missing were things like pants or shoes, footprints, a bag of any sort, or signs of anyone else, along with any collar or mark of ownership on the dogs; present were the dogs, three long javelins with what look like wickedly pointed tips, an unstrung bow, a shirt, and a horn in a vaguely familiar style.

That, and those two words had been Greek, and okay, I was fluent in Greek, but when I stopped to remember what words she used I could hardly recognize them, what with the linguistic drift. So how did I understand her?

I had enough time to perform the shift from looking inquisitive to gaping, along with the obligatory internal oh, probably in prelude to an oh shit, when she crooked her finger at me. I obediently kept walking forwards, because what else was I going to do? The way out was blocked, and the javelins were within reach of her hand. That’s a tunic, not a shirt, I thought to myself, uselessly. “I always thought you’d look older. More, I dunno, mid-twenties, at least? Though I guess the myths specifically described you as younger.”

From the look on her face, that was absolutely the wrong thing to say. “Younger?” The word buzzed in my ear and rippled across the waves, ancient yet somehow understandable. The muscles in her right arm—the arm next to the javelins—bunched, and I was fairly sure that my life hung in the balance for a split second before they relaxed. “You got hungry eyes, if you think I’m young.”

“Hey, look.” I opened my mouth to protest, but then realized that no, actually, I had been staring, there was definitely no arguing with that. She was glorious, lithe and powerful, and the water did nothing to hide her slender curves. “I apologize,” I said instead. “This is tremendously rude of me. I’d love to look away and appreciate the scenery, but I physically can’t, and I don’t know why. Is there something I should refer to you by, incidentally? The Delosi javelineer doesn’t really roll off the tongue.” I used the Greek for it, Dêlias and Aeginaea, as best I could, and her eyes softened a little. I could tell this because while I couldn’t look away from her, I could look at whatever part of her I wanted; but frankly, her face was so unfairly pretty that that hardly helped.

“You know my name; there a problem with it?” Her voice was like honey and also like distilled threat; a personal kind of threat, a run, so that you can die tired kind of threat.

“Lady Artemis,” I managed to choke out against the sudden pressure. “I meant no offense.”

“I know. And yet manners are manners, aren’t they?” Her smile was a thin little quirk of the lips, distant and almost displeased, and she waved lazily at the bank of the pond. “You may sit and bide for a time. You’ve shown enough respect to earn that, so I don’t mind letting you appreciate this little piece of the old days before I kill you. Nothing personal, you understand.”

Somehow I found that entirely unsurprising, which even at the time I could tell was an oddity. “Um. Thanks?” I sat down, mindful of my hiking pack. Getting up would be a pain, but I was finally able to take my eyes off of the goddess, and the terrain was miraculously comfortable, with a rock conveniently placed so that I could rest my pack against it and lean back, legs outstretched and butt on a soft patch of moss. I’d sat in chairs, expensive chairs, less comfortable than the bank of this pond, I was pretty sure.

And the pond itself and its surroundings were unbelievably pretty, almost literally worth dying for. The trees and underbrush were vibrant, the water crystal-clear with a bevy of easily-visible fish and the occasional lamprey or bivalve where there weren't artistically placed spots of green floating on the water. The trees climbed their way halfway up the stone that defined the far curve of the pond, giving way to mosses as the slope got steeper and the rock got less broken, and those trees leaned out over the water as if posing; and then there was the waterfall.

The waterfall was, obviously, the plat de résistance. It flung itself off the cliff above us, roaring as it hammered down into the pond’s depths, spraying rainbows for dozens of feet in every direction. There was a majesty in it, something profound and way beyond my ability to consciously get a grip on, but it was perfect. Not too loud, but still thunderous; not so high or with so much volume that I couldn’t internalize how big it was, but still coming down from a cliff, sheer and tall and grand.

The sublime moment lasted a while, and then I sighed, feeling my attention start to wander. “Hey, Artemis. Goddess of the Hunt, protector of girls and women.” I didn’t turn my head, instead watching a fish of some kind, probably some kind of brown trout, dart to and fro. “I know there’s nothing in your domain that suggests you’d be inclined to, and I have no way to propriate you. But if you’re gonna kill me, can you bring my phone to some place that has reception, let it send an email to my mom? Not that she’ll believe me, and my dad can basically fuck off, but I owe her some sort of goodbye. I don’t want…” I took a breath, letting it out, a little shakier than I’d have liked. “She’s losing her only daughter, I don’t want her to think I committed suicide.”

There was a long silence, long enough that I lost track of the fish I’ve been watching. I switched to another fish, a bigger one that looked like it’d taken a shine to another fish, and by that I mean it snapped up the other fish as food. The movement was explosive, a darting blur of color from a fish whose body barely moved as it shot forward in its pursuit of its snack, and I fought down the urge to applaud it for its flawless victory.

“So, hey.” There was a note of discomfort in Artemis’s voice, and that divine weight was gone in favor of an intimate informality. “Let’s forget about the killing thing, yeah? We’re just going to move on, I can’t let you go back home because I’m not even supposed to be here, but I can figure something else out, easy as hitting a mark.”

My head turned in disbelief. It was written in her new body language, clear as day in her tone; physically a lot looser, with an edge of guilt and shame. “Really? Really?”

Artemis sighed. “Oath to my mother, it was an honest mistake, really sorry. And how often do you get that from an Olympian; you wouldn’t get it from my brother, okay?” I kept staring at her, now gawking more than upset. “Obviously my bad, explains a lot, let’s cut to the chase, skip the in between. We’re good, two girls having a bonding moment, just like it never happened, yeah?”

It took me a moment to start my brain back up, and by then my head was in my hands. “Sure. Just… two girls having a bonding moment.” I raised my eyes back up to look at her, forcing myself to relax muscles suddenly tense. “What do you mean, though, you can’t let me go back home?”

“Look, none of us is supposed to be here, you know? You know, epistemic pollution, it’s nothing I can afford to mess around with, Dad only knows how fate would change, so you… can’t go back.” The goddess’s face had softened, somewhere in saying that, and the disconnect between her cadence and the seriousness of her words kept me from internalizing it for a moment.

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Only a moment, though, and then a few things clicked. “We’re in some sort of liminal space, right? That’s why it’s back, I can’t go back to… to Earth.” The thought was momentarily overwhelming, but as I looked at Artemis, it faded in magnitude and relevance. “And a liminal space can connect to other places.”

“Yeah, that’s about it.” She sucked in her bottom lip and bit it pensively, in a motion that suddenly trapped about a hundred and ten percent of my attention. “I could still kill you, leave your body where it’ll be found. You’d be dead, but closure, I guess. Or I send you on.”

“I want to live.” The words spilled out of me almost before she’d finished talking. “There’s a few people I’ll miss, but shit, that’s better than dead, and they’ll get over it, though I still want that message to go out. And I’m sure it’ll be more fun than pipetting and running experiments.”

“Scientist?”

I nodded at her, and she shrugged, lying back and shifting her hands to scratch the undersides of the dogs’ heads. They shifted, too, and I was startled to notice them; what with the subject of conversation and the reality of meeting a goddess, I’d forgotten they existed.

I just about went back to forgetting, about a second later, because the shift had her entire core at least a little bit engaged, and I could and did trace a line of lithe muscle from her hands down her arms and sides to her feet.

“—not all that interested, honestly, but everyone’s got interesting things about them, so drop the weight, sit by me and tell me about yourself, yeah?”

“Uh, sure.” Not knowing what to say to that, or what to do other than comply, I shrugged out of my pack and slid over. There was another sinfully—or blessedly—comfortable depression in the rock and moss and soil, cradling me as I leaned back in a mimicry of her position, legs outstretched with my feet hanging just over the water. There’s a fucking literal goddess about three inches away from me, and a giant dog that’s about as far behind me, I thought to myself, and I had to fight down a fit of nervous giggles. “Not sure what to say, honestly.

“Work is absolute bullshit and eats all of my emotional energy when I’m not on vacation, so everything is routine; playing a game or reading a book while I exercise is about the most interesting part of my day. And on vacation, well.” I looked around, drinking in the sights and sounds, carefully not looking at her. “This, but less so. I’d spend anywhere from ten to a hundred hours hiking, alone, nobody that I’m responsible for, no duties other than to myself. Lose myself in traveling and find places that try to look like this.”

“Yeah.”

I couldn’t help glancing over at her at that point, what with how much contented emotion she put into that one word of reply; and for all that I kept my eyes above her shoulders, there was still probably a whole lot of obvious reaction in my face, forget about my endocrine system. “Not a lot of romance, which is how I like it, and I’ve been working on getting to a place body-comfort-wise where I could start taking some folks up on the other side of the coin, which I’m looking—was looking forward to.”

“Ugh, modernity.” My eyes narrowed at her despite myself, but she just sort of smirked at me, turning a little to make eye contact. “Always caught up in complexes and stuff, I don’t know. I’ll give us this, we knew that a mortal is always a work in progress, even if that progress is dying, yeah? Fuck who you want, if they want you; use their eyes, if you can’t look at yourself.”

That got a snort of laughter out of me. “I thought you were supposed to be, like, a virgin goddess?”

“I mean, I wasn’t wedded. Didn’t mean I was dead, okay? Didn’t go for men, still don’t, source of some confusion occasionally. Anyway, let’s not take ourselves for a deer-chase, tell me what kind of life you’d like to be able to live, yeah? Not every world’s the same.”

“Other than one where I get to hang out with impeccably proportioned women?” The words fell out of my mouth without any involvement of my brain, and by the time I realized what I’d said and started blanching at it, Artemis was laughing.

Being a goddess, it wasn’t a surprise that her laugh was transcendent.

“Uh.” I was red in the face, but determined to answer her question anyway. “I’m pretty chill, I guess. I don’t want to have to fight.” I stopped at that, eyes fixed on the waterfall for some reason. “Like, I know you’re the Goddess of the Hunt and maybe this doesn’t make sense to you—” Right, that’s why I’m not looking at her. “—but I don’t like effort all that much, I resent having to do cardio to stay healthy, I hate running, and I really don’t want to have to fight.”

“Listen, I’m not Ares, alright? I’m not gonna judge you for that. Might not understand, yeah, but won’t judge you.”

“I appreciate that.” I watched the water for a bit longer, gathering my thoughts. “I like being nice to people. I’d like it if society were structured more around being nice. I’d like it if… if I could work on stuff that’s interesting, and not work on stuff that’s boring just because if I don’t, I’ll starve to death. Easy access to body-modding magic or shapeshifting, books, friends, and a long life.”

“Have to say, can’t relate to pretty much any of that, but I can work with it. Listen, had a decent time with you so far, just lie back and close your eyes, alright? Gonna have to do something with these. Too modern. Nowhere I can send you has this sorta post-industrial style.”

I felt a light tug at my shirt, at my pants, and obediently closed my eyes. “There’s something to be said for post-industrial,” I said, giving voice to my misgivings. “Without my meds—”

“—Sophie, girl, what am I?”

I shuddered in sudden terror at her tone, furious at myself for saying anything. Of all the people to fucking back-talk, what the fuck am I thinking? “Lady Artemis. You’re a Goddess. Please, forgive any insult I may have given; I will entrust myself to your hands.”

“Grew a bit careless with your words, you folks did. It’s fine, not one for formality, obviously don’t do it again. Mind you, anyone else in my family, they might have said that’s fair and square, no more debt, we both had a lapse of hospitality, by Dad’s laws that makes us square, yeah?”

I nodded, eyes still closed, shivering as the fear faded into relief. Theoxenia, I thought to myself. She’d misstepped, and this was her casually evening the scales; and I’d had the idiocy to imply that she was going to do a bad job of it. That’s my luck for a lifetime.

“Messages, health, that’s details,” she continued as if to herself. “Won’t send you onwards to a worse life. Magic, with enough structure to guide and enough freedom to discover; adventure if you want it, friends unless you lose ‘em, and… nice. I know a place, can’t send you with anything they don’t have, have to do something about the clothes. Now relax.”

I was happy enough to obey, letting the last of the tension bleed out of my body. It was pleasant, and more than pleasant; and eventually, I slept.

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