Once there was a Great Huntress with a great twinkling bow wandering all the mountainside forests of the world. With Her always She had Her many companions; Her countless attendants, anointing Her with perfumes and lotions, She could hardly stop them at such sheer numbers; Her virginal devotees, committed forever to living chaste and unpaired, despite all the hardships of the world, following Her everywhere and mimicking Her every grace, learning from Her every example; Her fellow hunters and huntresses, with bows and spears, living as echoes and shadows of Her incredible ability— or indeed, being so bold as to compete with Her, even, for the most sublime game that the Heavens or Earth could offer.
Among the devotees, there was one woman, who had made vows more deeply inspired than any other, who had decided from the very moment she was old enough to truly consider it that her body belonged to herself and only herself and always would, never to be touched. She spent her time crafting and weaving and writing poetry and singing and dancing and thinking and inventing. She was the Great Huntress’s favorite, of those who followed along behind Her left hand.
Among the hunters, there was one man, who had skills more finely honed than any other, who had been practicing from the very moment he was old enough to hold a bow, and practicing and practicing and practicing until there was nothing he could not hit and kill, with unmatchable speed and accuracy. He was the Great Huntress’s favorite, of those who followed along behind Her right hand.
One night, on one of the endless forests along the endless side of the mountain linking the Earth to the Heavens, there came across the Great Huntress’s path a stunning buck, with fur like the pale blue sky, the perfect blue sky, and for its left antler it had the branches of what had once been the divine tree sprouting irresistible golden apples for the brewing of ambrosia— and even now, as it crossed the Huntress’s path through a patch of moonlight, gorgeous golden apples dangled ripe and juicy from its left antler. For its right antler, the buck had the branches of the oak that had once grown all the way up the full height of this mountainside, all the way from Tartarus to the highest peaks of Olympus. In the moonlight, the fruit of this right antler sparkled as well, but not as golden apples but gorgeous silver pearls, seven of them, catching the eye with their shine as the stately deer pranced through the clearing.
The very instant the Great Huntress saw it, She decided for Herself that it would be Her prize, and without so much as a word, She tore off through the trees to give chase. Her attendants and devotees were helpless to keep up, they were left behind in an instant. Her hunters and huntresses were quicker to follow, and they followed and they followed and they followed, but one by one they began to fall behind— they were too slow, or their legs or lungs gave out— and soon there were none still chasing the deer but just two: the Great Huntress Herself, and Her most favored hunter at Her right hand, soaring with every stride. Even those two of them, though, could not keep up with the deer forever, and soon enough it had slipped out of sight into the darkness. The Huntress and Her hunter came to an exhausted stop, and they sat, and they puzzled between themselves about what best to do next. Eventually, the rest of the Huntress’s great party caught up with them, all the attendants and devotees.
Such a problem! The greatest of the hunters supposed that it would be simple enough to set out some bait; perhaps the deer could be poisoned?— or ambushed?— or perhaps some clever trap could be constructed with ropes? But no, the Huntress told him. This was no ordinary animal— that was plain enough, just looking upon it. There was powerful, powerful magic at work inside the thing, and no mere poison would be enough to harm it. No ambush would work, either— these were the keenest eyes and ears upon all the Earth, surely, the sharpest nose. Nothing could ever hope to sneak up on a creature such as this. And with such a lithe body, such agility and such strong limbs— see how it had run!— what rope-trap could hope to snare it, much less hold it for long?
No, the Huntress told him, no— this was going to take a different sort of thinking.
It was the woman— the weaver, the dancer, the thinker, the most favored at the Huntress’s left hand, who worked out the best way to defeat the beast. She went all across the mountainside, collecting all of the ripest and sweetest berries in her basket, and then she climbed the whole way to the top of the mountain, the whole way up to the Heavens, to the very gates of Olympus, where she took her small fist and she pounded upon the bronze, over and over, demanding an audience with the Gods.
She knocked and she knocked and she knocked upon the gate, and each of the Gods within, one by one, they noticed her and ignored her. The Sea ignored her and the Wind ignored her, and War ignored her, and Wisdom ignored her, and Wine ignored her. Love ignored her and Fire ignored her. The Sun ignored her, and with disdain— she was a follower of His sister, and so what use was she to Him?— or to anyone?
But the Thunder did not ignore her. She was a beautiful woman, shapely and elegant. It was the Thunder who opened the gates for her and allowed her into His gleaming domain of Olympus. He cooed sweet nothings to her, and promised her great gifts and pleasures and privileges for her company— all low enough for His wife not to hear, of course. But the Huntress’s devotee strode right past Him, among the clouds and the dazzling marble, searching around and around the celestial abode until at last she found the Harvest, tending to Her garden. There She was. She approached without hesitation or shyness.
“Oh Demeter,” She called to Her, “I am a devotee of the Great Huntress, the ever-shifting Half Moon, and I have come here to seek Your favor.”
The Harvest paused Her tending, for just a moment, to regard the small woman. It was rare indeed for a mortal human to climb all the way to highest Olympus, rarer still for a mortal human to be granted access, and entirely unheard of that one granted that rarest entry into Olympus should come seeking an audience for favor with the Harvest instead of one of those other Gods loitering about. People came here for the the Thunder, or for War, or for Love— not for Her. It was refreshing, as a start. And atop that, it was curious. And atop that… atop that, the woman, the way she was standing, the cut of her face, the soft green-brown of her eyes, she almost reminded Demeter of…
The Summer had just ended. It was the first week of autumn. The color and life were starting to fade from the world, as always, and here was this woman before Her, so full of life and color…
But even so— “What favor of Mine might you be worthy of, oh small devotee of the Great Huntress?”— She was a Goddess, grand and powerful, and Her stature was not to be bent lightly. “Do you seek a bountiful growing season for your village? Endless crops and livestock? The brightest fruits? The most succulent meats? And what would you offer in exchange for such a bounty?”
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“I have nothing to offer You but these berries that I have gathered in my basket, the sweetest that the whole of the mountainside has on offer. And in return for those, I would not be so bold or arrogant as to ask for anything more than just one single seed.”
It was a humble offering, to be sure, but it was a humble ask as well, in line with itself. It was allowable, the Harvest supposed. And after making such a journey!— for just that? How could She refuse her, really? “What sort of seed do you desire?” She asked. “There is no sort of seed that I do not have here in My stores. Whatever type of seed it is you wish for, I shall grant it to you. I have seeds which can grow trees with the tartest orange fruits, endless branches of them, such as to delight you and your dearest friends from now until the end of your days. I have seeds which can grow the stoutest wheat, enough from even just one stalk to deliciously feed a hundred people for a hundred days or nights.”
The devotee smiled, and she bowed her head, and she thanked the might God Demeter profusely for all the kindness She was showing her.
“The seed I am searching for grows not into sparkling fruits or lifeblood wheat, but into something humble and tasteless. I am searching for a seed that grows into a mountain.”
“A seed that grows into a mountain?”
Yet again, Demeter was surprised at this mortal woman. What a strange thing to ask! What a strange thing to want! She had such a seed, of course— She had told her already that there was no sort of seed that She did not have within Her stores, and She had spoken truly. She had seeds for the growing of forests, She had seeds for the growing of colorful coral reefs, and She had seeds for the growing of birds. Of course She had seeds for the growing of mountains. How else would mountains be grown after all?— it was the seeds of Demeter which had sprouted up into the mighty Olympus linking the Earth to the skies so long ago, after all— that same mountain now underfoot, it had grown from a handful of these very seeds. “Just one is all I shall need,” insisted the Huntress’s devotee, holding out her basket of berries for Demeter to take.
And so She took them. And in return, just as agreed, She handed her a single seed from which a mountain would grow.
It was nothing more than a pebble, what She handed her. Nothing more than a tiny gray stone— but it was exactly what she had asked for. “This shall grow into a mighty mountain, worthy of eyes from hundreds of miles around to gaze upon it in admiration,” said Demeter, and She meant it. Even so, it really did feel to Her like a shabby thing She had given, and so She handed her two more pebbles to go along with it, seeds of the same kind. “You have shown incredible bravery, coming here to this place, and incredible grace and deference in how you have behaved towards Me, young maiden. Take these, in case just the one isn’t enough. I insist upon it.”
The Huntress’s devotee followed thanked the Harvest again with a deep bow of her head, and with a promise to always honor Her and all Her blessings, and with that she turned and made her way back out the gates of highest Olympus, back down the eternal mountainside to her most beloved Goddess and the rest of the hunting-party.
The Thunder watched her go.
When she at last arrived back to the group, the woman showed the Goddess what she had brought, and explained her plan, and the Goddess, the Half Moon, She was greatly pleased.
Quickly, everything was set into place. A lure of nuts and berries and scrumptious mushrooms was offered out in a clearing, with one of the three pebbles mixed into it. And then, as if they had forgotten the matter entirely, the whole hunting-party departed, wandered off in all directions— as though they had entirely forgotten each other, even; the attendants went this way, the devotees went that way, the hunters and huntresses went to the North, the Goddess and Her two most favored hands went to the South, on and on, away and away, until every last soul was out of sight, and then even further, too far to have even the ghost of a scent on the breeze.
Soon enough, the eerie buck came across the offering. It sniffed carefully at the nuts and the berries and the mushrooms, and it smelled no poison. It glanced cautiously this way and that way, but there was no sign of a trap or any ambush, no ropes ready to snatch it up or hunters lingering in the shadows. And so, simply as that, the deer gobbled up the gift it had been given— nuts and berries and mushrooms and the pebble— it didn’t even notice the pebble as it swallowed it down along with the rest. And then, off it went on its way.
For the agreed-upon two days, all the followers of the Great Huntress lingered away, wherever they had wandered to. Some waited by the river, fishing and washing. Some ran through the trees, chasing other game to occupy their time. The Huntress and Her two hands sat by the fire they had built and said little— there is little to be said among people who do not need to speak for themselves, who have nothing to prove. At least at first. The devotee, she rose after some time, and went off with her two remaining pebbles to find a bird’s-nest. To the bird she found there, a grand falcon, she gifted the two pebbles, and she told it “Take one of these and fly away with it, as far as you’d like, to a place that is flat and empty, and drop the pebble there, let it grow into a tall mountain, worthy of the thriving family you shall raise among the trees that shall tower upon it.”
As for the other pebble, she told that falcon that it was to be a treasure of humankind, and that humankind could therefore not be allowed to put their hands upon it, for anyone who touched it would decide that it was theirs, and as soon as it was theirs, this sort of treasure, it was as good as no one’s for all the rot and vomit it would bring to the world. The falcon was to take this treasure and hide it away safe somewhere, a place that no one would ever find it until Fate was all-but begging for it to return to the world and its people— that was the best way to handle things. That was the chastity that she had learned well from her Goddess.
All the while, the Goddess Herself and Her great hunter were sitting together, watching the smoke coiling up into the sky.
There was nothing between them, of course. It was not for the Half Moon to have anything between Herself and anyone, that was not Her nature. But She could not help but to admire the man sitting beside Her, gazing upon Her. His features were handsome and his body was sturdy, strong— and at the same time lithe and agile. He was as near to a God down upon this Earth as She had ever seen— and he looked to be as close to mortal as She had ever seen any of the Gods of Olympus above play at being. He was one of Their children, surely. She could tell it by that body and that face, by his posture and his movements— and She could tell it in the way he spoke to Her. She could tell it by the things he said. A person did not say the things he said, and not to a Goddess, unless they knew that they were more than just a person.
“Who is your father?” She asked him, simple and direct.
He smiled back at Her. “My father is close enough to Your gorgeous divinity to make me worthy of You, oh my Great Huntress… and distant enough to the blood of Your family that our union would not be frowned upon.”
There was no truly mortal man who would ever dare to give such an answer. Just as there was no truly mortal man who could move as this man moved, who could aim and shoot a bow as this man did. There was no truly mortal man who could ever have hoped to be so beautiful. He fascinated Her. She could not take Her eyes off of him.
“Let us make a wager,” he told Her. “Let us play a game, You and I, oh my Great Huntress. The two days of waiting for that buck to have eaten our offering have very nearly passed. Once they are up, let us resume our hunt for it, You and I— that shall be our game. We shall hunt for it, side by side, or apart, however things may go, and in either case it shall be each of our goals to be the one to kill it. And the winner, as a prize, shall have their bidding over the loser, one command upon the other, who has fallen short in their hunt.”
“One command?” echoed the Goddess.
“Just one,” nodded the hunter. “A boon, perhaps, or a favor, or a grueling tribute. Perhaps I shall defeat You, and demand as my rightful prize that celestial bow of Yours.”— he pointed with his haughty thumb towards the bow strapped across the Great Huntress’s back, dark wood, near-black, but glittering with specks of cosmic possibility. It was the farthest thing from a mere human object, that bow, and it made the Goddess laugh, the thought of a mere human holding it, son of a God or not. “Yes, yes, laugh,” the man agreed. “That is the fun of the game, I think, the absurdity. Almost certainly, You shall defeat me and demand as your own prize what, I wonder?— perhaps nothing more than a simple poem in Your honor. Perhaps I should start composing it now, in advance, while I have the time. Get it out of the way.”
And so he did. The hunter let himself fall backwards onto the dirt, grin up into the empty darkness of the midnight sky, empty except for the Moon above him and the Moon beside him, and he began stringing together terrible poems praising its pale light, more and more ridiculous and terrible until finally the Goddess could not help Herself— and there She was, giggling alongside the hunter. Not laughing at him, down at him, as a Goddess laughs at the foolish hopes of a mortal.
No, She was giggling.
