The Wager: Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Σὺν Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ χεῖρα κίνει¹

The Great Hall of the Palace of the Morning Star was awe-inspiring, even for one who had grown up on Mount Olympus. Easily the size of a large stadium, the hall rose eight stories into the air, topped with a massive series of frescoes depicting the start of the rebellion in Heaven, the attack of the rebel angels, the fall of Lucifer and his cadre, and the establishing of the Kingdom of Hell. If an observer didn’t know better, she would have thought the frescoes looked like they could have been Michaelangelo’s work; if she thought further about it, she would realize with shock that this was because they were Michaelangelo’s works. And what works they were! Compared to them, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel looked rather drab; Michaelangelo had labored two hundred years on this ceiling, or perhaps two thousand; time has no real meaning in Hell.

The hall itself was astonishing, decorated in chandeliers that blazed forth with constant cold fire, illuminating statues and monuments aplenty to the angels who had rebelled, and to Hell’s best agents on Earth. The obsidian columns that supported the great ceiling were crowned in gold, and silver stripes two feet wide bordered the main walkways into and out of the chamber. It was more opulent than Olympus, or Yhwh’s palace in Heaven, but then, Lucifer had always been rather keen on proving his worth.

The most shocking thing to Eros would have been seen as almost mundane to the casual observer. Halfway through the hall, columns arranged themselves into a rotunda the size of a football pitch. The ceiling here rose over a hundred meters to a domed ceiling painted with the morning sky, a single star blazing forth in the east, right above the purplish-red of sunrise. Well, not a star; not exactly.

The star’s identity was given by the gold symbol inlaid in a platinum circle on the floor of the rotunda. It was a symbol that Eros knew well:

♀

His mother’s symbol, the symbol of Venus. He hadn’t thought of it before, but it was Lucifer’s symbol, too: the symbol the planet Venus, the symbol of the Morning Star.

He and Virgil stopped right at the point where the cross of the symbol met the O, for two figures had entered the rotunda from the other side.

They were two demons. One was clearly a minor functionary, off to the side, carrying parchment; he did not draw attention. No, Eros’s attention was drawn by the other figure, another demon, and a high-ranking one at that. He wore black vestments trimmed in red, and an ostentatious robe made of peacock feathers. He wore a heavy medallion on a gold crest bearing the open-pentagram Seal of Satan. The demon leaned his bulky upper body on an exquisitely fashioned copper cane

The functionary cleared his throat, and said, “May I present His Excellency, Polymitis Adramelech, Chancellor of Hell, President of the Senate, High Councilor to Shaitan Lucifer Iblis.”

The Chancellor smiled. “Hello, son,” he said.

“Hello, Hephaestus,” Eros replied.

* * *

The nightmare was all-consuming. Marbas was assaulting Stephanie, raping her. But Adam was his tiny self, and though he tried over and over to stop Marbas from defiling his wife, Marbas simply swept him aside each time as an afterthought. Adam screamed in fury, and rose again, and again, and again….

His eyes popped open. He heard a sound, a rustling, scratching sound. He rose gingerly, body feeling fine, but soul still wounded from Tanith’s assault the afternoon before.

“Hello?” he called into the empty lab. The room was dark, save for a safety light in the corner. He shrugged. Must be hearing –

No, there it was again, a scuffling, scampering noise from the floor. He put his ear to the bars, and tried to listen, tried to hear what it was.

He screamed and jumped backward as the monster leaped up onto the counter top, and ambled over toward his cage. It was a rat, a giant, black rat the size of two bears.

Adam rushed to the middle of the cage, eyes wide. He had to hope the beast wouldn’t pay him attention, because there was no way he could fight the beast. No way. He just had to hope the creature wouldn’t be interested in him, or at least, that it wouldn’t be able to break into his cage.

His first hope was immediately dashed, as the rat snorted, and looked around the side of the cage, moving quickly toward the cage door. Adam watched in horrified fascination; the beast almost seemed to be looking with intelligence, as it reached out with its paw for the latch.

The Wager, Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Ου με πείσεις, καν με πείσεις¹

 

In a well-apportioned mansion in Dublin, an old woman ran a hand idly over her desk. “I do not see how helping an Englishman helps Eire,” she said, finally, “and I see no reason we should interfere.”

 

Aiobheal sighed inwardly; this conversation was going much as she had feared it might. But she had no choice but to persist; she was not strong enough to free Adam on her own. It had taken some time to gain an audience with the High Queen; The Morrígan would have to help her; if not, she had no time to find someone else.

 

“Highness, Adam White is not English. He is American.”

 

“English, English colonist, it matters not. It still has nothing to do with us.”

 

“He is prisoner of The Adversary, Highness. We have an obligation to fight evil, aye?”

 

“Aye, we do, but only when it affects an Irishman.”

The Wager, Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά (Πλάτων, Πολιτεία)¹

The city of Mopti stood on three islands in the Niger River. In the narrow streets of the dense city, vendors busily readied themselves for the tourists and townsfolk who would soon crowd the streets. Aside from being unusually beautiful, the young woman walking down the streets toward the port did not draw particular notice, despite not being African; those that did notice assumed she had come from the north on a trip to see the Inland Delta; many Moroccans, Algerians, and Egyptians did, and even a few Europeans would show up from time to time. Mali had been stable for almost two decades – enough time to begin to slowly break free from the stereotypes about Sub-Saharan Africa’s neverending political turmoil.

The woman walked a good long way, until she reached the outskirts of the city; she was heading toward a house on a corner of one of the islands, one that was well-appointed by the standards of the city. She reached the door around mid-day; she supposed she could have come here by a more direct route, but the walk had given her time to think. And it did not tire her. Nothing could.

She reached to knock at the door, when a slight hissing noise drew her attention. She turned to her left, and saw a nine-foot-long python. The great serpent drew itself up, until its head was almost even with hers. And then, it did a most peculiar thing.

It bowed.

The Wager: Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

 

Aνάγκᾳ δ’οὐδὲ θεοὶ μάχονται¹

 

Queen Aoibheal of Thomond streaked through the morning sky, headed southwest, toward a smallish suburb of Houston, in the American state of Texas. It was, she thought, the absolute last place on Earth she would expect to be heading.

 

It was not that Aoibheal had never left Éire; like any Fay Goddess, she had been ’round the world and deep in the heavens and through the back beyond far more times than she could count. But that said, she had little reason to leave the southwest corner of the Emerald Isle these days. But the God who had asked her was persuasive, and she owed his family much.

 

As she traversed the turbulent jet stream, she mused on the conversation they had enjoyed, not long after dawn.

 

“Well, by Auberon’s crown, ’tis Eros!” she’d exclaimed, flying up to meet the eye of the beautiful giant. Well, to be fair, he was sized as a mortal human, and he offered quickly to drop to her scale; she demurred. She enjoyed the pretty god’s visage quite enough to entreat him to remain at his height. (Indeed, it would have been easier for her to join him at his height – she was Goddess of Love and Size, after all.)

 

“Your majesty, I have come to ask a favor,” he had said, and he had explained the convoluted dealings his mother, Aoibheal’s rival and friend Aphrodite, had been involved with – and that The Corrupt One had inserted Himself into.

 

“I cannot ask you to go,” he had said. “I cannot ask you to follow Adam White, to work to safeguard him. My mother would be furious if she knew I had asked you. And yet – I believe that the interests of love are best served by you doing exactly that. He is a good man, from what I can find. He honors his wife well.”

The Wager: Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς¹

She drew looks, even here, which did not surprise her; she was enough to make most anyone who lusted for men reconsider. Indeed, on a different night, in a different time, she might have tried to convince on of them to do just that, just for the fun of it. But this was not the night for trifling diversions, no matter how attractive the men making out with each other were. For one thing, she had serious business to attend to. And for another – well, loath as she was to say it, she simply would not be able to compete with the boy at the center of the floor.

 

He was beautiful – olive skin, jet-black hair done just-so, a dangling arrow earring catching the light. He wore a stylish shirt that managed to be loose-fitting and yet show off his toned physique – a gymnast’s build, strong and toned yet supple and lithe. Of course, if the shirt failed, his trousers were tight enough to make the same point, tailored to emphasize that there was a bulge in front of not inconsiderable size.

 

She smiled, watching him dance with a tall, dark man wearing a sleeveless white t-shirt and bulging muscles. It was unfair of her to drop in like this – he was working, after all – but she needed help, and there was nobody she trusted more.

 

She caught his eye, and smiled at the double-take, one of the few she’d absorbed that was not related to her beauty. He wouldn’t be expecting her, of course, not here, not now. But he was a man of good heart, and he would not turn her away. And so he brushed the man’s cheek with a kiss, handed him a folded slip of paper, and danced his way over to her, greeting her with kisses on both cheeks.

 

“Mother! What a lovely surprise!” he said, ebuliently, as he motioned to the bartender for drinks. “What brings you to South Beach?”

The Wager, Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Ποικιλόθρον’, ἀθάνατ’ Ἀφρόδιτα,
παῖ Δίος, δολόπλοκε, λίσσομαί σε
μή μ’ ἄσαισι μήτ’ ὀνίαισι δάμνα,
πότνια, θῦμον·

–Σαπφώ, Θραύσμα 1, “Ύμνος στην Αφροδίτη”

Iridescent-throned Aphrodite, deathless
Child of Zeus, wile-weaver, I now implore you,
Don’t–I beg you, Lady–with pains and torments
Crush down my spirit.

–Sappho, Fragment #1, “Hymn to Aphrodite”

The first thing Adam was aware of was nausea. He doubled over briefly, retching, but nothing came up.

That was when he became aware of darkness.

He struggled to put together what exactly was going on. He had a vague recollection of something…they’d been on the beach. Yeah, they’d been on the beach, and Stephanie wanted to go snorkeling, but she didn’t right away, but he said she should, and then that woman came up with the pen, but it wasn’t a pen, it sprayed something, and then….

…and then he was here. His head throbbed, and his stomach twisted, but he forced himself up into a sitting position, forced his eyes open.

He threw aside some fabric that was draped over him like a blanket, but that didn’t increase the light significantly. He was in a chamber. No – no, not a chamber. He could see on the ceiling the clear zig-zag pattern of a zipper. The light behind it was grayish and dim, so obviously whatever room lay beyond it was not lit up too brightly. Still, it told him he was in a suitcase, or a carry-on. It was too big to be a purse.

The Wager, Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Ἐκ τῶν ὧν οὐκ ἄνευ[1]

Time passed, as time does. Adam stood now less than two feet high — 19¾ inches, just over 50 centimeters, easily the shortest adult male in the world. Indeed, the Guinness people had certified him during an appearance on the Jayne Jordan Show two nights before, on the eve of his wedding day.

Now, he sat in the airport in a seat the size of a sofa, waiting to board a flight for his honeymoon.

Some ways away, observing from an airport bar, sat two figures whose presence would have spoken poorly about airport security, as they had simply walked through the TSA checkpoint without even removing their shoes. Of course, Gods are allowed some leeway that mortals are not.

“So, are you willing to concede?” the female asked, as she watched the tiny man snuggle up to the side of the woman three times his size.

“Concede? Whatever for?”

“They’re married, aren’t they? It was on the news, see?” she said, pointing at a monitor, which was showing what all the photographers had agreed was the hero shot – Stephanie kneeling down to kiss Adam, softly but fully on the lips. The shot was already being readied for the next edition of People.

“Married, schmarried. Marriage isn’t the end of the story, my wayward wife. You and I know that better than any of these mortals. The test isn’t over until it’s run its full course.”

“She’s not going to break,” said Aphrodite, sighing. “You could at least show them the kindness of not continuing this. Haven’t they suffered enough?”

“Suffered? This is what volitionals were made for, dearest. To test. To answer our questions for us. You ruined poor Paris’s life just to prove you were hotter than Athena and Hera (and frankly, you had him when you disrobed); don’t lecture me on sympathy.”

“I’m thousands of years older than I was then, and a good deal wiser. I am more attractive than Athena and Hera, but I don’t feel the need to show if off anymore. If it happened now, Hera could have the damned apple.

“But you’re right, marriage is just a mile-marker, it isn’t a destination, no matter what the stories claim. We’ll leave them alone. See if they live happily ever after. But at some point, you will concede.”

Hephaestus was silent.

“You will concede eventually, right?”

“How long did Penelope wait for Ulysses to come home, Aphrodite? Twenty long years, she waited, though she knew not whether he was alive or dead. Twenty years of a mortal life! She remained faithful to her husband though she had suitors aplenty. And you are pestering me to concede now?”

Aphrodite stared, nonplussed. When she gathered herself, she found she was quaking with rage. “Surely,” she said, “you would not be so petty as to require of these two twenty years of heartache simply on the chance it would prove your point? Surely you would not force this woman to live a life of chastity long after all hope of seeing or communicating with her husband was past?”

“Why not? It was good enough for the ancients.”

“We were awful to the ancients. They put up with far more than they ever should have,” said Aphrodite.

“They were stoic. Not like these hedonists. You’re telling me that this girl can’t keep her legs crossed for a couple decades? Some champion for womankind.”

“Penelope is still lauded today simply because her actions were so unusual! That kind of faithfulness borders on pathological; Ulysses had no right to expect his wife to be faithful to him, especially as he spent a year fucking our cousin Circe.”

“Why not mention Calypso?” Hephaestus asked with a thin smile. “She had him for seven years, if I recall.”

“Because Calypso kidnapped and raped him, precious husband. But he bedded Circe with eyes wide open – even had her swear by your name and mine, and all our brothers’ and sisters’ names too, that she wouldn’t steal his manhood – the vagabond had no problem getting his carnal needs met. But Penelope? She’s supposed to keep her legs crossed. And this is what you say dear Stephanie must do? You are more blind than I thought.”

“Hmpf. You are awfully quick to ask for my concession. And awfully impatient that the deed be done, and right quick. Not bloody likely, but I’ll offer you this: you can break the contract, if you wish,” said Hephaestus.

“No chance,” replied Aphrodite, angrily. “You are simply looking to force me to break the contract because you know you have lost. I should have known better to trust your word. No, Hephaestus, I thought you knew that I was tougher than that. I will not accede to your wishes.”

“Then we wait,” he said.

“No. We do not.”

“Then what in Zeus’ name do you suggest we do?”

“I shall appeal to The Council of Thirteen.”

“Appeal?” scoffed the God of Artisans. “Do you really think The Council will give you a fair hearing?”

“Whether they do or not is Their decision, not yours nor mine,” said Aphrodite. “I must place this in Their hands. My responsibility to this couple and to women generally requires it. If The Council wishes to punish me for what I once was….”

“Athena’s on the Council, you know.”

“She’s no more likely to favor you,” shot Aphrodite.

“You’ll lose,” said Hephaestus, straightening himself.

“We’ll see,” said Aphrodite, as she vanished.

* * *

Adam shifted uncomfortably in the chair, while Stephanie perused the paperwork for the cruise; they had purchased this trip back before…well, back before. And he was willing to go on it because Stephanie wanted to; she didn’t quite say that she wanted to go on the honeymoon because it would be their last vacation together, but he knew the thought had gone through her head. The thought had gone through his head. How could it not?

The Wager, Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Μὴ χείρον βέλτιστον [1]

“Of course it’s hard, Steph. I’m amazed you’ve been able to hang in through all of this. ’Course, you’re tough.”

“Right,” Stephanie said, staring into her skim mocha latté. She wondered how many skim mocha lattés she’d stared into, talking about relationships falling apart, while Michael sipped on his chai, listening to her vent.

“No, really, I can’t imagine having to go through what you’re going through. You’re holding up really well.”

“I have to,” she said, quietly. “Adam…Adam needs me to be strong.”

“Of course he does,” Michael said. “Of course he does. But you have needs too.”

Stephanie laughed, bitterly. “You know, it’d be easier if he could pull out of his despair. I don’t blame him, I really don’t; God knows he has every reason to despair. If his height would just stabilize…I don’t mind him being smaller. It’s the not knowing when it’s going to stop…or if it’s going to stop.”

The Wager, Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι[1]

“More fan mail for you,” said Stephanie, dropping a bundle of letters in front of her diminutive fiancé.

“Great,” Adam said, morosely, as she put several dozen huge envelopes in front of him. He opened the first letter, and sighed as he held the poster-sized letter. “Actually, this is for you,” he said, handing it up to Steph.

She read it with a pursed lip, then crumpled it and threw it across the room. “Bastard,” she muttered.

The Wager, Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα

In a cramped office in New York, Bekah Taylor’s phone rang.

The producer sighed, and grabbed it, going through the early pleasantries of the call. It was a reliable source, one who had pointed out more than a few famous people to wander through the Mayo Clinic. Still, with just twenty minutes until air time, it was a lousy time for a call, and Taylor said so.

“Becks, trust me, this is huge. Mega-huge.”

“What, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie all have the same strain of the clap?”

“Better.”

“So who’s the patient? Britney? Paris?”

“No no no, Becks, nobody famous.”

“Yeah…okay. Look, we don’t do news of the weird here. I don’t care how big the tumor in the fat lady’s gut was.”

“Look, will you trust me? This is something new. Totally new. A guy’s shrinking.”

Bekah stopped at that. “Shrinking?”

“Shrinking. He’s two feet shorter than he used to be. And it hasn’t stopped. He was just through here, but he’s on his way back home. I’ve got his address.”

Bekah drummed her pencil. “Isn’t shrinking normal? I mean, I remember my grandma shrunk.”

“Maybe by an inch or two, when you’re 80. Bone settles just a little bit, you get shorter. This guy, though – he’s literally getting smaller every day, and he’s pretty young. Everyone’s baffled, never seen anything like it. Frankly, I’m amazed it hasn’t got out yet. But when it does, it’s gonna be huge.”

“Is there any other hook to it?”

“You need a hook? Really?”

“No,” admitted Bekah. “But I want everything you know about him.”

“Usual fee?” the source asked.

“Usual fee.”