Ganymede and Other Romantic Short Stories from Greek Mythology Read online

  “Ganymede,” said Hermes. He placed his hand atop the crown of Ganymede’s head. His fingers pulled through his hair, testing the bounce of his curls. “You are far lovelier up close. Look here.”

  Eager to obey the request of a god, Ganymede lifted his head. Hermes’ hand cupped his jaw and he lifted lightly, silently bidding Ganymede to rise.

  Ganymede rose.

  “I cannot stay to bask, regardless of whether I’d like to,” the god said. He stood several inches above Ganymede, but so did most mortals. “But I wish to look on you before I go.” He did just that, and looked on Ganymede a few moments longer, his smirk steadfast. “You may care to know where it is I’m going.” He spoke this sentence like a question, and one he expected to be answered.

  “Where are you going?” asked Ganymede. His knees were shaking, near to buckling. He didn’t know the proper way to address a god; it had never come up in his studies with Alexius. If he ever saw him again, he would be sure to fault him for the gap in his learning.

  “I’m off to speak with King Tros and see how he fares with the loss of his son.” Hermes patted Ganymede’s cheek and stepped away. The wings at his heels fluttered faster. “Fortunately, he has two others, but if he did not, I doubt it would have changed your fate. Goodbye for now.”

  In a blink, he was gone.

  Ganymede looked over his shoulder uncertainly, making sure the god had not reappeared behind him, but he seemed to be truly gone, and if he’d been speaking the truth, he was going to see Ganymede’s father.

  He almost sighed with relief before another surge of panic gripped his chest. Surely his father and mother would beg for his return, but the question was . . . return from where? Where had the eagle taken him? He turned from the mountain’s edge and wove his way slowly through the courtyard garden. His fingers trailed over a tree of ripe, golden apples. Although Alexius had not taught him how to address a god, his teaching had not been entirely unhelpful. Ganymede thought he knew where he was, exactly where he was, and who had brought him here, but to actually believe it would be madness.

  He gazed again at the sky. It should have been endlessly blue and clear, but it was domed with gilded bronze instead, the cap of the world, the tip top of the heavens. His singularly sandaled foot caught on a loose vine and he stumbled.

  “This is my replacement? A clumsy mortal?”

  As Hermes’ voice had shocked him, so did this new one, feminine and airy and so sweet it could be nothing but insincere. His eyes darted up to the girl approaching him, who looked to be no older than he was. She was beautiful and fresh faced, with dewy skin and auburn hair that rolled over her shoulders in waves. And she wasn’t alone; she was flanked by a gaggle of women who could not seem to stop giggling behind their cupped hands.

  “My father sent me to fetch you before you injured yourself,” she said, looking him up and down with cheery disdain. “You mortals are always getting killed by falling off things or stabbing yourselves on accident. Come with me.”

  Ganymede stumbled again as he made to quickly follow. The girl laughed cruelly at him, and as she flipped her luminous hair, he realized she was not a girl, but a goddess. The impossibilities were stacking up so swiftly, Ganymede was running out of ways to reasonably deny where he was.

  “I am Hebe,” said the young goddess as she strode along the golden path of the garden, weaving elegantly through the same shrubs that tugged at Ganymede’s chiton. “You will be claiming my former bedchamber, mortal, and I will be leaving Olympus.” Her words were venomous, and if goddesses could be said to have spat, this one certainly did. Of course, none of that mattered, because Hebe had just confirmed the very thing Ganymede feared.

  Realizing he’d stopped following, she sighed and snapped her fingers. “Gather him. I’d prefer not to waste my entire day.”

  Her attendants never stopped giggling as they formed around Ganymede and gripped him tight, soft hands clinging to his shoulders, arms, hips, and thighs. They pushed him along through the courtyard and back to the marble hall, where Hebe made a right turn after the second huge column and breezed through the open door of a bedchamber.

  It was bigger than his room at his father’s palace, with glittering walls and exotic furs on the floor. An immense bed with extravagant gold framing and silk sheets stood at its center, but there was a bath chamber through a curtained archway, and that is where Hebe led him. Her attendants probed and prodded him until his chiton fell around his feet. Hebe held his olive leaf pin in her hand and he longed to reach for it, to snatch it back.

  “You will have nicer things than this,” she told him, looking scornfully at the little bronze pin. “Some advice though?” She found a seat in a gilded chair and watched as her attendants tossed aside Ganymede’s chiton and remaining sandal. “Don’t get too comfortable. My father has wandering eyes, and they’ll wander from you soon enough.”

  Ganymede gasped as warm water cascaded down his back. He had not seen the attendant fetch the jug, but now he was being scrubbed with soft cloths all over his body. One of the women tugged playfully at his hair, and he resisted the urge to swat her away. If she was here, the odds of her being mortal like him were small. But he was here. And here was . . .

  “Where am I?” he asked, not bold enough to say his guess aloud.

  Hebe regarded him with a narrow gaze. It was just as withering on her as it might have been on his father, after he’d done something bad and been caught at it. “Are mortals truly so slow you’ve not yet figured it out? Did Hermes not tell you? Did my father not?”

  The attendants began to pat down his wet body and he stared at Hebe helplessly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who your father is, but Hermes told me nothing of where I am.”

  “Then it is my pleasure to tell you.” Hebe crossed her legs, her ivory gown flowing gracefully to the floor, its hem stitched with a garland of flowers. “This is Mount Olympus. It was my home, and now it will be yours.” She snapped her fingers again at her attendants. “Finish with him so I may leave. Mother wishes me to meet with the brute today.” She sighed, lazing back in her chair.

  Ganymede stopped allowing himself to be tugged about during the oiling and scraping of his skin. It was the shock wearing off. With confirmation of his whereabouts, he traded one panic for the next. If he was truly on Mount Olympus, he had to leave. He had to return to his father and his mother, and Nicolas and Alexius, and his brothers. They would be fretting themselves to death, all while he had flowers strung into his hair.

  “Please stop,” he begged, pulling away from Hebe’s groping attendants as they smoothed their hands up his thighs and wrapped his waist with a thin, triangle draping of golden cloth that left him minimally covered. “I cannot remain here. I don’t know what I’ve done.” He looked pleadingly at Hebe, who held no sympathy in her eyes for the mortal before her.

  “Your only crime is your beauty,” she said. “And so the only punishment can be this: you are to be my father’s cup-bearer.”

  An attendant pinched his cheek, and Ganymede shrugged away. “Cup-bearer?” he asked.

  “Surely mortals have such positions. A servant to pour the wine.”

  “Yes,” Ganymede said. His father had similar servants. They were usually young boys from the palace, sons of generals or councilmen. At certain events, they served entirely in the nude, but Ganymede was never invited to those events. Nicolas had told him of it once, whispering the sordid details while Alexius was busy scolding sheep. “This task used to be yours?”

  Hebe’s face soured. “It has always been mine. But now, father says it’s yours.”

  “And who is your father?”

  “You know nothing,” she sneered, rising from her chair and summoning her attendants back to her side. “But I trust you know my father. He is Zeus.”

  With a final snap of her fingers, Hebe glided from the room, her attendants in tow, and Ganymede was left alone, standing nearly nude in the palace of Zeus. Despite the p
erfect temperature, he shivered. His first steps into the bedchamber were on shaky legs. His skin shone with the gleam of oil. The flowers in his hair perfumed the air with sweetness. The cloth at his groin glittered like the gold running through the marble all around him. But inside, his blood was ice.

  Zeus.

  He had known when the giant eagle claimed him, but he’d denied, denied, denied. He could deny no longer. He had been plucked from his life by Zeus himself and brought to Mount Olympus to be his cup-bearer.

  It could not be.

  Hebe had not closed the door to the bedchamber, and so Ganymede slunk into the hall, careful not to make a noise. His shoeless feet were silent on the marble as he padded quickly past one column, and another, until the golden path of the courtyard was once again within reach, only a few steps away.

  Someone moved from behind the next column, and Ganymede almost rammed into them in his haste.

  “I’m sorry!” he cried, not knowing where to look. Directly before him were flowing robes of silken green and an alabaster hand wrapped around a lotus scepter. He dared a glimpse at her face and paled at the expression of pure hatred he found there.

  “This is Ganymede?” the woman—goddess—asked. She was beautiful, with dark curls adorned with a crown of woven peacock feathers.

  Never before had Ganymede been the object of such scorn. His stomach revolted against her revulsion, and he yearned wildly for the safety of home.

  “Does he speak?” asked the goddess.

  “Yes. I am Ganymede,” he answered quickly.

  “A girl’s voice to match a girl’s body,” she snarled. “How disgusting you are, little mortal child. Move.”

  Before he could obey her, she shoved him and he hit the floor hard. As he clasped his bruised knees, the goddess sailed past him, heading across the wide hall and through another set of doors. Ganymede glimpsed an enormous bed within before the door slammed shut. With labored breaths of pain and embarrassment, he got to his feet and leaned pathetically against a column.

  He did not have a girl’s body, as she had claimed, and he ran a resentful hand across his chest. It was growing broader and more muscular by the day, and his brothers had told him that soon there would be hair there, where now the skin was utterly smooth. He was softer in form, perhaps, than his peers, but there was nothing womanish about his figure. He was all straight lines, edges that would one day be chiseled and defined. And his voice had begun the great change last year. While it was not deep, it was not a girl’s voice. At home, he would never be insulted so. And yet, his insulter was a goddess, so how could he deny her words?

  He continued along the marble until his feet reached the garden path. He looked around, and noticing no one in the courtyard, hurried forward, back to the edge of the mountain, where he’d stood before Hermes had almost startled him over the edge.

  Now that he knew he stood at the top of Mount Olympus, standing at the edge felt different. The sea of clouds was not as thick as it had been before, and after a moment of searching, he could see through a parting all the way down to the earth. He saw Troy and the sea, Athens with her ships along the coast, Sparta, Thebes, and Crete. All the places his tutors made him study on his father’s maps, he saw from here, this highest peak in the world.

  And much closer, further down Olympus and not far from where he stood, he saw other palaces for other gods. He saw where the nymphs roamed at the base of the mountain, and he saw gates made of clouds, where the Olympians came and went from their paradise as they pleased, guarded by the Horae, the goddesses of the seasons.

  He could not hope to reach those gates, nor pass through them, but there was more than one way down a mountain. He scrambled to think of a way that would not kill him. He could climb, but he would never make it. The gods had horses. He could borrow one and fly down, but at what cost? Stealing from the gods was as bad as escaping from the gods, and he could bring himself to do neither, even as he stood so close to freedom, so close to stepping off the edge of Olympus and plummeting quickly back to Troy. But it was his life he wished to reclaim, not death.

  Lightning struck the sky above him and thunder boomed. Ganymede jumped away from the edge with a startled cry, his back smashing into a wall he hadn’t known was behind him. Large hands covered his chest and pulled him further into the garden before spinning him around. The wall was not a wall, but a god. The god.

  Zeus.

  Ganymede touched the flowers in his hair, making sure they were secure. His eagerness to flee left him. He could do nothing but stare, eyes wide and worshipful.

  Zeus was tall, taller than Ganymede’s father, and broader, more muscular, more golden-skinned, more everything. His hair was wheat-field yellow and ringed with a wreath of oak leaves, his beard was full and handsome. His eyes were blue and his mouth was attractive yet severe as he grimaced down at Ganymede. This was the eagle who’d snatched him up and brought him here.

  Thunder continued to roll and rumble, though the sky remained blue where it was not capped by bronze. Hands held his wrists as gently as the talons had, and he pulled Ganymede forward, into the divine heat of his body, though not close enough that they touched. To hear him speak was to hear the voice of the sky, and Ganymede was thankful to be held aloft, for he would have fallen to his knees otherwise.

  “Ganymede,” Zeus said, and Ganymede tilted his head, awestricken, because Zeus had just spoken his name, and it sounded like honey on his lips. “Twice you stand too close to danger. I would not place you atop a mountain if I wished for you to fall off it.” For a moment, his hands tightened around Ganymede’s shoulders. The brief grip did not hurt but excite. “You are free to play in the gardens, but roam too close to the edge again, and you will regret it. Do you understand me, Ganymede?”

  There was his name again, on Zeus’ tongue, and Ganymede almost missed the dangerous warning, he was so enraptured. “I understand,” he said, as soon as he was capable.

  Zeus’ eyes softened, and Ganymede realized they had not been soft before, but furious. He brushed his large knuckles over Ganymede’s cheek, then cupped his face, as Hermes had done, but with reverence instead of mockery. “Beautiful boy,” he whispered, and the rumbles of thunder ceased.

  A piece of Ganymede still wanted to run, but he was no fool. He knew his desires were insignificant atop this mountain of gods. If one was wanted by Zeus, in any way, one was had. Even if Ganymede’s feet had been capable of running, he would not have run. There was nowhere to go, and if Zeus had plucked him once, he could pluck him again.

  Thoughts of his family seared him, and his face must have crumpled, because hands smoothed down his neck and across his naked shoulders, and when Zeus spoke again, it was with great warmth.

  “Do not mourn them,” he said. “They did not deserve your beauty. You’re where you belong at last. Rejoice in this honor. It is not a favor bestowed on many.”

  Ganymede nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat, and this pleased Zeus enough to bring a smile to his face. His teeth were too white and straight to belong to anyone but the king of gods, and Ganymede doubted he would ever grow used to the flawless immortals around him, even if he was truly to remain here for . . . how long? Hebe had said she’d always been the cup-bearer, but she’d also warned that her father’s interests roamed. Was Ganymede to live here forever, or was he to expect an abrupt boot off Mount Olympus as soon as Zeus found someone prettier for the task?

  “Even frowning, you have the most beautiful mouth,” Zeus said. “I will kiss it, but not now. Follow me.”

  Frozen by the word kiss, Ganymede required a little push before he was able to move, walking at Zeus’ side through the courtyard and into the marble hall. Waiting against a column with a cocky smile was a boy who appeared to be Ganymede’s age, or slightly younger. He was as stripped as Ganymede, wearing little more than a scarlet sash around his waist that did little to hide his manhood. One hardly noticed that, however, because his face was too striking t
o look away from for long. If Ganymede was said to be the most beautiful of mortals, the boy before him was the loveliest of immortals. He was attractive in a way Zeus was not: pretty and plump-cheeked, with perfect bow lips and heavy eyelids.

  “Eros,” said Zeus, and he stopped before him, his fingers lightly tracing Ganymede’s hip as he spoke. “Meet our new cup-bearer.”

  The boy, Eros, stood from the column and bowed his head with a knowing smile. “Ganymede,” he greeted. How long had the gods known his name? How long had Zeus coveted him and spoken of him to the others?

  “Show him around the pantheon, Eros,” Zeus instructed, his voice no longer soft, but firm, the king of all kings. “See he is ready for this evening’s feast and don’t let him hurt himself.”

  “Yes, Zeus,” replied Eros, already scrutinizing every inch of Ganymede’s skin. Searching for flaws, perhaps, or merely looking.

  When Zeus turned away, Ganymede almost asked him where he was going before he remembered himself. He remained silent and watched Zeus go through the same bedchamber door the harsh-worded goddess had disappeared into before. When he glanced back at Eros, the youthful god was snickering behind his hand, reminding Ganymede of Hebe’s attendants.

  “Hera will have his balls on a plate for the feast tonight,” he said. “She will try, at least.” His smile was rueful. “She always tries.”

  With Eros as his guide, Ganymede discovered that there was a second, grander structure beyond the northern side of the white-marbled palace. Leading them through yet another golden pathed courtyard, the pantheon was revealed. Instead of white marble, it was black as night, the infusions of gold sparkling all the brighter for its contrast.

  “Hephaestus built everything you see,” Eros said, surveying the towering ebony and gold columns as if they were un-miraculous. To him, they probably were; he saw them every day. But to Ganymede, the pantheon was like nothing else. Black marble, shining and sleek, a circular structure, twelve thrones placed in an arch, one more intricately carved than the next.