Hera

The earth streams with molten gold. It flows in every direction, around the scattered rocks, gleaming in the light of the fires that rage all around. Ichor, the blood of the immortals, seeping into the soil.

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Smoke hangs heavy in the air, obscuring the stars. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and the horizon flashes with lightning. It dances across the sky, leaping between the clouds, a glare that dazzles, white and blinding, and is gone, only to reappear somewhere else a moment later.

Hera glances up at it, narrowing her eyes to chart its progress as she steps across the ravaged battleground.

The falling dusk and swirling ash make it hard to see. The ground is churned up, great gashes in the earth where boulders have been heaved and trees torn up by their roots. Some of the mounds she skirts are these shattered rocks and mangled trunks, but some of them are not. Some are golden-stained, sprawled, staring glassy-eyed up to the heavens. Every now and then, one might stir painfully as she passes, let out a whimper of agony so that she raises her spear. She is swift and merciless, leaving silence in her wake.

Lightning sears the sky directly above her, its livid glow rendering every detail of the carnage in stark clarity for the space of a heartbeat before it dies away into darkness again. She listens, trying to distinguish the shrieking of the winds from another scream, one of anguish and rage. The earth is scarred and brutalised, but it is quiet at last. The fighting is in the heavens now. The euphoric rush of victory still tingles through her body, but she senses something else too. As she walks on, her gold-spattered tunic damp against her skin, she feels the soft melancholy that hangs on the mist and drizzle. It rises from the vast craters; the wounds carved deep into the ground. It is the sorrow of Gaia that she feels. Gaia, the first of them all. The goddess of the earth, who bears the pain of this violation. Hera glances around her, making sure that nothing else is still moving. Satisfied, she kneels, and rests her palms on the gold-stained mud. Her touch is gentle and reverent, her eyes closed, as she prays. One goddess to another; a holy moment of gratitude to the mother who had birthed them all: the Titans who lie bleeding and the warriors who fought at Hera’s side.

There has been so much suffering.

Hera opens her eyes and looks to the heavens, where the thunder is reaching its crescendo. It growls from the furthest edge of the horizon, the rage building as it echoes across the mountaintops, loud enough to split the rocks apart and send them tumbling down the steep slopes. Lightning shears the skies over and over, hurled by Zeus to bring down the last Titan still standing.

Her brothers and sisters are up there with him, fighting side by side. Hera’s battle-mates on the ground were not gods; they were Gaia’s monsters. Creatures of nightmare nurtured in the deepest caverns of Gaia’s womb, broken free to aid in this war against the Titans. Before Gaia had sent them, the two sides were evenly matched. Cronus and his five brothers had ruled the heavens since they overthrew their own father, Ouranos. Hera, Zeus and the other four children of Cronus had the advantage of youth – they were full of fiery rebellion, eager to seize the world. But the six Titans were experienced, they were crafty and they were long-enduring. And so, years of war have passed in spasms of frantic, boiling chaos punctuated by desperate councils where the gods proffered the same tactics over and over, and Hera saw her own frustration at the unending stalemate mirrored in Zeus’ eyes.

And then the three Hecatoncheires lumbered forth from the earth, sprouting fifty heads from each thick neck and a hundred arms bulging with muscle. The three Cyclopes followed, each with one vast eye in the centre of their craggy forehead. The gods turned their perfect faces away from them in distaste. But to Hera, their strength was beautiful.

Now Hera’s monstrous warriors come forth again, clanking bronze chains as they walk, their silhouettes massive against the incandescent sky. They spread out across the battlefield and begin to bind the defeated Titans, who have fallen to Hera’s blade or been crushed by the monsters at her side. Not that they can truly die; she knows that. The same golden blood runs in her own veins, and ichor is strong enough to sustain her through any injury, however grievous. It will sustain them too, just enough to keep them alive in this broken, battered state. It is the closest to death that an immortal can ever come. They are beyond resisting, unable to move or make a sound, drained and beaten to almost nothing.

The ground shudders. This is the end. Cronus, their father, who battles now against Zeus in the mountains, cannot stand against them alone. His allies are shackled at Hera’s feet, his children united against him, and even as his howl of fury rings out across the vast sky, she knows he is already beaten.

The age of the Titans has collapsed. The rule of the Olympians begins.

*

After the war is over, Gaia’s earth heals. In the years that follow, the plains where Hera cut down the Titans become meadows, and flowers grow in wild profusion where their blood soaked into the soil. The raw edges of the craters soften into gentle, grassy slopes. Hera strolls over them, and she remembers, This is where I led my monsters, this is where I plunged my spear into my enemies’ flesh, and the sunlight warms her skin. When she comes across pools that once glistened with golden blood, she smiles at her unchanged reflection in the clear water. Birds fly across skies that were once fractured with Zeus’ lightning, skies that now stretch blue and cloudless to the horizon.

In the war, time was measured in skirmishes and strategy. Now, Hera charts its passing by the trees that grow where the battlefields were; thin saplings becoming forests of broad-crowned oaks and towering pines.

It’s from such a forest that she emerges now, slipping out from between the wide trunks into the afternoon sunshine, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. She shakes out her hair, plucking a leaf from the dark waves tumbling down her back.

Her skin is still warm and tingling as she hurries towards the mountain that rises up from the landscape, higher than any around it. She pictures the river-god she leaves behind her in their secluded glade; in her mind’s eye, she sees him bathing under his foaming waterfall, his thick chest gleaming in the spray, droplets glistening on his strong arms. She casts a longing glance back. These hazy days of peace afford a freedom that Hera never knew before. But today, she has somewhere she needs to be, and she moves briskly on.

When Cronus ruled, Hera was hidden away and raised in the darkness of the house of Oceanus beneath the waters. She can remember what it was like, hearing the great river above her, its distant thunder surging over the rocks, trickling down through the mud, tingeing the air she breathed with the scent of damp earth. Now she is free, and every joy is hers to discover. She is a goddess revelling in the infancy of the world. A warrior who fought side by side with giants. A girl delighting in birdsong. Reigning in the heavens alongside her siblings; laughing in the woods with her lovers. A sister, curled up by the fire, exchanging confidences, her face open and warm in the glow of the cosy flames.

She eyes the distant mountain. She can traverse great distances and never tire, but she decides to take the form of her preferred bird, the hawk, to get there now. Her body ripples in transformation, and she takes to the air, the ground dropping away. Since the war, no god has seen Gaia, but she has rewarded them with more and more bounteous life, and all of it is laid out beneath Hera now: silver schools of fish in the waters, bears and lions to prowl the forests, creatures that creep and slither and scamper, furred and feathered and scaled. On the plains, horses run wild, kicking up dust behind them, and Hera sees her brother Poseidon, darting between them, swinging himself on to their backs, seemingly just for the joy of galloping. He’s on his way to Mount Olympus too, the seat of the victorious gods, the mountain home that has given them their name. Up the steep slopes, past the ragged pines whose branches are stripped by the wind that whistles through the peaks, beyond the rough boulders, where the fresh tang of scattered snow is sharp in the air and the clouds wreathe around bare rock; from here, they can watch the world beneath them. The palace they have built is a feast for the eyes: shining white marble and gleaming gold columns so cold and smooth they could be carved from ice, every line and corner straight and sharp and flawless. It’s nothing like the rugged perfection of Gaia’s creation, Hera sometimes thinks. Its glory comes not from the wild and beautiful chaos of the earth below, but from order, and that’s more pleasing to her than anything else. After the tumult of war, they lift themselves now beyond the grasp of any possible usurper.

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From Hera by Jennifer Saint. Used with permission of the publisher, Flatiron Books. Copyright © 2024 by Jennifer Saint.