Lamont spoke up. “Hey, Jerry. How’s about if we enlisted the Titan Prometheus?”
“Hmm . . . ” Jerry pursed his lips, considering the idea. “It’s a thought, now that you raise it. He should be chained up to Mount Caucasus.”
One thing at a time, he reminded himself. He turned back to Arachne. “Honest, ma’am. We’re just passing through. Apparently there are a few others gathered on Lesbos. Ares is ravaging mainland Greece.”
“My spider-sisters say that half of Thrace is burning. And there are cruel sacrifices being demanded in the other half. But whatever the Olympians are doing, it is yet confined to the area around the mountain. We are prepared here, however. The Olympian gods are capricious and cruel. They and their servants will not leave Lydia in peace for long. You stumbled into one of the traps we have prepared for their reivers.”
“Well, can we stumble out?” asked Jerry, carefully suppressing any arachnophobic thoughts. “All we want to do is to buy some food, and then we’ll be on our way. You can even keep the rest of us here. Mac can go and dicker about some food, and then we’ll leave.”
The spiderwoman nodded. “My sisters confirm: there are two dragons, a sphinx and a man resting in the high pasture. Come, follow me.”
* * *
“Listen, Doc,” said McKenna quietly as they walked along. “You obviously know who she is. How come she’s a spider?”
Jerry grimaced. “For the same reason I never really liked working on ancient Greek mythology. She was a skilled human weaver. She dared to challenge Athena to a weaving competition. There are variations to the story, but basically she chose as a subject the philandering of the gods of Olympus. And she did weave better than Athena. Either for her disrespectful choice of subject or because she was a better weaver, Athena turned her into a spider, doomed to weave eternally, and to spin her own thread from her body. There is another version, which has Athena destroying her work in a rage and the girl committing suicide and being changed into a spider out of pity. It seems that here, anyway, you can guess the former story to be the true one.”
McKenna ground his teeth. “You mean she was human and some so-called goddess did this to her ’cause she just couldn’t cut it in competition with a human?”
Jerry pulled a wry face. “That about sizes it up, yes.”
McKenna’s eyes narrowed. His normally cheerful face was hard. Jerry was just glad not to be on the wrong side of the man when he looked this serious. “Look Doc, I admit I don’t know one hell of a lot about this mythology stuff. But I thought Athena was one of the good guys. This is a bit petty and childish for a so-called goddess.”
Jerry shrugged. “The ancient Greek gods were prone to pettiness, to be honest. And they weren’t what you’d call a particularly ethical bunch, either. Zeus, for instance, had affairs by the score. Jealousy and revenge were an intrinsic part of the mythology. A lot of it was petty. In this case, it was also a message reinforcing the social order of the day. Athena was just explaining to anyone else who got uppity that it wasn’t what you could do, it was who you were. If I remember right, Colophon was a bit of a maverick society anyway.”
“Any way you can turn this Athena into a cockroach? Or help Arachne?” asked McKenna.
Jerry shook his head. “Mac, Egyptian mythology and magic were different. Firstly, power there is vested in words. I could manage those. Here, it is in the commanding of the ‘spirits’ of what we’d regard as inanimate things—you know, wood, rocks, rivers—all controlled by a hierarchy of gods. Medea draws much of her strength as a sorceress because of the powers over these ‘spirits’ given to her because she was a high priestess of Hecate and granddaughter of Helios. I don’t have any skills here. Secondly, a mortal could make even the Egyptian gods do his bidding, with magic. The ancient Greek pantheon were there for supplication, and are pretty much beyond mortal command. Ask Medea if she can do anything, but Athena was one of the most powerful of the ancient Greek pantheon. I doubt if she can help.”
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