The
Companions of the Winged Sandal
By
Maureen Bowden
Clara
Bulkley was a large woman: not obese, but chunky. She
had broad shoulders, muscular arms, and what the
Victorians would have called childbearing hips. She had
no trouble jacking up a defective car or unscrewing the
top off the toilet cleaner, and at her all-girl college,
in the days before she acquired an impressive bosom, she
had invariably been cast as the male lead in the
end-of-year play.
Her
once-a-week lover, Roger Packwell, in an attempt at
verbal foreplay during one of their Sunday evening
trysts, said, ‘You’re magnificent, Clara. You’re a
goddess.’
Clara
preferred sex without conversation. “Shut up, Roger, and
do your stuff.”
After
packing Mr. Packwell off home, in the early hours of
Monday morning, she discarded her bathrobe, and studied
her voluptuousness in her full-length mirror.
“He’s
right,” she said aloud. “I am a goddess: not Aphrodite
or one of those simpering bimbos, give me my armor and
I’m Athena, ready to charge into battle with swords
blazing.” She acknowledged the mixed metaphor, but she
liked the image. So did an eavesdropping god.
Whilst
admiring her reflection, Clara observed, hovering in the
air behind her, a skinny boy in a loincloth. She turned
to face him. “Who the hell are you, where did you come
from, and how are you hovering?”
“Hermes, at your service, large lady: known in my
current incarnation as Chesney Hardcastle. I come,
originally, from Mount Olympus and I have wings on my
footwear.” He raised his leg, presenting her with a
down-at-heel sandal that did, indeed, possess a wing.
“Take
your foot out of my face and stand on the floor,” she
said. He obeyed. He was several inches shorter than her,
so they now stood eye to nipple. Feeling somewhat
uncomfortable, she signaled to him to raise himself
higher. He did so, until they were, once again, eye to
eye. Clara assumed that Roger must have slipped
something into her vodka and orange, but she decided to
go with the flow. “What shall I call you, small man,
Hermes or Chesney?”
“If
you don’t mind, I’d prefer Hermes.”
“What
do you want, Hermes?”
“I
want you to lead an army of Titans against the higher
deities of Mount Olympus, to prevent them from bringing
about The Big Crunch.”
“What’s that, a new breakfast cereal?”
“I’m
afraid not. It’s the opposite of The Big Bang. It will
suck the universe back into The Void. Our destiny is
upon us. I dressed for the occasion.”
“No
kidding? When do we get crunched?”
“Probably within the next twenty-four hours.” He handed
her the black lace bra that had been dangling from a
wall-light. “Put on some clothes, but not too many. The
armor will have to fit on top of them.”
“I get
armor?”
“You
do. Please hurry. I’ll explain on the way to the
Balkans.”
She
squeezed into her Stella McCartney designer jeans, and
an orange vest-top with ‘Look But Don’t Touch’
emblazoned across the front. “Okay, let’s go.”
He
wrapped his arms around her waist and they flew out of
the window. The sight of Earth falling from beneath her
feet made her dizzy, so she closed her eyes and, for
distraction, interrogated the small man. “Enlighten me.
How did the mighty Hermes dwindle into Chesney
Hardcastle?”
“I was
the messenger of the gods. It was a good gig, plenty of
overtime and no heavy lifting, but I didn’t like the
tactics of the rat pack that called themselves the New
Olympians.”
Clara
plumbed her memory of The Child’s Book of Myths
that Auntie Kathleen had bought her for her seventh
birthday. “Zeus, Hera, and the rest of the boys and
girls in the band, right?”
“Right,” Hermes said. “They kicked out the Titans:
called them has-beens, hurled them down to Earth, where
they could only survive by becoming mortal, dying and
reincarnating, over and over again. I was so annoyed
that I came with them.”
“A
small man of principle: I admire you.”
“You
came too, but we lost touch a long time ago.”
“How
come you remember and I don’t?”
The
small man blushed. “I have Iris, my soul mate, to remind
me. She’s also a messenger of the gods. She stayed in
Olympus to keep me informed about what they were up to.
That’s how I found out about The Big Crunch.”
“A spy
in the camp: does she have wings on her heels too?”
“No.
She rides the rainbow. We may need her help today.”
They
landed on the slopes of Mount Olympus as dawn was
breaking. An archway, black, and smelling of hot metal,
towered above them. It stood, like a slice of midnight,
absorbing the glow of early morning.
“It’s as I feared,” Hermes
said. “The gods have opened a portal between their
reality and ours.”
“What’s it made of?” Clara said.
“Dark
matter.”
“What’s it for?”
“We’ll
get sucked through here and follow them into the void.
They’ve seen it all, done it all, and now they’re tired
of existing. The only way to cope with immortality is to
keep busy, and they’re not good at that, so they’re
packing up their troubles in their old kit-bags.”
“Why
do they want to take us with them?”
He
shrugged, “Because they can.”
“What
do we do now?”
“We
wait for the Titans. In the meantime, take a look
through the portal, into the reality of the Greek
pantheon”. She looked. White-robed figures lounged
around the mountainside. Their demeanor suggested
boredom. A woman with long golden hair dangled her naked
feet in a fast flowing stream. Her robe was transparent
in some places and absent altogether in others.
Aphrodite, Clara guessed. Her blind child, Eros, sat
beside her, playing with a bow and arrows. While
Aphrodite was distracted, a tall warrior, wearing a
helmet and a short tunic, gave the child a clout around
the ear.
“Who’s
the dude in the skirt?” she asked Hermes.
“That’s Ares.”
“He’s
a nasty piece of work.”
“Well,
he is the god of war. What do you expect?”
Clara
pointed to a figure on the mountain peak. It appeared to
vacillate between male and female. “Who or what’s that?”
“It’s
Gaia and Tartarus,” he said. “They’re the Duality:
negative and positive, good and evil, left and right.
They’re lovers, sister and brother, mother and son,
father and daughter. Everything that exists comes from
them.”
“But
where did they come from?”
“They
came from The One, that rose out of The Void. We call it
Chaos.” He sighed. “It’s all about to go into reverse,
large lady, unless we can stop it.”
The
clomp of boots, and other assorted footwear, signaled
the arrival of twenty-four men and women who had once
been Titans. “I thought there’d be more of them,” Clara
said.
“The
rest are between incarnations.”
“You
mean they’re dead?”
“You
could say that, yes.”
“How
long do we say dead?”
“Could
be ten years or ten thousand. We come back when the
time’s right.”
Hermes
pointed out the ancient man, bald and bent, who was
leading the procession.
“Before The Fall he was Prometheus, the mightiest of
them all, but he’s had many incarnations since then.”
“He
looks like he’s ready for the next one.”
Supporting Prometheus, keeping him vertical and dragging
him up the mountain, was a young man whose face Clara
had seen before, snarling at her from the screensaver on
Auntie Kathleen’s laptop. She remembered asking, “Who’s
he, Auntie Kath?”
“He’s
the pre-army Elvis,” her favorite aunt had told her.
“He’s a hunk, isn’t he?”
Clara
nudged Hermes, “Who’s the fit one holding up
Prometheus?”
“Back
in the day he was the Titan Astraeus, god of the dusk.
There’s a rumor that he’s had an incarnation as some
sort of king, but I think that’s unlikely. He’s a
trucker now: calls himself Snake-hips. He’s a hunk,
isn’t he?”
The
Titans were all ages, all shapes, all exhausted. They
flopped down on the grass and passed around sandwiches
and beer cans. Snake-hips deposited Prometheus at
Clara’s feet, along with a sack he’d been carrying over
his shoulder. “Hello, baby,” he said. “Athena, I
presume.”
“How
do you know me?”
He
grinned at Hermes. “Tell the lady about The Companions
of the Winged Sandal, Chesney.”
“They’re a secret society: a Hermes cult,” the small man
said. “Their members are postal and delivery workers all
over the world: this reality’s equivalent of winged
messengers. They know who and where everyone is, and
they can contact the Titans whenever they’re needed.”
“Is
Roger one of them? He runs his own company, Packwell’s
Parcel Delivery Service.”
“He
is, indeed. I asked the Companions to seek you out, so
that you could lead the Titans against the Olympians.
Roger found you.”
“Why
didn’t he tell me about all this?”
Snake-hips growled deep in his throat, “He might have
done, if you’d settled for a little more conversation and
a little less action.”
She
appraised his athletic, youthful body. “Thank you for
the advice,” she said. “Now take some from me. Keep off
the beef burgers, eat healthily, and stay away from Las
Vegas.”
“Okay,
baby.”
“I’ll
have some advice for Roger, too,” she said. “If he wants
our association to continue, he’d better stop gossiping
about me to reincarnated Titans.”
“He
has to talk to somebody, baby.”
Clara
said nothing. She knew he was right.
Hermes
intervened. “This is a war, not a relationship
counseling service. Give her the armor, Snakey.”
Snake-hips untied the sack. A cardboard box was inside.
She tore it apart. Under the Amazon delivery note was a
suit of glistening gold armor. There was also a sword
that looked as if it had been forged by Tolkien’s
dwarves, in the ancient kingdom of Gondolin, and called whatever is Elvish for ‘Avenger’.
Clara
had never lacked self-confidence, but she was now
overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy. “I can’t wear
this. I may have been a goddess once, but I’m only a
human being now.”
Hermes
smiled. “Once a deity, always a deity. It’s a state of
mind. A god is just a human with attitude.”
“But I
don’t know how to fight.”
“You
don’t have to fight.” He pointed to the portal. “You
have to destroy that eyesore.”
“Why
do I need armor?”
“To
protect you from the Titans.”
“I
thought they were on our side.”
“They
are. They’ll send mental energy towards the portal to
weaken it. You have to knock it down. The armor will
prevent the Titanic thought power from weakening you
too.”
“They’re the brains, I’m the brawn?”
“Right.”
The
goddess Athena donned her armor. The helmet and
breastplate gleamed in the sunlight. “I wish I had a
mirror,” she said.
Hermes
delved into his loincloth and produced a powder compact.
“This belongs to Iris. I keep it close to remind me of
her.” He handed it to Clara, as she tried not to
visualize the part of him to which he kept it close.
The
mirror in the compact was tiny, but she saw enough to be
impressed. I look the business, she thought. This should
liven up Sunday evenings. Roger Packwell will blow a
fuse.
The
battle to save the universe commenced. Twenty-four
latter-day deities directed their combined brain waves
at the portal. Weakened patches grew paler and the
armored goddess slashed at them with her sword.
All
day they toiled. The pale patches spread. Clara lunged
and pounded. Gaps were appearing in the dark matter, and
the Olympians beyond the portal were looking worried. A
tall figure with a long white beard appeared in their
midst. I’m guessing that’s Zeus, Clara thought. I wonder
what he’s got up his sleeve. What he had up his sleeve
was a hammer. He scowled, and brought it down with such
force that it shattered a boulder on the banks of
Aphrodite’s foot spa.
The
sky clouded. A lightening bolt and thunderclap signaled
a bombardment of hail that stung their faces and clanged
on Clara’s armor. Hermes yelled to her over the din,
“Zeus is The Storm-Bringer. He’s playing mind games with
us. We’ve got them rattled. Keep pounding.”
Snake-hips shouted, “We need more help, Chesney. Call
the Companions.”
The
small man produced a phone from his loincloth. “I’ll
tell Roger to email them all and ask them to back you up
by sending out their own thought power from wherever
they are. It’s not much but it could just tip the
balance.”
Clara,
still pounding, called, “Give him my love.”
No
more than three minutes after Hermes made the call, her
flesh tingled as a surge of energy from the Companions
joined their assault on the portal. One of the side
pillars collapsed, and the other, under Clara’s hacking
and battering, began to splinter. The apex, however,
high above her reach, remained, suspended in the air.
The Titans directed their mental muscle towards it and
Hermes flew Clara up to its level to give it the
hammering from Hades, but it wouldn’t budge. She looked
through to the Olympian’s reality. Zeus, Hera, and the
rest of the boys and girls in the band were being
absorbed into The Duality, and Clara confronted the
prospect that she, and everything in her reality would
be next.
They
were facing oblivion, but without Zeus the storm
stopped, and a rainbow arched across the sky. A girl was
sliding down it like a child on a fairground ride.
Hermes waved to her. His voice trembled. “It’s Iris. I
knew she’d come.” They watched the slender figure leap
onto the portal, slamming her body into the unyielding
blackness, infusing it with
all the colors of the spectrum. The apex collapsed onto
the mountainside, taking her with it, just as The
Duality folded in on his/herself, becoming The One.
Chaos passed into The Void as the portal disappeared.
Hermes
sat, sobbing, holding the girl’s lifeless body in his
arms. Clara hunkered down beside him and touched his
shoulder. He smiled at her. She realized that he was
shedding tears of joy. “She’s mortal now,” he said.
“She’s come to join me.”
Clara
shook her head. “She’s dead, Hermes. I’m so sorry.”
“Of
course she’d dead. What does that matter?” Still
cradling Iris on one arm, he used his free hand to blow
his nose on his loincloth. “We all die, but next time I
reincarnate, so will she. We’ll be together through all
our future lives. I told you, we’re soul mates.”
The
Titans collected old, dry timber from the forest on the
northeast side of the mountain, and built a funeral
pyre, topped by a rough trellis of twigs, on which
Hermes laid his soul mate’s body. They covered her with
violets, madworts, and rare mountain flowers. Prometheus
rubbed two pieces of wood together. A spark flickered
and set the branches alight. Snake-hips whispered to
Clara, “The old man still likes playing with fire.”
The
flames rose as the sun was setting. The blaze crackled,
burst, and illuminated the night sky. Clara’s
tingling flesh told her that the Companions of the
Winged Sandal were still with them in spirit; the
mourners kept a vigil; and Snake-hips sang Somewhere
Over the Rainbow.
When
the fire burned itself out and the night wind scattered
the ashes, Hermes said to Clara, “Are you ready to go
home, large lady?”
She
nodded. “I’ll sleep well tonight, knowing I helped to
prevent the universe ending.”
“We
didn’t prevent it,” he said. “It’ll happen when it’s
supposed to happen, but we have a few billion years
yet.”
“Then
we get sucked into The Void and the party’s over?”
Snake-hips was listening. He flashed a lopsided smile.
“No, we recharge the batteries and wait for the next Big
Bang. The party never ends, baby, so don’t hang up your
rock ’n’ roll shoes.”
“Can I
keep the armor?”
“You
sure can. It suits you.”
She
winked. “I know.”
After
they exchanged hugs, high-fives, and email addresses,
Hermes wrapped his arms around Clara’s waist, and they
were airborne. She looked down on the Aegean Sea, and
then kept her eyes closed until they flew in through her
bedroom window, and landed in front of her full-length
mirror.
“Goodbye, large lady,” Hermes said. “When you see Roger
Packwell next Sunday, remember that we owe him a debt of
gratitude.”
“Don’t
worry, small man, he’ll be well rewarded. That’s why I’m
keeping the armor. It’ll give rise to a little more
conversation, if nothing else.”
The
End