Orion

The stories of the gods spin throughout the stories of all others that walked in their time, influencing every thread of Fate that they brushed across.  This is Orion's story, yes, but we must start with the gods who brought him to the sky: Artemis, the goddess of the moon, and Apollo, the sun-god.

Artemis was strong-willed and independent, a huntress without equal.  She kept company with her nymphs and attendants and, whenever she desired to speak with someone she respected, she found her twin brother, Apollo.  They had walked together since childhood, finding time in the twilight hours when neither had to be the Sun or the Moon, sharing stories of the lives of the mortals whom they watched during their trips across the sky.  His were stories of cleansing fires and sweat-soaked backs and the music of glaring shields sparking against spearheads.  Hers were of starlit interludes and peaceful serenades and stags leaping away from the hunt, leaving only bright shadows in their wakes.  They told each other of the mortals whom they had found and admired, or in Apollo's case, loved and left.  Artemis insisted on a partner who was her equal, and so she hunted through the skies alone, running in my trail and wading through your light, my dear stars.

Eternity passed, and one morning just before Apollo was called away by the dawn, Artemis mentioned Orion, an impressive hunter, and Apollo did not hear the new depth in her soft voice.  But when each twilight grew longer with her stories of Orion—of his skill, his misdeeds, and his adventures—Apollo wondered and worried, and one evening his sister did not come visit him at all.

He looked for and found her that night, enthralled in the hunt, as always.  But it was not a nymph lagging behind or a hound struggling to stay at her heels that served as her companion; she was with a man, strong and hale, matching her stride for stride.  Apollo had never seen his sister with eyes so alert or legs so graceful or cheeks so ripe.  And he knew as he watched their feet pound the earth in the same rhythm that their hearts did the same.

His sister was in love.  When she met Apollo later, she offered no explanation for her absence, only a thin apology and a vague suggestion that such absences might occur again.

The weeks passed and she never told him of her Orion, even when asked, directly or indirectly, about what had happened to that magnificent hunter she spoke of so often so many twilights ago.  Apollo took comfort in his mortals and his music, but they were failing substitutes, and he found himself dwelling on things long past: he sat beside the laurel tree that had once been a nymph who had refused to love him and had whispered obscure secrets in his oracle’s ears.  And then he could stand himself no longer and sought out his sister.

He found her leaning against Orion, telling him stories of the night and the hunt; she glowed with the pale light of a quiet sky filled with the echoes of a thousand fires on earth.  Jealousy arched through him.  He created a Scorpion out of his immortal blood and set it after Orion.  It could not be killed and it would never tire, and as strong as Orion was, he was only mortal.  And so Orion ran, unable to stop to alert Artemis to his trouble.  For the first time since Orion and Artemis had begun arranging meetings, he did not come.

Artemis came to see Apollo that evening and the next, her face stretched tight with a waning smile and waxing fury, both hiding her sadness at what she supposed was Orion's abandonment of her.  Orion was forced to flee across creation with feet pounding the earth and the wind pushing the sweat from his limbs and onto the Scorpion.  He came to the sea at last, and he swam as far as he could while the Scorpion stalked the shore, testing the water but unable to pursue.

That night, Apollo brought his sister, full of angry despair, to the same shore and pointed to the head of a swimmer who was fast escaping over the waves.  He told her that this nameless man was trying to flee from her wrath because he had harmed one of her nymphs.

She did not hesitate and a silver arrow arched like a comet into the swimmer's head, and as he sank beneath the waves, she turned her back to the sea to return to her brooding heartache over her missing Orion.  Apollo let her go, ignorant as she was of her lover's body drifting through the sea.

Apollo watched Artemis mourn for weeks.  He had never felt time pass so acutely as when his sister wept iridescent tears in the daylight shadows of her forest.  Guilt and his own sadness for her loosed his tongue.  He confessed.  Artemis, for the first time in her life, could not look at her brother.  The twilights shortened so that she would not have to see her brother, so that she could leave before the desire to tear him to pieces overcame her steady hands.  Apollo, furious with himself and desperate for Artemis’s forgiveness, begged and pleaded with her until she met him on the shore, for as angry as she was, she still missed the only person who had been with her for her entire life.  Together, both weeping, they pulled Orion’s body from the sea and hung him in the sky, star by star.

So now Orion and Artemis run through the night sky together, hunting until dawn, with feet pounding through eternity in the same rhythm, and every morning she falls from the sky to greet her brother before the day.  Apollo is no longer jealous, and Artemis has until the galaxies melt back together to forgive him, and she does, little by little, dawn by dawn.

Words from the Typist