Cheating The Dawn

"Tonight!" Aphrodite halted, surprised, for never had it been said that lovely Eos had failed to bed a man. "Was he, then, ugly? And if so, what would avail a day in between?"

"He swore to me that I'd never have a better."

"As have other men before."

"But this was different." Eos drew once more a deep breath, settling her thoughts. "He swore it by him who rules the Styx."

"He did not."

"He did." The Dawn-Goddess licked her lips, uncertain. "Never have I heard such a thing before."

"I should not imagine so. For if he fails to perform..." Both left the words unsaid, the thought unthought, for it was not often that a mortal man offered his life in trade for his skills, save on the battlefields. "Are you certain?"

"As certain as your husband's cuckoldry," snapped vulgar Eos, her mind still far, far away, and it was in that moment that her kinswoman who loved laughter decided she must pay for her affronts. Before, when she'd stolen Ares, Aphrodite had taken a price from her loins; now, when she would not quit her mockery of Hephaestus, Aphrodite would take a price from her erstwhile lover.

"Indeed." The Love-Goddess looked away. "I fear I must leave you, Eos, on that note. Gods preserve your Phylaxes. I decree this day that he shall please tonight the worthiest and most desirable of goddesses," she purred, voice honeyed in a way the distracted Eos failed to hear, and thus was the fate of the mariner sealed. "Until tomorrow, beloved aunt."

* * *

In the hours just after noontide, as the stables on mighty Olympus slept in drowsy silence, on quiet feet stole a hooded figure. Swiftly, a sack of sea-onion was emptied into the feed of the spirited colts who drew the Eos' chariot every morning to thrust wide the Gates of Dawn. Phaeton and Lampus were their names, and they snuffed at the sea-onion in wise suspicion before they eyed each other and, with equine diffidence, ate it up.

The hooded figure crept away then, missing the havoc her intervention had caused. For at once, the colts of Eos bolted, seeking the mares of Diomedes in a state of supreme phallic magnificence, galloping rampant across the sky. And so it was that Zeus, thinking of the breaking of the next morning's Dawn, summoned their mistress of the rose-gold fingers to hunt down her colts and tame them, even as her husband Astraios mounted the skies to herald the dusky evening.

And thus it was that Eos the Goddess of the Dawn did not return to Argos in time for her tryst by the river Inachos as the stars pricked Selene's firmament that evening. But another would come for Phylaxes Kontotechnes, a hooded figure, her cloak still smelling of the divine stables of far Olympus. From the sea by the mouth of the river she rose, shell-riding as was her wont, a figure of beauty breathtaking under Selene's silver light.

She did not look like her aunt Eos. But she did not imagine Phylaxes would have gotten a good look at the Goddess of the Dawn by the last night's feeble light, and she was right. So that as the Kontotechnes waited by the water, his spear ready to hunt, he failed to notice that the goddess of this night was not the goddess of the night before.

And, certainly, he did not care.

Hand in hand they strode the road south, to where the ship of Phylaxes rested still upon the shore, the long hard shaft of its prow nestled still within the moist embrace of the quiescent sands, an oracle of the night to come. "My ship," he said simply, leading the goddess up the gangway.

"A worthy vessel," she nodded gaily, "but mine is worthier still."

"Your ship?" He handed her aboard as she smiled.

"My vessel, sir. You'll find it sleek and well-made." They shared the smile that lovers share. "Perfectly formed and ready for you to ride within, safe and warm."

"Warm, certainly." His voice was confident enough to sound insolent. "Though perhaps not safe."

"On the contrary. If you are master of your spear, then it is only I who am at risk."

"Hades, Lord of the Styx, might see it differently this night," he pressed, but the deck echoed beneath their eager feet as they trod it toward the master's cabin at the rear, where Phylaxes slept amid rugs and the brocades of distant lands. "Though I trust you will find that I steer your vessel well."

"I trust I shall, sir," and the goddess now was breathless, the flush of her excitement painting her body rosy as her aunt, but her lips were parting already as Phylaxes kindled the lamp in the close, warm place he entered, taking her into his arms and stooping to claim her tongue. They danced together on their feet, suckling from each other's mouths as their clothes whispered to the rough wood of the deck at their feet. "Then steer it," she whispered, her voice light as the winds but heavy as lust as she took his hand and pulled it into herself.

"Gladly." His spear painted the wall in the flicker of the lamp, long and thick, the beat of his heart shaking it like a warrior ready to do battle, and like that warrior he took hold of his quarry and made it submit to his will. His strong arms molding her as a sculptor shapes his clay, he guided her to his bower and bent low to drink his fill of her body.

And that night, the Goddess of Love discovered exactly why the bedrooms of Argos held so many happy women. She reeled away in the night, heavy with his seed, mind addled by his ravishment, stealing back into the waves even as Eos returned in tardy wrath from the stables where she had at long last tethered her horses.

Eos was ready, and more than ready. Alas for Phylaxes Kontotechnes, who had nothing left to offer, not even a ram he could sacrifice, desperate, in the middle night as he tried to blunt the edge of this goddess' wrath. But as so many others had found, his hope in her placation proved as vain as his trust in his own mastery over his body, frail and mortal as it was.

And so it was that silent Charon had work to do on the Styx that night, before Eos thrust forth her Gates once more to strew the dews over the surface of the world, her mind anger-warmed.

* * *

Swift Hermes, feet winged on his daily rounds, found the Goddess of the Dawn later that morning, closeted with her kinswoman who loved laughter. Glowering was her glance, and morose her manner as Hermes came before her and bowed. "Eos Rhododactylos, I bring greetings from noble Hades Polydectes, Lord of the Styx. He sends a message."

"I'm sure he does," Eos sighed, head heavy in her hands. Her loins, sadly unfilled for two nights yet, gnawed at her. "He seeks knowledge of the man I sent him yesternight."

"He does indeed, ruddy Eos."

"The man. Yes. Phylaxes. Kontotechnes, he names himself: skilled with the spear, and yet I call him something else." Disdainfully, she sniffed the golden air of Olympus. "Kontoklastos. Him of the broken shaft. He sang me an empty song, after I bade him not to."

And Aphrodite found a secret smile lining her lips. "Was he, then, incapable?"

"Spent he seemed, as though he had sampled too much bread and left no room for his meat." She scowled. "And yet, his meat was meant for me. I needed his full appetite, for I had been up in the heavens half the day and into the night, seeking my wayward stallions." She sighed, her vanity pricked as her loins had not been. "His storied spear, I am afraid, remained sadly limp."

"Alas, then, for his pride in it." Aphrodite, it seemed to Eos, was better-pleased that morning than most, her smile strangely feline as though she had passed the night in heated comfort with a capable lover. "And so, doomed by his own oath, to Hades he went?"

"He did indeed," spat the Goddess of the Dawn, lifting her tired eyes toward the messenger. "So go, worthy Hermes, and tell him so. I don't care whether Phylaxes stays in darkness until the world ends." She stared down toward her lap. "Impudent and imprudent both, the man who brags of his bed-prowess and then fails to deliver."

She fell silent, brooding, and Aphrodite the Lover of Laughter let her chuckle ring out into the dust drifting through the light of Dawn.