SquidgeWorld Archive

The stranger carefully scrutinized the tray of pendants. One-by-one he picked up the creations and studied the gold wires, fine as cobwebs, wrapping the stones; then one-by-one held them up to the light as if searching for that one piece of amber holding the remains of his favorite insect. He did the same with silver pieces decorated with volcanic glass, looking perhaps for fossilized fire. She watched him quietly, noting if he would attempt to slip something inside his tunic.

The visitor to her island, while he was not tall or overtly physically attractive, carried himself with an air of refinement. His clothes were made of the finest fabrics and fit as if they had been custom made for him. Both his curly light brown hair and beard were neatly trimmed. Even his hands were uncallused and his fingernails neatly trimmed and buffed. She recognized a man who earned a living with his mind, or his money, not his hands. He looked about thirty, not young, but definitely not old. He could have been a prince or a wealthy merchant.

"Can I help you? Are you looking for something for your girlfriend, your wife? I have a fine collection of fertility amulets. They are 100% guaranteed to work during this visit to the island." She smiled at him. Although she felt that her jewelry almost sold itself, her father had taught her early that a smile and a little explanation would increase the quality or quantity of purchases.

"This stuff is exquisite. Who made this jewelry? I would love to meet him. Help him expand his market."

"I am the one who made the jewelry. I am busy enough making the pieces I sell here. I don't need to expand my market."

"But this work would command twice what you are asking in the Agora in Athens, maybe four times that price in Rome. You could buy larger, rarer stones, from all over the earth. With your skill you should be making jewelry for kings and queens."

"I prefer to make them for the common men and woman who visit my island. I've never been anywhere else. Why would kings and queens be interested in my work?"

"To begin with, the craftsmanship. The silver and gold wires seem to have been spun by silkworms or maybe Clotho herself. I've never seen anything so delicate. The amber seems to capture the sun, bring it inside the room, even by lamplight. But there is more, something more."

"I do have a few larger pieces in the back. If you like my work so much, I guess I better consider raising my prices -- at least for you." She suspected that after his praise of her work, he was about to ask for a discount.

It was not the first time he had seen this jewelry. In a village in northern Greece, he had noticed a small crescent moon hanging in the hollow of the throat of a young woman from a family of fishermen. Once he had noticed the piece of jewelry, he could look at nothing else, despite her fiery beauty. Asking for a closer look, he noticed two tiny gold stars hanging on separate gossamer chains accompanying the moon.

He asked the woman about it, and she responded with a story he only half believed. Three years before a man had come to her village looking for a woman named Serena, her grandmother. When she told him that Serena had died almost ten years before, he sat and cried for almost a day. The tall, well built man was a warrior, much younger than her grandmother. She wondered if he had been a relative, a nephew, even a long lost son. She had asked his name and he had told her it was 'Hercules'. She told him, although she said she hadn't told Hercules, a story she had heard from her grandmother. It seemed her grandmother had claimed she had actually met Hercules years before when her husband had been lost at sea and she had gone to petition Triton for his safe return. The woman had told him that before Hercules left, he had given her the necklace and told her to keep it to give to her daughter on her wedding day. Hercules had also said the necklace came from Thera.

"Do you have any jewelry with the moon and stars?" He asked the craftswoman.

"I've only done one piece like that. Think it was five years ago. Right about the time my mother and father both died. I was very sad and made a piece with the crescent moon to represent this island, and two stars to represent my parents. I had intended to keep the piece for myself, but ended up selling it to a stranger. A man who had come to the island to visit my father."

"I think I saw it once. I fell in love with it immediately. I have come all this way in search of the person who made it, and I haven't even asked your name."

"My name, believe it or not, is Aphrodite. Most people just call me Di. My mother was pretty crazy when it came to naming her children. I have a brother named Jaxon and another named Iolaus."

"Iolaus? Like Hercules' friend, Iolaus?"

"So you've heard the stories, too. I just thought most of them were things my mother made up and told us. My mother had this way of turning myth into history and history into myth. She was a bard."

"You wouldn't believe the stories in my family. My grandfather even claimed he knew Xena, Warrior Princess -- way back, when she was still an evil warlord. He claimed it was he, not Hercules, who lead her to the right path -- that of a hero."

"That's really funny. I also have a niece named Xena --another of my mother's favorite names. I didn't know she was ever evil though, my mother must have forgotten that part of the myth . . story.. history."

"Small world, isn't it. Listen, you don't seem to be inundated by customers. How about putting up a 'back-in- an-hour sign", and coming with me to get something to eat. I would love to discuss your works, and your family. I am sure we have a few choice . . . family myths . . . to share."

"How about making it dinner, on me, after I close tonight. My brother owns Hotel Atlantis, meet me there about a half-hour after sundown."

* * * * *

Despite the fact that she earned her livelihood dealing with visitors to the island, essentially strangers who she would never see again, Di rarely interacted with them on other than a business level. She always thought of herself as different, both from the people who lived on her island and those who visited. She had grown up with the stories of her parents past, how her mother had come as a young woman to find her father, an old innkeeper, and to have his child. How the couple had lived together for many years having four sons before they were married, and how she had been born to a mother whose hair was turning gray with age. She could, however, picture her mother young, because she thought she saw her every time she looked in the mirror.

She felt secure at Hotel Atlantis surrounded by her brother, Horace, and nieces and nephews who worked in the hotel. It was the best place she could think of to meet a stranger and talk about jewelry -- and maybe tell family stories. She had never felt that she would ever meet someone with whom she could share the Hercules and Xena stories.

They sat on the white terrace, lit by flaming pots, and talked. She gave him a sketchy outline of her family and told him that anyone he met on the island with blue eyes would probably be one of her relatives.

"It's a wild and crazy family I am part of, to be sure." She told him.

"My story is wild, too, " he began, "not so much because of who I am, but because of who I was supposed to be."

Her face bore a strangely puzzled look. He continued. "My grandmother was a princess. In fact, she was from this huge family of princesses."

"How huge?"

"Would you believe 50. . . . I know, my great-grandfather, King Thespius, was quite the lover. I think there were seven different mothers, but even then. Couldn't produce a son though. So he got this idea that he wanted his daughters, every one of his daughters, to have a child by the demi-god Hercules.
Put a little spunk back in the family line, so to speak. "

"So you are a descendent of Hercules?"

"No, that was who I was supposed to be."

"Oh." She was supposed to be someone different, too. Her mother had told her that she had been an Amazon and that when she first came to Thera her plan was to have a daughter, fathered by a man from her past, and to return to live with her tribe. The fates, despite her father's insistence that people made their own fate, had interfered and by the time her mother gave birth to her -- after having four sons -- she was so in love with her husband that she would never leave.

"Well, I don't know how many Hercules stories you've heard, but he wasn't really a lady's man." He noticed the shocked look on her face. "No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. He was shy with women. He had two wives, and a couple of women he really loved, but certainly wasn't the type to have sex with 50 women he didn't know."

"That's what I gathered from my mother's stories. She didn't talk about him a lot, but when she did, she always talked about how reluctant he was to discuss personal things, and how he used to blush. I could never imagine Hercules blushing. Glad you clarified the 'not really a lady's man' though -- I've heard a couple of stories about Hercules and his friend Iolaus -- don't want to think about them that way."

"Pretty sure they are not true. People will tell those stories, though, they always do. My grandfather, the one who did get my grandmother pregnant, was a strange old bird. He told people he was Hercules' official biographer, and wrote a lot of scrolls about him."

"We do have really similar backgrounds, and bards in the family. Do you think we are related?"

"Not unless you are related to King Thespius."

"Your grandfather wasn't Iolaus, was he? Seems like he would have been the second choice to Hercules. He was as heroic as Hercules, and he was mortal. But I never remember him being a bard."

"No, at least that's not what I heard. Don't think he was on that trip with Hercules. My grandfather left right after my father was born. Left a few scrolls. I think my father sold them, he'd sell anything to the highest bidder, just like his father. Left a few other children too, a lot of my father's cousins who are really his half-brothers and half-sisters. My grandfather may not have been the world's most handsome man, but unlike Hercules he definitely had a way with the women. I never got to read the scrolls, just heard the stories."

"My mother hid a lot of hers, buried them in caves somewhere on this island, so I never read the good ones either. She was a little crazy when she first came here. Used to carry a little pot of ashes around with her and talk to them all the time. I am glad she mellowed a lot by the time I was born, but by that time she wrote children's stories and fables."

"Yeh, identify with that. Everyone was convinced my father and his cousins were descendants of Hercules. They had to go off to the Academy and study fighting and such. Not a warrior in the bunch -- unless you count my uncle who became famous as a weapons' dealer."

"If you're interested in weapons, you ought to come back to the shop tomorrow. I have some really interesting ones. I have this knife my father made. It is about a cubit long -- you know elbow to tip of finger. Can use it like a sword or throw it like a dagger. Never seen another one quite like it."

"I come from a family of merchants and traders, let's say people who respond to healthy financial offers. I myself have traveled most of the known world buying and selling jewelry. Do you know there is a stone from India that is so hard, it can only be cut by another stone of the exact same kind? "

"My mother went to India once. She went to Chin, and Japa, and the North. Then she ended up here -- to find my father. He was an old friend of hers from the past

"Sounds interesting."

"You should see the strange weapons my mother had. I never got the full story about any of them. My mother used to be a warrior, and as I said, an Amazon Queen."

"Wow, we both have royalty in our pasts." He commented. They had both consumed more wine than they had planned, and even surrounded by her family, he had moved his chair closer and begun to hold her hand, toying with her fingers as they talked.

"For a while, I was somewhat concerned that we might be related. There are so many connections, our families knew the same people." She commented. He found it interesting; a lot of women would have wanted them to be relatives, felt more comfortable because of it.

"I am actually staying in this inn," he said, and thought, 'As much as I would like it, I can't take you back to my room because everyone here is your relative.' "It would be most ungentlemanly of me to not walk you back to your home. We really talked too long."

"I could stay here, with my brother and his wife, but my house isn't far. I'd be pleased if you walked me home. Around here the night is still pretty young."

* * * * *

She had thought about that night, often. They had left the safety of the inn to make the short climb up the hill to the small house she now shared with her brothers, Jaxon and Iolaus, when they were in town once or twice a year. She remembered the night air was soft, music playing in the distance, and the stars bright; she felt the wine. It made her feel like skipping. He had allowed her to skip ahead, to act like a child. She wasn't a child; she was a grown woman. It must have been the wine. She was having too much fun to go home, and suggested they go back to her shop. They skipped back down the hill to the storefront holding hands.

He had wanted to buy all her jewelry. That had made her suspicious that he was really interested in buying something else -- something that wasn't for sale. She had said 'no', but allowed him to purchase an amber pendent, a bracelet, and a small fertility amulet.

They got out the weapons and went outside into the dark alley and tried to throw the dagger. He was right about not having warrior blood in his family. She didn't attempt to demonstrate the weapons that had belonged to her mother; she knew the damage they could do in untrained hands. He had wanted to buy the weapons saying museums would pay big money for them. She told him she would think about it.

After that things really got fuzzy. She couldn't blame it on the wine. She had had more than enough time to sober up since they left the inn. He had just seemed so charming in a really different sort of way. She vaguely remembered telling him that he was smooth enough to charm her dress off. He just looked at her in a puzzled way, and to get her point across she took off her underwear.

Naked in her shop, he suggested she model her jewelry. It had been so much fun. She remembered when as a young teenager, back when her father was first showing her how to melt and cast metals, she had told him that sometimes she wanted to dress only in her jewelry. Another father would have slapped her face hard, but hers had just smiled, laughing softly and muttering something about her "namesake."

It had to have been an "Aphrodite spell" in the shop that night. A wonderful flowered rug that her father had had for years, the lights of 50 candles ("One for every daughter of King Thespius" he had joked.), and soft pillows her mother had stuffed with duck feathers. The strange man with firm kisses and the softest hands you could possibly imagine.

'Damn, why did I put that guarantee on the fertility amulet.' She thought.

* * *

"Well, Mom and Dad, looks like you are going to be grandparents again. No, it's not Horace, it's me! I'm going to have a baby!!" Di had never stopped climbing up the hill and talking to her parents at their graves.

"I'm glad you won't be real upset that I am not married, that I am going to raise this child alone. The father is gone, I have no idea where I might be able to find him."

"Sorry, Mom and Dad, I don't even really know WHO the father is."

"No, not like that, Daddy! He was only the third man I have ever been with. The first man in over five years. . thought I had outgrown that sort of thing, didn't you? As a matter of fact, so did I."

"He was a very nice man, I just don't know his name. I never asked him. Can't believe I made love to a man, and I didn't ask him his name."

"You guys probably know his family though. We talked a lot that night. He knew a lot of the people you guys used to talk about: Hercules, Xena, Iolaus, even Serena. That was the part that was really romantic, Daddy, he said he had come here because he had seen a necklace Hercules had left with Serena's granddaughter. He came to Thera because of my necklace."

"Daddy, was that man who was here when you died really Hercules?

"I think you may have known his grandfather, though. Funny how I know his grandfather's name and not his. His grandfather was named Salmoneus. He said you have to remember him, do you?"

* * * * *

Aphrodite, the goddess, high in her mountain cave, had been eavesdropping on the conversation between her namesake and her parents, as she often did. She thought about the bloodlines that would join to produce this child. It would be the start of a family tradition to be passed on from ancient times. When you take the cleverness and bravery of Iolaus and the talent and loyalty of Gabrielle, and mix that with the stubbornness of old King Thespius and the charm and entrepreneurial skills of Salmoneous. you could get all sorts of results. She looked ahead into the future. You might get a Joan of Arc, you might get a P.T. Barnum, you might get a Lady Godiva, you might get a Heidi Fleiss, you might get a Mary Shelley, or you might . . . you might get Janice Covington.

McJude

November 2001