Chapter 0

Prologue

Jul 1

9 July, 1886 CE

Abyssinian Lowlands

Artemis lay her head on the heaving side of the elephant. The animal was a large female, eighteen or nineteen years old. The small watery eye searched frantically for the calf that had never been far from her side. The calf and the rest of the herd had fled.

The cow had tried to get to her feet but had only succeeded in wrenching her front quarter onto her knees, which made the blood pour like twin waterfalls from the raw chasms on either side of her mouth. A red paste of blood, viscera, and soil pillowed the beast’s head. Artemis’ fury and grief mingled with the mess. She dipped her hands into the muck at her feet and held them up for a moment, noticing their shape—human, because she was made of their dreams. With ten long fingers she striped her face and bare torso with the paint. She picked up her bow, stood back twenty paces and let loose an arrow which flew straight through the animal’s bewildered eye and into its brain, releasing the pain.

The goddess threw her head back and opened her throat, the scream descending into the hunting cry of a lioness. In minutes she was joined by a band of seven young, sleek cats who fell on the carcass, tearing through the thin, rumpled skin. They paused as the shimmering figure stroked the fallen elephant from the tip of her trunk to the tip of her tail, bowed their heads to their queen as she loped into the bush.

“This isn’t hunting, this is war and this is your doing,” Artemis stormed as she strode into the chamber where the four rivers converged. One hundred goddesses gathered around a table they used for their smaller councils.

Athena’s cool, gray eyes assessed the markings and fury on her half-sister’s face and snapped back, “Am I the one who painted your face, your highness? Am I the one who ripped out those tusks?” The black raven that perched on Athena’s arm rankled its feathers as if to punctuate her remark.

“You saw it then. You knew it was going to happen.”

“Let’s just say I heard rumblings in the village,” Athena said, barely containing a smirk.

“And you didn’t put a stop to it?” Artemis slammed her palms on the table in front of Athena, forcing the Goddess of War to tip back in her chair. Far below molten fire came to a boil. Above, the surface of the earth groaned and fractured to vent the volcanic gases, which spun into a small army of twisters that rolled across the plains. Heat lightning striped the sky, leaving ghost trails on the surface of the Red Sea.

The remainder of the goddesses who had answered Artemis’ call to the council sat silent, some amused and others in terror. The ones closely related to Athena or Artemis—the goddesses of wisdom or war or hunting or midwifery in their own domains, named by their own storytellers, shamans, and priests—naturally took the side that was in her best interest. The Greek gods and goddesses like to think of the others as their ‘descendants’ (quite arrogantly in everyone else’s opinion). In truth, it had gotten confused which goddesses came before and which later but at this point no one could deny that the world above was reeling and the discord between these otherworldly creatures, particularly Artemis and Athena, had become problematic.

“Why should I stop the reaping of tusks or meat for commerce? The people are hungry Artemis, should they starve? If those hunters are stronger, they live and the elephant dies. How many times do we have to have this debate?”

Artemis sat in her chair, not because she was conceding her argument or her anger had cooled, but because over the past two thousand years her name was spoken less and less by the humans. Her protection and guidance were so rarely invoked that she had grown weak. The Great Huntress picked up her bow with some difficulty and laid it across her lap, stroking its curves, flexing her fingers slowly as she spoke to combat the stiffness. She felt heavy and thick, like an insect caught in tree sap. “That isn’t hunting, it’s savagery and waste, and you know it,” she said—her words soft and slurry.

Athena flinched, not at the argument—that she would win. She was the embodiment of strategy and domination; winning was her nature. No, it was Artemis’ hands that made Athena recoil. They were pale and smooth, tainted red with the blood of the massacred cow, hovering motionless over the bow. Artemis had slammed them down so hard that her palms had left two deep imprints in the wood of the table and now she couldn’t move her fingers. As much as she detested what Artemis stood for they were born of the same father and that counted for something. Her half-sister understood what it meant to have the power they had, and be powerless too. Now she was dying. Athena, for the first time in her fabled history, didn’t know what to do. So the Goddess of Justice finished her argument.

“Those young lions were hungry too, sweet sister,” she said, not unkindly. “And I am sure your beloved hyenas and lions won’t let one bit of that elephant go to waste.” Athena sat back, satisfied she had won her case.

But Artemis hadn’t heard her. She curled into herself, eyes drooping shut. The bow clattered to the ground, flushing the raven from its perch.

Athena leapt to her feet and shook Artemis hard, slapping her across the face when she got no response. It was like hitting stone. Athena looked wildly around at the hundred faces looking to her. She spotted Mielia, a petite derivative of herself, and growled at the girl, “Go, find Hestia, NOW!”

Over their heads, a distance immeasurable by human minds, hundreds of shadowy figures slipped out of the villages all across the African continent into the night. Hundreds more emerged from crisp canvas tents all across the continent. Their rifles, machetes, and knives shone under the sliver of moon as they fought against the unseasonable winds. The hot soil crackled and shuddered under their feet. They kept moving, anticipating the thrill of slaying the beasts.

Mielia flew from the room.

Athena sank to her knees.

Hestia strode into the chamber and hurried to Artemis’ side.

“What’s happening?” Athena demanded. She was used to knowing all that would transpire—every possible outcome and maneuver visualized in front of her, giving her the ultimate advantage in any battle. She and Artemis fought constantly over the millennia (as one might expect as they embodied very different facets of the One), blinding Athena to what she saw now—without the Great Huntress’s protection the wild animals would perish; the humans would destroy them all, and then . . . Athena blinked the vision away.

“You know what’s happening, Athena,” Hestia said calmly. She turned to the assembly, “I warned you all of this.”

The raven alit on Hestia’s head. She reached up to feed him a morsel of bread she pulled from her pocket. Athena’s fury returned at the raven’s betrayal, but even she didn’t dare to cross Hestia.

Hestia was the hearth of them all, the only god or goddess in all of the pantheons old enough and universal enough (despite her Greek lineage) to never succumb to the waxing and waning of power the others experienced as their names came in and out of fashion with the humans. Her relative obscurity in the minds of men from the start had been her safe harbor—the goddess had never been featured in sagas or been the object of quests. Hestia was the fires of home. Touchstone. She was also the keeper of the only means they had left to understand the Will of the One.

Hestia kept in her possession a set of small sheets of linen, rectangular cut, stiffened with a starchy substance whose recipe was long lost; the whole deck of ancient cards fit in her hand. Seventy-eight all together—each one bearing a complex set of images and words in a lost language. They were the story of the eternal creation and recreation of this universe. Every myth had come from these cards in some way through the ages. Hestia had no notion who, or what, had been their keeper before she. She only knew the original cards had gotten more difficult to read and interpret with any accuracy. As a result, the world had fallen out of balance as its true story dimmed—the powers of war and the terrors of death had taken over. To Hestia the worlds had become one battlefield of misunderstood myths.

“The cards are to be repainted and we must find the one chosen to do it. She was born somewhere near London and will be of age soon. They named her Frieda. You must take her for the rites, Athena. We can’t trust anyone else, it’s much too important. She must choose to repaint the cards on her own when it’s time; only then can we begin to influence what she sees and creates. That door she must open herself. The human psyche is so delicate,” Hestia sighed, “yet the will is so strong.”

Athena knew this all too well. Even the soldiers broke too easily now, their minds unable to carry what their weapons so easily executed. This Frieda has been chosen to repaint the cards for the new aeon, then what? she asked Hestia.

“The cards will tell us, I hope. Somewhere in the human world, the ones who can read the cards as they are intended will be born, and the cards will find them. In the meantime, we must keep Artemis alive.”

“Or?”

“Or it will be too late. Her power isn’t only to protect the animals’ lives, Athena, she also protects women from violence and the dangers of childbirth. It’s in her nature, just as driving humans to war in the name of justice and initiating boys into manhood is in yours. You have the gift of seeing the web of potential futures, surely you can see what the absence of Artemis’ power means.”

Athena had to agree; she could see that future. And she was nothing but her nature, so she consented to her task against every fiber of her being. She was a strategist—a maker of nations and men; she would find a way to keep Artemis alive in the world without diminishing her own supremacy.

Artemis was laid out on a high plateau near the farthest falls in the farthest cavern in the chthonic maze. Here the goddesses had convened since the dawn of man’s consciousness brought the first of them into being, and here, Artemis The Great Huntress, would be safe until they knew how to bring her back. The goddess’ guardian, Hyena, paced nearby.

Hestia tended the fire, while Athena flew off to find the child named Frieda.

13 August, 1886 CE

The Goddesses’ Cavern, Beneath the Red Sea

Athena stood in front of the child. Boys were much easier to initiate, she thought. She spoke as gently as she could to the child named Frieda, who was nearly nine years old. Athena had spirited Frieda to the goddesses’ cavern through the door all humans have in their dreams. The door opened in their ninth year, after which the wall between worlds grew so thick they could no longer move easily between them. The door stayed open for an uncertain passage of time—sometimes hours, sometimes years. This rite for girls had fallen away—the goddesses’ unsure of which children were born to their line perhaps, a sort of hopelessness having set in—it was a fact that most of the old rituals were in disrepair. Humans too often never knew their true names or the gifts they carried, not of their world, but the one beyond. Lived and died alone surrounded by others—kin and strangers—unable to access the wisdom and protection of their guardian.

“Girl,” Athena said to the trembling waif, “perhaps now you will begin to understand why I have brought you to this place where gold lines this cavern like blood lines the womb, and the four sacred rivers meet.” Athena’s words were formal, stilted, leftover from the ancient texts. She wasn’t used to speaking to children, and certainly not in the last century.

“Come sit with me, you're shaking,” she said, trying again. Mother of Mothers, what was the girl shaking about? She’d looked so happy a moment ago, dancing and laughing as she returned to the fire. I haven’t even told her the terrible part yet, Athena sighed. She led the child to a circle of benches that surrounded a hole ringed with stones. Magma bubbled and spat like stew in a pot. This part of the caverns beneath the volcanic mountains served as the goddesses’ communal hearth. Four subterranean rivers, each fed by a waterfall from the surface, converged in a bottomless moat surrounding this courtyard of sorts, with the fire in the center and space enough for every goddess to attend the councils and rites. The ground here was hot and carpeted with ash. The rest of the space was a maze of chambers—ecosystems that mirrored the most extraordinary conditions of the world above. One cave housed an equatorial rain-forest, another a Nordic tundra and so on. Frieda had been free to explore, to follow her heart and her senses, to find the place that felt like home, where the rhythm and hum synced with her own. Sometimes the place where a girl felt she most belonged was very different than the place the girl had been born and she would spend much of her life trying to find that feeling again.

“So tell me, princess,” Athena half-sneered the word, then recovered her decorum, “what did you find on your little trip?”

“Find?”

“Yes, a golden ball, or something of the sort? I see you are alone, no animal came to be your friend?”

“I did see lovely animals, and the fruit on the trees were golden and tasted so sweet.”

“And that’s it? You didn’t take a piece of the fruit? No animal followed you here?”

“No,” the girl whispered, her bottom lip quivering and tears spilling onto her cheeks. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” Athena tried to assure her, though assuring little girls was out of her realm. “Let me think. Here, sit by the fire, stop that shaking . . . I mean, try not to worry.”

She had tried to tell Hestia something was wrong. There didn’t seem to be any golden apples or balls anywhere in the cavern. The girls she was asked to initiate came up empty-handed. No ten coins—one for their birth, and another for each year. The goddesses had tried to resurrect this ancient way of keeping the world in balance, girls discovering their true nature and gifts and keeping them moving, but something wasn’t working quite right. Nothing worked as it should in the Age of Forgetting. Athena glanced at the girl. Good. She was sitting quietly, staring into the fire. With no coins and no guardian animal, what was she do with the child? When they woke up in their beds they all forgot this place. Forgot their guardian animal until they met again, and even then, the girls too often misunderstood and ran from their own wise guide and protector! Without a guardian this fragile creature had no chance to even stay alive long enough to . . . Athena’s guardian, a trio of white hares, joined at the ears, appeared at her feet. They scuttled and tumbled in the ash, turning gray in the process and making the girl laugh.

I’ll have to tell her what I know and hope the One puts the paintbrush in the girl’s hand. Leads her to make the cards in time. How long until Artemis dies? Athena sat next to the girl, who held the hares on her lap, stroking the three long ears that they shared and their three fuzzy backs.

“Frieda, listen closely, I need to tell you a story and you must try very hard to remember all that I say.”

The girl nodded but didn’t look away from the fire, which danced wildly in front of them.

Athena watched the web of the girl’s possible futures play out in the fire and carefully chose what to tell her.

“When you are grown you will paint. You will find teachers in color and geometry and the true shape of the universe. You have been chosen to paint the new myths. Return the story of our worlds as it is meant to be lived to the humans and gods. You will help end the Age of Forgetting and the chaotic storms. Your paintings will be printed on cards and . . .”

Athena paused. She was unclear on what happened after that, but she could see the darkness in Frieda’s life. The man, Crowley, would prove essential and would become her greatest liability. Athena thought to give the girl some warning about him, when Frieda interrupted her, leaping back from the fire and dropping the hares in a tangle of ears.

“What is it?” Athena asked, then looked where the girl pointed into the fire.

The flames raged higher and hotter and in the center danced an orange and black-striped tiger. The beast opened its maw and took a step toward the girl, shaking its head and bellowing. The girl straightened, making herself tall. The tiger leapt from the fire. Frieda didn’t flinch. It landed in front of the girl, meeting her eye to eye, then spun around her in circles, sparks flying from its fur. It continued to bellow, now in a repeating cadence, until the girl reached out and grabbed hold of its tail.

Athena started toward the girl and the beast, unsure if she should intervene—when the tiger settled at the girl’s feet. Her guardian. Of course. Hestia had said four princesses would come—four human girls, one for each of the four elements of their world. Earth, Air, Water. Frieda must be the Princess of Fire.

“He keeps saying the same thing over and over,” Frieda said, still holding the tiger’s tail.

Athena recovered herself, “What is he saying?”

“I don’t know, it's words I don’t understand.”

“Try saying it aloud, as you are hearing it,” Athena suggested.

“Sor or za ba, Sor or za ba.”

A name. Latin, Athena surmised, although filtered through a Bengal tiger and an English girl, she couldn’t be sure that she had the words right. Soror Tzaba. Sister Host. Whatever could that mean?

“Frieda, this tiger is your guardian animal. He will always be a part of you, guide and protect you, if you can will yourself to remember who he is, and the name he has revealed to you—your true name.”

“I won’t forget. How could I forget him?” Frieda asked, kneeling to stroke the massive head.

“You will forget!” Athena said so fiercely that Frieda fell back as if she’d been shoved. “No, don’t cry. It isn’t your fault.” What Frieda chose to see and do in this life was all up to her. Artemis’ life, and the lives of them all, rested in the hands of this child. There was no more she could do.

“Come on, it’s almost sunrise in your world,” Athena said, “time we get you back into bed.”

Frieda wiped her eyes, first at the tears than at the sight of Athena shaking herself into the shape of a giant white raven. The trio of hares jumped to its back and nestled under the feathers. Too surprised to think, the girl climbed on the white raven’s back and promptly fell asleep.

Frieda’s sister startled awake when the small foot lodged square in her back. She reached over and smoothed the damp tangled hair of her younger sister. Watched her thrashing and moaning grow still. Forgave her the bruise. Since their parents disappeared, neither of them had slept without nightmares.