Page 55 of Fear No Hell

Calliope

“Ever since I escaped from Arthur, I’ve been experiencing changes.” I start. “When you got here, you said, ‘no,’ like you thought something like this could happen. Do you know why all of this is happening?” I gesture at myself.

“That’s a long story.” My mother sighs deeply. “And not a particularly happy one, either.”

“Tell it anyways.”

“I’ve never told this story to anyone, so please excuse any…

any roughness in the telling. I guess everything first began before you were born.

I was one of the first generation of Titan children.

The ninth child born to Uranus and Gaia, but I imagine you already know that.

” At my nod, she continues. “When Zeus led the uprising against Kronos, I, my sisters, and our female cousins elected not to fight. After all of the blood had been spilled, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades allowed those of us who remained peaceful to live. I made my home on Mount Pierus in Pieria, not far from where the Olympians eventually settled. It was a peaceful life, but I was lonely. I was used to the Titan camps and being surrounded by my siblings.”

I gesture for her to go on.

“One day, Zeus showed up at my doorstep and asked to speak to me. I invited him in, and we spoke for a little while. During that conversation, he touched me so many times. Even though I stopped him, he kept trying to get closer. I sent him on his way because he was married, which wasn’t particularly significant, and, honestly, I wasn’t interested anyways.

He left. Reluctantly. But he still left.

“I didn’t hear from him for weeks. I thought that was it.

” Her voice turns bitter. “I should have known better. On the night of the Black Moon, it was pouring rain, so loud I couldn’t hear anything outside, when the door to my home vanished, and there was Zeus.

Soaking wet and naked, standing in my doorway, no matter that I told him to go away and not return.

He stormed in and demanded I give myself to him. I told him no. I told him to go away.”

I know where this is going. Although I haven’t had many occasions to interact with my father, his crimes against women are well known among the goddesses and, to some extent, humans through myth.

“He didn’t take that well and started shouting—screaming at me, really—that having his interest was an honor.

I told him to go away again. That was the final straw for him, I guess, because he came into my house and he-h-h-he forced me to my bed and took what he wanted.

” She raises her eyes to mine, and they’re wet, tears glittering on her cheeks.

“He split me open while he forced himself upon me.

When the morning came, he left me lying in a pool of my own blood and his spend and told me he would come back in a year.

“Not long after he left, my belly grew large. Within a matter of hours, I was fat, round with child, and I could feel them kicking. Could feel you kicking.”

“How the fuck—” Sam chokes out.

“My dear boy, do you really wish to discuss the gestational timeframe of gods right now?”

He shakes his head and goes silent again.

“I gave birth to you the next day. You were so beautiful, this bouncing red-eyed, black-haired little girl with the cutest fangs and claws I had ever seen. After years of thinking I would never be a mother, I was so excited to have you in my life. Soon after you were born, odd things started happening around you. Monstrous creatures gathered outside every time you screamed, almost like they were coming to your aid. Days after that, you developed a glowing glyph in the center of your chest.”

My fingers pass between my breasts where the crescent moon and inverted cross sit.

And, of course, my mother catches the movement, her face crumpling.

“I sought the assistance of my sister, Dione, who is a powerful oracle and, unfortunately, infuriatingly cryptic. After a lot of verse and even more mysteriousness, I finally deduced that she was trying to tell me that the circumstances of your birth—the horror of Zeus taking something from a powerful Titan that wasn’t freely given—created a queen of daimons. ”

“Demons?” Sam asks. “Like evil pitchfork, Hell dwelling demons?”

She gives a weak, humorless chuckle. “No, dear, daimon. As in d-a-i-m-o-n. Unlike the demons you’re referencing, daimons aren’t necessarily good or evil.

They’re more… feral, I think is the best way to describe them.

They’re spirits, ones that act as intermediaries between the mortal and the divine.

Some want nothing to do with humans, so they elect to stay in the daimonic plane and interact with mortals as infrequently as required.

Others tend towards mischief and destruction, which—to be fair—many may easily interpret as evil. ”

I list sideways, Sam’s arms the only things keeping me from plummeting to the floor.

“What happened then?” Sam sounds like he’s whispering.

Bewildered, I frown and glance at him out of the corner of my eye. I don’t understand why he would be so quiet. We're in our own home. Suddenly, his words vanish completely, even though I can still see his mouth moving.

Why can’t I hear him?

Goosebumps ripple along my shoulders as the blood freezes in my veins.

Gentle taps start up against my waist. The rhythmic dit-dah combinations that I know without tracking are spelling out brEATHE.

So I inhale deeply. Exhale. The first breath in and out is barely anything.

The second more substantial. The third is a real intake of air that clears the ringing in my ears.

“Zeus returned a year later and found Calliope. She bore a striking resemblance to my sister—his mother—Rhea, so there was no question whose daughter she was. He demanded to be allowed access to her. Given how she was conceived, what he did to me, I declined. He started shouting and threatened to take her away from me. I begged him not to while Calliope cried and pounded her fists against the floor. Eventually the storm clouds started responding to his wrath and lightning struck close to our home. At that point, Calliope started screaming, and just like always, the daimons responded. This time, though, they attacked Zeus and managed to draw blood. He told me—” She buries her face in her hands.

“We don’t—” I begin. horrified at the sight of my icy mother fall apart like this.

“No, no, this is important.” She lifts her head just in time for us to see another crystalline tear slip over the apple of her cheek.

“He ordered me to ‘put you down.’ He gave me one week to comply. I couldn’t do it, though.

So I-I-I used my magic to make you forget your first year of life, and my sister, Phoibê, bound your powers.

When Zeus returned, you were blue-eyed with blunt teeth and fingernails.

I told him I had taken care of the other little girl.

When he asked who you were, I said you were my daughter by another.

He believed it—thank the gods—and didn’t ask any further questions.

Instead, he demanded eight nights with me to make up for his trouble. ”

“Eight nights. Eight sisters,” I say quietly.

“Eight nights. Eight sisters,” my mother repeats in confirmation.

“Within a week of his last night with me, I began bearing daughters. None of them were born with the same physical characteristics you had. My only theory is that it’s because I consented in some way, even though I had little ability to deny him. ”

“Why did you do it?” Tears are choking me, making it hard for me to force out the question I need to know the answer to. “How could you let him back inside your body after what he did?”

“Because—” Her face grows fierce. “I would have done anything to protect you. If consenting to eight days with the god who gave me you was what I had to do, then I was willing to pay that price. And I got nine beautiful daughters out of it.”

I stare at her. "I don't… understand."

"Calliope, I may be a negligent mother and certainly not the one you ever needed me to be. Be that as it may, I love you more than life itself." She leans forward, bracing her elbows on the table. "I love you and would do anything for you, including giving more of myself away to that monster."

I can't process a love like that. Can't reconcile the cold mother I grew up with, the one who abandoned me, with the one weeping in front of me.

I have to move beyond her profession of love, her story of experienced violence so like my own, or I'll fall apart.

“With my powers bound… how was I able to spread inspiration? How was I a muse like my sisters?”

Mnemosyne's shoulders slump at my blunt question. “Daimons are attached to creativity and destruction. As best I can tell, Phoibê’s binding suppressed the true extent of your powers and buried your ability to summon and perhaps control daimons. I imagine you yourself share some power with those daimons, though, which would probably manifest as inspiration.”

“And it’s why my inspiration can become unstoppable persuasion if I use enough force.” So many things make a macabre sort of sense now.

“Has that happened to you?” She purses her lips.

“Sylvia Plath and Edgar Allan Poe.” Brilliant authors with so much creativity, haunted by mental illnesses that rendered them unmoving for days on end, I heaped inspiration on them until, with my magic alone, I forced them from their beds to their desks.

Pushing their hands to write down the beautiful stories and words I could feel living in their heads rather than seeking the help they so desperately needed.

It is one of my greatest regrets that I contributed not only to the rapid decline of their mental health but also to their tragic deaths.

Unfortunately, they weren’t the only ones.

“Oh, my sweet girl.” Her fingers tap out a rhythm on the table, the only physical sign of her feelings on the matter. “I never knew.”