“Your Body, My Prison, My Forge”
Lungs. Stomach. Bones. Heart. I will use every piece of you I can in order to craft what I require.
Every so often my brain stops and takes a look at something it’s known for a long time, and sees it in a whole new light.
In this case, it’s the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus. The precursor to that is Zeus swallowing her mother, Metis — and then later Athena emerges fully armed and armored. Clearly, my brain said, that means Metis was forging those items inside Zeus.
I mean, not really. You aren’t generally supposed to think about mythology in such practical terms. But when you do, sometimes you wind up with a story.
A rather weird story that comes closer to body horror than I normally go, though not all that close in the grand scheme of things. Let’s just say that Zeus doesn’t enjoy the process. But the editors at On Spec did enjoy it, and so I am delighted to say that, after an absence of thirteen years, I have returned to their pages! The story came out in issue #124, in July 2023, and has been reprinted in my collection A Breviary of Fire.
Praise
. . . this particular treatment lends a remarkable dignity to the whole affair, transforming what strikes many moderns as a silly, rather icky mythic tale into a genuinely religious transformation that stirs one’s sense of wonder. In short, it reveals the high-minded religious sensibility underlying the myth and renders the faith behind it more accessible to modern minds. What seem like a pointless fairy tale today was once numinous to the ancients, profound and relevant to their everyday lives. I am very pleased with this story for revealing the ancient mindset. Truly educational. Delightfully so.
Cover Gallery
cover art for On Spec #124
