Leda Kills the Swan

By A.R. Banister-Jones

Ancient Greek gods aren't exactly known for their strong sense of morality. For centuries Zeus has abused his position as king of the gods, kidnapping, transforming, and attacking mortal women—sometimes in the shape of a huge swan. But now he smells mutiny brewing, and paranoia is setting in. He's compiling a list of all the enemies he's made, including all the bastard sons he has neglected. He'll never suspect it's their mothers who are his greatest threat.

Leda is one such mother, out for revenge against her assailant—but there's one small problem: she's dead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Apr 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228862833

A.R. Banister-Jones

A.R. Banister-Jones is an Australian playwright and performer, specialising in feminist narratives, comedy, and reinterpreting texts of antiquity for the modern audience. She is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre Making, and was consul (president) of the University of Melbourne Classics and Archeology Society.Leda Kills the Swan is her first novel.

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by A.R. Banister-Jones

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-6282-6 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-6281-9 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-6283-3 (eBook)

Contents

Acknowledgement

Prologue

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Poetic References

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I write: the First Nations people of the Noongar region, and the East Koolin Nations. They have been telling stories for millennia as the oldest continuing culture in the world.

I am privileged to be able to tell and reinterpret stories here of the ancient Greek variety, and to that people and that culture, I also send my respect. Such tales have influenced the many facets of the world, and revealed the many facets of ourselves for countless generations. Wherever you are, I invite you to take a moment to consider the story of the land on which you read these words.

Content Warning

Our journey into the ancient Greek mythological world is a perilous one. This book is not suitable for children. It occasionally utilises course language, and contains depictions of and allusions to sexual assault and other instances of traumatic violence. Please read safely!

To those who have been strong at times when they shouldn’t have had to be.

A note from the author

The truth in these words cannot be quantified by their relation to Homer, Hesiod, or Ovid, their consideration of agreed -u pon histories, nor their overlap with contemporary interpretations of ancient Greek mythology. The interpretations of myth I present here are only what I have chosen to believe for the purposes of this story, and it is what I invite you to believe (for now) as well. The ancient deities are as complex as the natural world they represent, and in some cases I have elected to pin down certain aspects of their multi -f aceted characters to serve my intended narrative. There are some stories you may have heard before, some that no one has heard before, and some that you may have heard versions of that I have moulded to fit my purpose. It is suitable, I believe, for these ancient stories to remain the malleable tools for expression that they have been from their conception. Continuing the tradition of reinterpreting the characters and events to suit our ever -e volving world, I have taken great liberties, and I encourage you to eat them up like they’re your new -b orn children who are destined to defeat you and take over the co smos.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The ancient Greek gods: once the puppet masters of wars and weather, now reside in the etchings of artefacts, brought forward through history by the permanency of their medium. The Greek mythological universe is so comprehensive that you’ll be hard pressed to find an element of modern life that it doesn’t have influence in. The most obvious are the myths that have been reimagined into poetry, musicals, children’s books and comedy. Rick Riordan had everyone in my middle school just about converted to the ancient Hellenic religion with the Percy Jackson series. Epic Hollywood blockbusters have long retold the stories of ancient heroes, with mixed results (I’m looking at you, 2004’s Troy). The International Astronomical Union even continues the tradition of giving mythological names to the stars and moons.

But what happened to the actual gods? The religion may have been absorbed by the Romans, and then fallen to the rise of Christianity, but what about the actual beings? Where are they now? Are they, as Riordan would have the teenage demographic believe, at the top of the Empire State Building? Or perhaps they never left Olympus, and still sit invisible atop their mountain in Greece, watching the tourists pass by.

Personally, I find those ideas difficult to swallow, like a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. What was, and still is, special about the Greek deities is that they were not by any means ‘perfect’. And thus, it’s safe to say they would not be so quiet were they still the gods they were of yesteryear. They were vengeful, prideful, and lustful adulterators, murderers and rapists, torturers and tricksters. They were not level-headed, self-sacrificing, family-oriented parents, as Disney would have you believe (I’m looking at you, 1997’s Hercules). So why doesn’t Poseidon punish the corporations that pollute his oceans? Why do we no longer hear of young hunters running into trouble with Artemis when they kill her sacred deer? Why doesn’t Zeus strike us down with lightning for not paying him his sacrificial lamb? What happened to them? Where are they? And who is in charge now?

To know that, perhaps we should first address where they came from.

Prologue

A short and inaccurate history of the Cosmos

Unlike in many other theologies, the Greek gods were neither the first beings in the universe, nor the creators of the first humans. Unlike the Christian God, they didn’t create the universe, the world, time or space. Unlike the primordial deities, they didn’t invent the sky, the water or the earth. Even heaven was not theirs to begin with. So just who do they think they are?

Let’s backtrack.

The Primordial Deities

First there was just Chaos, a gaping void created between the earth and sky when they separated. It was the messiest divorce in recorded history, and since it resulted in the rest of history, it is safe to say it has caused the most trouble (including all subsequent divorces). Birthed from that cosmic vagina were the primordial deities. These were the entities of the core elements of the cosmos, including Gaia (earth), Tartarus (hell), Hemera (day), Nyx (night), and so on, you get the idea. There was also, of course, the sky, Uranus. An unfortunate name, he is aware, but at the time, the English language did not exist, and it is of little consequence to him now. He was ruler of the universe then, the sky being so expansive and powerful. With Gaia, he fathered the twelve first-generation titans, the three Cyclopes, and the three Hecatoncheires. Uranus did not like them very much, and they did not like him. The Cyclopes were large one-eyed smiths with lots of attitude, and the Hecatoncheires had hundreds of hands and thusly, were quite the handful. Uranus elected to deal with these children of his by pushing them deep down into the earth. Gaia, being the earth, was not all too impressed by this. It was rather an uncomfortable sensation, having her already-birthed babes forced back into her womb. Besides, visually abrasive as they were, the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires were her children, and she, their mother. She would not stand for their oppression. Truthfully, she could hardly stand at all from the pain of it.

Plotting her revenge, Gaia fashioned a scythe – which is that thing Death is always carrying around in pictures (you know the one; it looks like a curvy silver knife on a big stick – it’s the Goth version of a shepherd’s crook).

The Titans

Gaia gave the weapon to her son, the titan Cronus. He was the youngest, and the only one of her twelve titan children willing to get their hands dirty – and get his hands dirty he did. Cronus waited in hiding for his father to come visit Gaia, as was his habit in the evening. When Uranus indeed arrived, Cronus took the scythe and promptly castrated him.

Uranus found this to be quite the shock. And… painful. He had never known such pain before this. He writhed and screamed curses at his rebellious son who, throwing the dismembered genitals into the ocean, went to work seizing the cosmos as his own.

Good for him.

But then Cronus had to live with himself.

Oh no, not good for him.

It wasn’t guilt or remorse that drove Cronus. He was simply overcome with paranoia that he would meet a similar fate to his father – that is, that one of his own children would defeat him and take the throne. So, when his consort, Rhea, gave birth to their first child, Hestia, Cronus picked up the tiny bundle of joy and swallowed her whole.

A perfectly sensible solution, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Cronus found it worked quite nicely. He became complacent and confident in the eternality of his reign. To maintain this comfort, he continued to consume his subsequent four children in this fashion until Rhea decided that enough was enough. She kept the sixth babe hidden when Cronus came to consume him, wrapping a baby-shaped stone up instead. Cronus didn’t spot the discrepancy and happily gulped it down.

The Titanomachy

It was the famous Zeus who was hidden away at birth. His mother concealed him on the island of Crete, with a goat to look after him. Well, not just the goat. Rhea would not neglect this child whom she had risked so much to save. Just as Gaia had enlisted her son to bring down Uranus, Rhea would bring up Zeus to dethrone Cronus. When he was old enough, he was presented to his father in disguise as a new cupbearer. In this position, the god was able to poison the titan’s wine so he’d throw up Zeus’s brothers and sisters (by now fully-grown and unhappy to have lived so long in the belly of the beast). These were the gods Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hades, and Hestia, and they would be the next generation to rule over the cosmos, much to Cronus’s dismay.

What is it they say about all the best-laid plans?

Nevertheless, Cronus was not going down without a fight, and he had the allegiance of his brothers and sisters to help defend him. Thus ensued the Titanomachy, a ten-year war between the Olympian gods and their titan predecessors.

It should be noted that there were some titans who elected to fight with the gods, or at least not against them. (They happened to be titans with the gift of foresight, in all fairness; choosing sides is not so difficult when you know which is going to win). These were: Metis, whose wisdom exceeded all gods and men; Themis, the lady of divine justice; and Prometheus, who will be important later.

After a tumultuous ten years, the Olympians were victorious and most of the titans ended up in pieces, cursed, or imprisoned in Tartarus (the deepest, most hellish part of the underworld).

The Olympians

Now that the Olympians were running the show, Zeus became concerned that he might meet the same end as his father, and his father before him. Indeed, his new consort, Metis, confirmed with her foresight that one of their children would grow up to take his throne.

So, to try and stop this from occurring, Zeus ate her.

This alone would have been upsetting enough, but it was made doubly insulting by the fact that Metis herself had been the one to help Zeus concoct the plan against Cronus. She had done so with the understanding that Zeus would make a better king of the universe than Cronus and not resort to, you know, eating his family members. But the titaness had fallen pregnant, and Zeus was thrown into a panic very similar to his father’s. This child growing in Metis’s belly could be the one to take over his rule. Zeus suddenly became very attached to his throne. In a ridiculous ploy to eliminate the threat, Zeus asked his lover to transform herself into something small one day as he complained of a toothache.

Could you just check it out for me? he had asked.

I can’t see anything! Metis had replied, squinting into Zeus’s mouth.

It’s too far back for you to see then, but I can feel, like, a lump or something!

Alright.

Metis complied, turning herself into a fly, and Zeus ate her like a raisin. Many have since wondered how Zeus tricked her, as Metis’s foresight should have allowed her to see that he would swallow her as she flew into his mouth. It might have been that she had a moment of blindness, or perhaps she had dismissed her foresight of the event, believing it too absurd to be true. The prevailing theory, however, is that she knew it was what had to happen for her daughter to survive.

Athena was not birthed in the usual way. Zeus was ailed by a splitting headache in the months following his cannibalistic endeavour. Out of that headache burst Athena, in beautiful armour, glowing in the wisdom of her mother. Zeus was so overjoyed to have his headache over and done with that he must have forgotten the prophecy, as he welcomed Athena onto Olympus, a proud father.

The Making of Man

All seemed too perfect in the Cosmos now that the war was won and the gods had been victorious over the titans. A new race was in order. Secure in his authority, Zeus then decided, ironically, to delegate some rather important tasks to some titans of all beings – the most notable of which was the task of creating mankind. So, it was the titan Prometheus who created the first man from the clay of the earth (I told you he would be important). His love for his creation was so strong that he quite literally began playing with fire. From the workshop of Hephaestus, Prometheus heisted the new invention of the flame, and at the same time, irreparably damaged any good relations he had with Zeus.

When the supreme god found out, he was furious, and took the fire back from the humans, throwing it into the sun. How dramatic. Prometheus was no Icarus, and had the power to simply fly to the sun and bring the flame back down again. Zeus quickly tired of this back and forth, so he moved on. But he wasn’t ready to stop making life difficult for the humans (and he wouldn’t be for a long time). As rent for staying on the earth, Zeus demanded the humans sacrifice half the spoils of their hunting to him. Like he needed it. Once again, Prometheus championed for his little mud-men, and tricked Zeus into accepting the gross, fatty half of the game.

It was annoying, but ultimately harmless, and Zeus was not in the mood for another war. The last straw, however, was Prometheus’s continued refusal to tell Zeus the rest of the prophecy regarding the god’s downfall; the name of his son who would grow up to take the throne. Prometheus, although his foresight allowed him to know, would neither confirm nor deny that eating Metis had worked to mitigate any prophesized threats to his throne. Zeus was frustrated. He couldn’t ask anyone else about the prophecy. The only other being beside Prometheus (and Themis, but one doesn’t threaten the lady of justice) who knew the prophecy was Metis, and he couldn’t very well ask her.

Pandora

Some have speculated Prometheus only escaped banishment to Tartarus because the wise voice of Metis was still buzzing around Zeus’s scull. Instead, Zeus was moved to merely punish Prometheus by facilitating the creation of woman, who, in theory, would serve to weaken Prometheus’s precious human race. He enlisted the help of many Olympians, the first of which being Hera’s son, Hephaestus, who was a great craftsman, but not all that great-looking, and so was not often favoured by his mother (and that is putting it delicately – Hera had in fact thrown her new-born down from Olympus when she had first looked upon him).

Hephaestus made the body of the first ever woman in the image of the goddesses, and Athena breathed life into the mud figure as she had done for Prometheus’s men. She also taught the woman some practical skills so she wouldn’t be going down into an already-forming society without any abilities. Athena looked down at the men and saw that they lacked wisdom in things like textiles and weaving (as they were likely distracted by the fire). So, she made the woman a dress of silver and showed her how exactly she made it. Zeus’s son, Hermes, taught the woman how to speak, and Aphrodite taught her how to move. Others on Olympus at the time of her creation adorned her with jewellery and a crown.

A queen.

Hermes called her Pandora, the All-Gifted.

Problematically, Zeus sent her down as a literal gift herself for Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother, who had chosen to live among the men on Earth. With her, Zeus sent a wedding present: the famous box.

Well, it was actually a jar, but things get lost in translation. And besides, the nature of the container is somewhat immaterial when we consider the gravity of what it contained. What does matter is that she opened it, and unleashed pain, disease, death, destruction, pestilence, famine, that nasty smell tuna makes when you put it in the microwave at work, and all number of other horrible things into the world before she managed to force it shut again.

So basically, Zeus unleashed all of the evil of the mortal realm through a lady who was no more than a week old.

I guess that’s a pretty bad start.

CHAPTER I

Thebes

High above the ground, but not so high as heaven, the supreme god surveyed his kingdom. All over Greece he soared, above the noise and squalor of the tiny human race. They looked so small and helpless. And Zeus supposed that they were. Inundated as he was with prayers for better weather or fortune, he figured that they couldn’t be very happy at all. The endless requests filling his letterbox on Olympus may have gotten annoying at times, but mostly Zeus was content. These prayers served as a reminder that he was, indeed, in charge. He was the all -p owerful herder of clouds, bringer of storms, source of lightning and thu nder.

Today he thought sunny, partially cloudy skies would do just fine. 2% chance of precipitation.

There was nothing so relaxing to the god of gods as taking the form of a majestic eagle and going for an afternoon fly. The wind rushed through conjured feathers as he peered through the splatter of clouds he had designed for today. How good it was to be so in charge, yet so free. Over the ridges he flew, passing Athens, bustling and busy. Then out and away from the city he went, over acres of farmland filled with sheep and shepherds, fields of crops. None took notice of the eagle passing above them. His disguise of expanded white wings and tiny angled black eyes was quite seamless. Wrinkled, clawed legs curled up beneath his levitating bones, secret mechanisms for snatching. His hooked beak shone in the blazing sunlight and cut through the air like a knife. If any of the humans below had looked up at the divinely designed guise, they would not have looked down again until it had passed over the horizon and out of sight.

But they would not look up. They were all hard at work, their focus towards the ground.

So, when Zeus flew over the outskirts of Thebes and looked down at the young woman covered in the glossy red blood of a sacrificial lamb, he was surprised to see her look back at him.

Strange, he thought. Although, he supposed, if there was any time for a human to look up to the heavens it was then. Zeus could tell the woman had just performed a ritual for him. Yet it seemed a spooky coincidence that she should look up at him just as he was looking down at her. It was almost as if she knew that at that precise moment, she had caught his eagle eye. Now their eyes were caught in one another. Did she know it was him?

No, Zeus shook the thought from his mind, replacing it with the far more sensible idea that she was simply looking up because she was so enthralled by her completion of the sacred task. The sacrifice had not been merely a ritual for her. He could tell. He could see it in her body that she was longing for his approval from the heavens, not knowing he was so close, delighting in the sacred slaughter all the while.

In truth he found the whole ordeal somewhat icky, but it fed his ego none the less to see the mortals so passionate over his divinity. They also thought the blood from the animals was magic, and that just made him laugh – and if humans aren’t entertaining then they’re not all that useful for anything. This specimen provided a beautiful example of the truly faithful and obedient mortal servant to the gods. These kinds of humans didn’t cause any trouble, and there is nothing sexier than a mortal respecting authority. The very idea of maintaining his power made Zeus horny.

As she bent down to wash the magic from her soft, unweathered skin in the River Asopos, Zeus almost managed to stop himself from reaching down and closing his hand around her wrist before it touched the flowing water.

If only he had, he might have avoided everything to come.

Semele was the daughter of the hero, Cadmus, slayer of dragons and founder of Thebes, and Harmonia, the love child of Aphrodite and Ares. The princess was a slight and smooth young woman, with soft skin, sun-kissed cheeks, and cascading locks the colour of dark strawberry.

Her thin pink lips took in a sharp breath as she felt the divine grasp stay her delicate hand. She looked up again, this time seeing the anthropomorphic manifestation of the god whose eyes she had felt high above her just moments ago. He was tall and beautiful, dressed in tasselled goatskin. This was also a disguise; of course, his true form was not suitable for human eyes. He made himself with thick hair like half melted coco butter, his skin bronze and taut against his muscular form. The sunlight reflected on the curves of his gorgeous, solid shoulders and created shadows in the valleys of his thoughtfully constructed body. Zeus would have called himself irresistible.

Semele froze, her chest tightening with the rise of adrenaline, as she met eyes with this vision. She would jump, or exclaim, but the steady hand around her wrist kept her in place. It was a puzzling sensation. Panic and peace rolled into the same central nervous system.

She almost forgot to breath. She almost forgot to think. She did forget to blink. Her eyes glued themselves to him as he lifted her hand to his lips. Zeus kissed her bloody skin, forsaking any qualms he’d held about the ickiness of the sacrificial blood. Semele locked eyes with the god. His irises were almost the shade of his pupils. They pierced her retinas, drilling into her brain, while simultaneously drawing her further and further into his gaze until she felt consumed by them. He saw all of her, while she could only see the dark wanting in his deep, endless eyes.

Zeus slowly took his now bloodied lips from the priestess’s hand and leaned in towards her exquisite mouth. For a moment he inhaled the breath that she reluctantly expelled. It didn’t exactly smell of flowers, but something about the base scents of the mortal woman compelled the god to make contact. His lips met hers and he closed his eyes in bliss. She felt so real and solid, yet soft and delicate. She was malleable, like the clay she was wrought from.

Semele was trapped in the locked lips of her god, whom she had worshipped all her life. The surreal nature of the encounter worried her. She could’ve been dreaming. As he kissed her, she found it impossible to keep her eyes open. Despite the concern that if she closed her eyes, she would be left kissing only the air, she surrendered and shut out everything but the sensation of his lips on hers, and his hand on her wrist. It was electric. How could it not be? Lightning coursed through Zeus’s veins.

The god was unstoppable and he knew it. Semele felt it too. She felt so insignificant next to him, yet oddly special for having caught his divine eye.

Semele was smart enough to know she was not exceptionally special, as Zeus had been known to take many lovers, both mortal and celestial. But it was a difficult thing to remember as she felt him and his desire right there in front of her.

Zeus pulled away slowly and noticed that he had left a smear of the sheep’s blood on the girl’s mouth. He reached down and scooped some water from the river so he could wash it off. The cool liquid on her cheek made her gasp, but it wasn’t enough to wash the blood away. Zeus pushed her slowly to the ground of the riverbed and covered her bloodied skin with the water, handful by handful washing the stains from her arms and then face, as she lay unmoving in his grasp. He touched every inch of her exposed skin. When she was clean, he smiled at his good work and leaned over her, kissing her once again as she lay, one with the earth. He threaded his left hand in her spiralling locks, and drew his right up her leg, moving the white cloth of her dress up and up again. The gentle tide of the river crept also up the bank and soaked into the dress, so he decided to help her out of it.

How very selfless of him.

Olympus

Hera looked down from her bedroom window with disdain.

How embarrassing, she thought; the king, my husband, screwing some little harlot on the ground. Her eyesight was flawless, unfortunately. She saw everything. But she had seen it all before. In fact, she was fast running out of ideas for punishing these little human whores. She felt the familiar pang of possessiveness tighten her jaw.

Jealous and rash as she was, she wasn’t in the mood to waste her time on another one of Zeus’s meaningless affairs. She’d settle with a sprinkle of passive-aggression when he did his annoyingly unshameful walk-of-shame back to Olympus. That wasn’t much of a plan, but it would do. Or so she thought, until Zeus’s latest fling revealed itself to be more than a one-time matter.

Zeus returned to Semele whenever the whim took him, much to Hera’s disgust. She