Aphrodite
through the dark Symplegades;
Aphrodite perched on her rock at Paphos, and looked out at the Cyprian sea. No wonder she always came here when one or another of the gods had irritated her. As the sun danced on the glimmering waves, she felt something akin to envy that anything could be so beautiful besides her. The Graces were preparing the water for her bath, and she was glad of it. Once her skin was oiled and she could slip into a new dress, she might feel less irritated. She ran her tongue lightly across the back of her teeth because it was the only way she knew to express rage without affecting the shape of her perfect mouth. But she could contain her fury no longer: why would anyone be so foolish – she screamed the word into the gentle breeze – as to neglect her? Why?
She resented it when it was her husband, always leaving her to go and make . . . She paused briefly. Armour? Spear heads? Whatever he did. It scarcely mattered, because if he didn’t craft them, then someone else would. Men always needed the tools to wound. And so, she supposed, did other gods. The ethereal glory of her smile was such that no one would have dared call it a smirk. But the satisfaction that prompted it was entirely directed at herself. She could destroy a man or incapacitate a god using nothing but their own desires, which were hers to control. Weapons seemed to her a very cumbersome way to go about taking a life, when compared to longing or its bedfellow, despair.
In this way Aphrodite nursed her anger, allowing it to grow. Hephaestus did sometimes fill her with rage, but he had done nothing particular to antagonize her today, so she would not punish him. Then she heard a pair of oyster-catchers chattering to one another on the shore below, but the birds had never insulted her, so she would leave them to their courtship. No, it was only men who could be so offensive, so provoking. She paused while she remembered some of the many different forms of revenge she had taken on men over the years. She smiled again when she saw the bodies she had broken and the lives she had shattered. No battlefield could be bloodier than hers, and she had never fired so much as a single slender arrow.
And yet. Again she felt the surging anger. And yet, men had learned nothing from these lessons, so kindly offered them by this mightiest goddess. Had they looked on the destruction of the impious and vowed to live better lives? Perhaps they had, but in that case, they were perjurers as well as blasphemers. Because here she was, unable to enjoy her bath because she was thinking of the inexcusable people of some tiny island in the Thracian Sea. She could barely remember its name before today, but she would make the Lemnians one promise, and she would keep it sooner than they could imagine was possible. They would regret insulting her.
They would regret building their temples to Zeus, to Hera, to Artemis and Apollo, of course. Naturally they would build one to Poseidon, because they spent so much of their pitiful lives at sea. They had dedicated their largest temple to Hephaestus, which only sharpened the sting. To ignore her, the goddess whose favour everyone desired? She shook her head and her beautiful hair shimmered in the sun. She had given them plenty of time to correct their catastrophic mistake and beg her forgiveness. And had they? Perhaps if it had been a sanctuary for Demeter, she might have allowed some of them to live. Mortals needed a good harvest, she supposed. But it was a temple to Athene they had decided to build next. Athene! And even that she might have ignored if the women had prayed to her. She had occasionally let men off if their wives had begged. But the women of Lemnos had done nothing. No temple, no shrine, no offerings. And she could hardly ignore such a slight.
She curled the fingers of her left hand, and examined her shell-like nails. There was no trace of imperfection. A lilting call told her the Graces had readied her bath, and she rose and turned away from the sea. As her gaze fell on the jugs of perfectly heated water, the neat piles of fresh clothes and the bottles of heady perfume, she smiled. Yes, of course. There was no better way to punish the people of Lemnos.
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From No Friend to This House. Copyright © 2025 by Natalie Haynes. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
