Apollo's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Apollo sat on the bronze tripod at the center of the empty theater and tried, for the ninth time that morning, to make the syllables mean something. The marble tiers rose around him in the sun. On his knee lay a wax tablet crowded with fragments the future kept dropping into his ear: KRE. THAL. OI. NUS. Alone, each one was a stone in his mouth. Together they were supposed to become the sacred hymn, the song that would sing Olympia's fate out loud. He had promised the Muses a finished verse by nightfall. He had nothing. He pressed his thumb against his temple until it hurt. The god of prophecy could not read his own prophecy. If he brought this stammering nonsense to the council, they would strip him of the tripod before sundown. He scratched out a line, then another, then the whole tablet. "You're bleeding through the wax," Aether said from the aisle. He had been watching longer than Apollo wanted to admit. He climbed the steps and set a cup of water on the tripod's rim. "Stop. You're grinding." "I have until dusk." "You have a headache and a broken tablet." Aether took the stylus out of his hand. "Say the pieces out loud. All of them. In the order they came." "They didn't come in an order. That's the problem." "Then say them in the order you heard them." Aether sat on the step below the tripod, elbows on his knees. "I'm not leaving. Try." Apollo closed his eyes and spoke the syllables the way they had arrived: KRE, OI, THAL, NUS, PHE, RON. Nothing. He said them again. On the third pass, a shadow crossed the sun and Cycnus dropped through the open roof, wings wide, the gold laurel at his throat catching the light. The swan circled once and landed on the tiled floor in front of the tripod. In his beak he carried a single laurel sprig. He set it at Apollo's feet and, with one clawed foot, dragged the sprig across the dust. Six leaves. He nudged them into a new order: THAL, OI, NUS, KRE, RON, PHE. Apollo read the leaves and felt the meaning click into place like a bone resetting. Not fragments. A refrain, scrambled at the ear because prophecy came to him backwards. The key was reversal. He said the corrected line aloud and heard, for the first time, a whole sentence in the hymn's voice. It was about Olympia. It named a house that would fall. He grabbed a fresh tablet. Aether watched his face and stopped smiling. "What does it say?" "It says I can read them now." Apollo's hand was already moving. "And I wish I couldn't."