Dionysus's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The festival began in three days, and Dionysus had nothing to serve. He stood in the great gold-and-marble hall his brothers had loaned him for the revel, and stared at the empty pedestal where his signature drink should sit. Gods would come. Mortals would climb the slopes. Even the shy creatures of the wood had sent word they would attend. And Dionysus, the god of wine, had no wine worth pouring. His cellar stores had turned to vinegar and ash weeks ago, and every fresh grape on his vines rotted before it ripened. His spotted panther, Semele, padded across the marble and pressed her head against his hip. Grape vines twined through her collar, still green, still living. She was the only vine of his that had not withered. Dionysus scratched behind her ear and felt the low rumble in her chest. "We can't serve them table wine," he said. "Zeus would laugh me off the mountain." Semele huffed and walked to the doors. She looked back at him once, then padded out toward the slope. He followed her because he had nothing else. She led him past the dead rows of his vineyard and up into the high meadow he had never planted. Wild grapes grew there, small and dark, clinging to the rocks. Semele stopped and set a paw on one cluster. The fruit was untouched by whatever curse had eaten his cellar. Dionysus knelt and tasted one. It was sharp, almost bitter, nothing like the soft grapes he had spent centuries perfecting. But it was alive. He worked through the night. He cut wild grapes with the blade of his pinecone staff and carried them down in the folds of his robe. In the hall, he set a great tiered fountain of marble and gold at the center of the floor. He crushed the wild fruit into a golden pithos taller than a man, its sides worked with vines and his own likeness. Then he added what no vintner would dare: honey from the high cliffs, river water, crushed pine resin, a single drop of his own blood. Semele watched from the steps, tail flicking. He poured a cup at dawn and drank. The taste hit him three times in a row, sweet, then sharp, then warm as a hearth. His laugh startled a dove from the rafters. This was not wine. This was something new. He tipped the pithos and let the drink cascade down through the marble tiers of the fountain, and the hall filled with the smell of pine and honey and dark fruit. Dionysus wiped his mouth and looked at Semele. "Three days," he said. She yawned, showing teeth. He would need more grapes than one meadow could give, and he would need them by sundown tomorrow, or the fountain would run dry before the first guest arrived.