Who: Thalia and the Korybantes Samothrakioi [narrative] When: May 30 - July 14, after this. Where: Newark, New Jersey Warnings: It's long. Sorry.
The sky was an inky blue outside, the sun still hidden below the horizon, when the silence of the house and its sole, sleeping occupant were broken by the sound of knocking. It was not a polite knock, not the apologetic tapping of somebody very much aware of the hour and the fact that they were pulling people out of bed -- this was loud and persistent, rapping out an erratic rhythm against the door.
Nick rolled over in bed with an indistinct mumble, which soon became a groan when he managed to get the display up on his cell phone. It was 4:14 in the morning.
Cursing aloud, he flopped back against the pillow. He pondered whether he could be bothered getting up, and decided that he couldn't. Chances were, it was just some boozed-up kid come to spew all over his feet anyway. They'd get tired and go away in a minute.
They didn't. As one minute ticked over into two the knocking only grew louder, until it had become a full-fisted thumping, still with that same uneven beat. Annoyance won out over weariness. Grumbling loudly, Nick threw back the covers and began feeling around for a pair of pants.
By the time he had made his way to the door, Nick was in a decidedly foul mood. Still rattling off expletives in his head, he grasped the handle and yanked it open so sharply that the knocker started and almost toppled forward. Out of instinct he moved forward to steady the person, but the raggedy figure caught herself at the last minute, staggered against the door jamb, and shot Nick a lop-sided grin. Recognition hit him with a jolt.
"Ma?"
The grin widened, all teeth and no mirth. "Hey, baby."
Nicholas Thrace, formerly Kouros, youngest of the Korybantes of Samothrace, and ever the son of Apollo and Thalia, stared disbelievingly at the woman on his doorstep -- this pale, dirty creature with his mother's face.
"I got a joke for you," Thalia said. Her voice was cracked, and disconcertingly blank.
"Jesus Christ, Ma, what happened to you?"
Thalia ignored him, continuing in that same, expressionless voice, her eyes focussed on a point beyond her son's left shoulder. "'S called, 'Just Bend Over and Take It, or: A Comedic Representation of an Epic History Detailing the Praises of a Tragic Song and Dance Through Time and Space. And Sex.' Can't forget the sex."
"Have you been drinking? You're not m-- Jesus, you're bleeding!"
"An' the subtitle," she went on as though he hasn't interrupted, "The subtitle is, 'Why God Doesn't Give a Shit, and Neither Should You.'"
"Ma, come on-- Come inside. We'll get you cleaned up." Nick -- Kouros -- reached out to take her softly by the arm, but Thalia jerked sharply away from his hand.
"Wait, wait, lemme finish. Please. It's a good one, I promise…"
There was a desperate edge to her voice that made Kouros start. He had never seen her like this before.
"Okay, Mom," he said softly, in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. "Okay. Tell me the joke."
"Right. Joke. So the joke starts, and there's this--" she paused, seeming to lose her train of thought for a moment. "Yeah. Some people walk in -- it's a bar, I said that bit, yeah? They go into the bar, these--" another pause; Thalia was frowning now. "Well, they're not really people. But it's not really a bar anyway, so it's-- okay, the important thing is that a thing goes into another thing, and the thing, the first thing, not the second thing, the original thing says…"
She stopped again. In the half-light, Kouros could see the worry etched into her face, sliding towards real distress. "Fuck me," she whispered.
"Ma." Kouros stepped forward, ready to steady her. Thalia didn't seem to notice him.
"I don't remember. I can't remember the fucking joke."
"It's okay."
"It's not okay. Jesus. It was there, it was right there. In my head, I had it." Her eyes found her son's for the first time, red-rimmed and pleading. "It was a good joke," she insisted, again.
Kouros had cleared the small space between them, moving slowly so as not to spook her, and now he wrapped one arm around his mother's shoulder. She was cold under his touch, and at that moment she seemed terribly small.
"I know, Ma," he said quietly. "C'mon. Let's go inside and you can tell me all about it."
This time, she followed him without protest.
*
He bathed her as though she were a babe -- as she had him so many centuries ago, during his hazy infanthood. The blood he'd seen was coming from a nasty gash on her right hand (the same hand she'd hurt when first the darkness had claimed her; healed to a pink scar some weeks ago only to be prised open again with teeth and nails, though Kouros could know none of this), but when he tried to inspect it further she screeched so loudly he was sure she'd wake the entire neighbourhood. His attempts to dress her raw, blistered feet were met with similar resistance.
He ended up carrying her into the bedroom, and by the time he drew the covers around her she seemed to be dozing already -- but the moment he had stepped out into the passage and closed the door behind him, he heard a muffled keening start up. Kouros' hand hovered over the doorknob, undecided. After a moment, and with a small pang of guilt, he turned the lock.
Then he went into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialled a number he had not called in years.
"Yeah, I know what time it is," he briskly, as a groggy voice grumbled down the line. "It's Mom."
*
Iasios was the first to arrive, late in the afternoon of the same day, with Pyrrhos only a few hours behind him. Okythoos and Skelmis showed up together -- they co-owned a garage in Washington these days, Kouros learned, and wondered as he had more than once of late why it had taken something so drastic to bring them all back into contact. Then came smiling Epimedes -- grim-faced and worried, now -- and lastly Telesias, his flight from Texas touching down late into the evening of the third day.
Thus it was that on the third night, and for the first time in over a decade, the seven Korybantes Samothrakioi gathered in an old unit in Jersey.
Thalia was no better. When Iasios had come to tend to her various cuts and scratches she had screamed and refused to let him near he. He had persisted, seeking to calm her with soothing words, speaking gently to her as though she were a skittish animal; Thalia had burst into tears and begged her son to flee. Most of the time she just talked gibberish, half-remembered jokes and contextless punchlines interspersed with anxious babble about shadows and the hounds of the dark.
The little they knew was drawn from rumours and the accounts of others. A satyr friend of Epimedes had heard talk of some god -- he knew not which -- attacking the Mousai, and when Epimedes had asked why Phoebus Apollo or the Thunderer hadn't intervened the daimon had only shrugged and said he guessed that was their business. Axieros of the Kabeirides, currently waiting tables in Brooklyn, had heard the rumours but had thought them to be just that -- although, she'd added, there had certainly been something going down not so long ago. Did they remember that weird blackout that had made the news back in May…?
Rumours and second-hand stories. That was all they had. A whole lot of maybes and perhapses, but nothing solid and no idea of how to relieve this festering sickness of the mind -- and every day, Thalia's cries grew louder.
There was only one thing the Korybantes could offer their mother, and so they gave her that.
They danced. As once on distant Mount Ida their Cretan cousins had masked the infant Zeus' cries with their foot-stomping and shield-bashing, now the sons of Thalia took up their spears and with the ancient korybas they drowned out their mother's wailing until even she could scarcely hear herself.
Shields clashes against spears and bare feet pounded the floor and the Korybantes danced.
In the dark of Thalia's mind, the shadows of the Maniae shrieked and chittered, but even they were muted by the thundering korybas. And the Korybantes danced.
For forty days and forty nights they danced, until it seemed to Thalia -- to all of them -- that there was nothing else in the world except for the banging of the shields and the steady, pulsing rhythm of their feet.
They stomped and they roared and they danced until Madness herself could bear it no more, and Mania fled shrieking from the Muse.
That was on the fortieth night. And in the early hours of the forty-first morning, heavy with exhaustion and lulled by the familiar beating sound, Thalia fell at last into a long and blissfully dreamless sleep.