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Heracles stepped out of the shadows where he had been listening.

Here he comes, the Hero of the World, wearing a lion-skin and swinging his olive club.

‘Have a drink Atlas, you old globe. We’ve all got our burdens to bear. Your punishment is to hold up the universe. My punishment is to work for a wanker.’

‘And who’s to blame?’ said Atlas. ‘Not your father Zeus, but your foster-mother, Hera.’

‘Call it Fate not blame,’ said Heracles. ‘Your name means “long-suffering” mine means “Glory of Hera”, which is a bit of a liberty under the circumstances. Does any woman feel love for her husband’s bastards? I am son of my father Zeus, but my mother Alceme
was mortal. Hera was deceived into suckling me. She’s not happy about that. Women don’t like a stranger at the tit.’

‘She sent a serpent to kill you.’

‘I strangled it in my cot. I was too young to bear a grudge.’

‘And then she drove you to madness.’

‘There’s plenty of men been driven to madness by a woman.’

‘Only a madman would come here.’

‘I need your help.’

Help. He comes for help at the hinge of the world.
Heaven and earth fold away from each other, but here they
lie edge to edge. To this doubleness he comes for help, this
man of double nature, the god in him folded back in human
flesh.

‘What kind of help?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Well,’ said Heracles, ‘If you’ve got all the time in the world, I’ll begin.’

Men are unfaithful by nature. This is not a fault in men, for nature should not be accused of faulty workmanship. It is as useless to rail against man’s infidelity as it is to complain that water is wet. What god or man is content with what he has? And if he were content, then he is less than god or man.

Alceme was beautiful, so Zeus dressed himself up as her husband and had a quick word with the moon and he got Alceme into bed for a night that lasted thirty-six hours. He gave her pleasure and pleasure grew into a son. To save me from Hera’s marital wrath, he tricked her into suckling me just once, and so I gained immortality. Hera can hurt me but she cannot truly harm me. What she really likes to do is humiliate me.

Even a goddess is still a woman.

I was a bit of a braggart in my youth – killed
everything, shagged what was left, and ate the rest. Then Hera made up her mind to drive me mad, and while I was mad, I slit six of my own children, which I regret, and a tent full of other people whose names I didn’t even know. Not good behaviour, Atlas, and I always had my standards, even when drunk, so I went to Delphi to try and get forgiveness. The pythoness at Delphi ordered me to make myself servant to Eurystheus. Yes, that slack-prick, gnat- witted, wine-sour Eurystheus. As an atonement, you understand. For twelve years I must do whatever he asks. No matter that he is weak and I am strong. No matter that I could kill him by spitting on him. He is my master. For his glory I have already killed the Nemean Lion, destroyed the Hydra, caught the golden hind of Artemis, captured the world’s biggest boar, cleaned the Augean stables, driven away the man-eating Stymphalian birds, coralled the Cretan bull, tamed the carnivorous mares of Diomedes, stripped Hippolyte’s Amazon girdle from her body,
fetched home the Geryon cattle, and now I find myself here with you, for the eleventh of my labours.

Fruit
.

Didn’t I say she wanted to humiliate me? What kind of a hero chases after fruit?

You see, Atlas, my old mountain, my old mate, I have to get hold of some of Hera’s apples – the special ones she got as a present from your Ma when she married Zeus. They’re in your orchard, aren’t they? Have you still got the key? You didn’t leave it with those bloody Hesperides did you? I don’t fancy smarming your daughters, Atlas, I’m strictly off women at the moment – got to concentrate, you know. By the way, just as a bit of gossip, your other daughter Calypso has got that idiot Odysseus in her den and will she let him go? No she won’t. Hera herself can’t get him away. Odysseus is slippery as a greased boar but Calypso has hands like skewers. They are a bunch, your girls, I must say. You should get them married off.

But to the point, Atlas. If you
have
got the key,
would you mind just popping down there and picking one or two, well three, as it happens, three golden apples for your old friend Heracles? I’ll take the world off your shoulders while you go. Now there’s a handsome offer.

Atlas was silent. Heracles slit a skin of wine and slung it at him, watching the giant’s face while they drank. Heracles was a bastard and a blagger, but he was the only man alive who could relieve Atlas of his burden. They both knew that.

‘Ladon lies curled round the apple tree,’ said Atlas. ‘I fear him.’

‘What, that poxy snake? That hundred-headed whodunit? Every tongue a question, every answer a hiss of nothing. Ladon’s not a monster, he’s a tourist attraction.’

‘I fear him,’ said Atlas.

‘Let me tell you,’ said Heracles, ‘I’ve faced a lot
worse than Ladon. The Hydra, now she
was
a worm. Chop off one head and straight away there’d be another glaring at you. Like marriage really. And after this I’ve got to go down into Hell and drag out that stupid dog, what’s his name Cerberus? Three heads, loads of teeth – that one. No wonder the dead don’t get any letters; who’s going to deliver them with a dog like that at the gate? I’ll fix him though, just like I fixed the Cretan bull. You’ve got to look them in the eye Atlas, show ’em who’s boss.’

‘Ladon has two hundred eyes,’ said Atlas.

‘Two thousand, two million, I’m Heracles, don’t worry about it. I’ll go and kill him and bring us something to eat on the way back.’

There he goes, the hero of the world, thick-cut as his olive
-
club. Is he a joke or a god? His doubleness is his strength
and his downfall. He is a joke and a god. One or the other
will be the death of him. Which is it?

Heracles vaulted the wall into the Garden of the Hesperides. He had the key, but the lock was rusted and he thought it unwise to use his thug-trough manners on Atlas’s property.

The garden was thick and overgrown. Heracles trampled through it towards the shining centre, where Hera’s tree was rich with fruit.

Ladon was under the tree. Ladon curled like a worm-cast. Ladon, a dragon with a man’s tongue. Ladon, a man turned reptile, cold-blooded and morose.

Heracles hailed Ladon.

‘Is that you, you bag of venom?’

Ladon opened sixty-five of his eyes but did not stir.

‘Don’t play dead with me Ladon. Look lively.’

There was a ripple. Small music of Ladon’s scales. At his head, he was heavy-sounded as a cymbal, but towards his tail, where the scales were smaller and higher, he was a chime or a triangle. He tinkled at Heracles.

‘The girls haven’t done much mowing, have they?’
observed our hero, looking at the grass, tall as a tower. ‘No one’s been here for ages.’

‘I live alone,’ said Ladon.

‘I don’t live anywhere,’ said Heracles. ‘I’ve been on the road for years now.’

‘I heard,’ said Ladon.

‘Oh, what have you heard?’ said Heracles, trying to sound casual.

‘That you have offended the gods.’

‘That’s an overstatement,’ said Heracles. ‘Hera doesn’t like me. That’s all.’

‘She hates you,’ said Ladon.

‘All right. She hates me. So what?’

‘This is her tree. These are her apples.’

‘That’s what I’ve come for.’

‘You will be cursed.’

‘I’m cursed already. How bad can it get?’

‘Go home, Heracles.’

‘There is no home.’

Ladon reared up, and with his terrible bulk began to uncoil from the sacred tree. His hundred mouths dripped venom. His eyes flashed prophecy. Heracles knew that it would be this poison or the one after. He had taken milk from Hera’s breast and she would one day return it to him as poison. He had known as much when he was a baby sleeping on his mother’s fleece, and Hera had sent the azure serpent to kill him. This he had strangled, and he had avoided cups and libations ever since. He had defeated the Hydra. He would defeat Ladon. He would not die today. But he knew he would die. Sometimes he thought it was a strange life, this life of avoiding death.

Heracles used the overgrown garden to hide himself from Ladon’s angry searching. As the serpent slithered through the long grass and over the unused trellises and frames, Heracles retreated further and further from the centre, towards the wall, where he had left his bow and arrow.

He strung the bow and braced his feet.

‘Over here, Ladon, you creep!’

The serpent reared up and as he did so, exposed his soft throat to Heracles’ arrow. The flint pierced him and he died at once, his lidless eyes filming over, his jaw-plates sagging.

Heracles knew that all serpents feign death to avoid capture, so he cautiously walked around Ladon’s body and hacked off a piece of his armoured tail. The scales were thick as a breastplate, but Heracles wore no armour, only the skin of the Nemean lion that he had slain so easily so long ago.

Caught in a moment’s thought between death and death, Heracles did not see Hera standing before him. He suddenly felt a drop of rain against the sweat of his skin. He looked up. She was there. His tormentor and his dream.

Hera was beautiful. She was so beautiful that even a thug like Heracles wished he had shaved. Without
a mirror she showed him to himself, muscle-swollen and scarred. He feared her and desired her. His prick kept filling and deflating like a pair of fire bellows. He wanted to rape her but he didn’t dare. Her eyes were all contempt and mild disgust.

‘Must you kill everything, Heracles?’

‘Kill or be killed. Don’t blame me.’

‘Whom else should I blame?’

‘Blame yourself, drop dead gorgeous, all this starts with you.’

‘All this started with my husband’s trickery and your brutality.’

‘You drove me mad.’

‘I did not ask you to kill your own children.’

‘A mad man has no reason in his head.’

‘A brutal man has no pity in his heart.’

‘You are my fate, Hera, and guess what? I am yours.’

‘A god has no fate. You will never be immortal, Heracles, you are too much a man.’

‘You suckled me, and my father is Zeus. That makes me immortal enough.’

‘Enough is not enough. I could kill you now.’

‘Then kill me. Do you think I’m frightened?’

‘You must bring about your own ruin, Heracles.’

‘But you’ll be there to help me to it, won’t you, Hera?’

‘If I seem like fate to you, it is because you have no power of your own.’

‘No man was ever stronger.’

‘No man was ever weaker than you.’

‘You talk in riddles, like a woman.’

‘Then I will speak plainly, like a man. No hero can be destroyed by the world. His reward is to destroy himself. Not what you meet on the way, but what you are, will destroy you, Heracles.’

Hera moved forward, and delicate as she was, hair shining, her limbs pale, she picked up Ladon light as a toy, and threw him into the heavens where she
set him forever as the constellation of the serpent.

The effort had bared her breasts.

‘Well then, Heracles, why do you not take the apples?’

Heracles moved forward and with his finger he touched Hera’s nipple. He felt it harden, and wetting his fingertip, he touched it again, rubbing around the aureole with his thumb. He wanted to suck her breasts.

Hera put her hand over his. ‘Take the apples, Heracles.’

He remembered. He stepped back. Dark-hearted Hera was smiling at him. He had been warned not to pick the apples himself. He must leave them on the tree. Someone else must do his gathering for him.

He stepped back. Her breasts were bare. Why not die now, take the inevitable with some pleasure? He could have her, force his prick in her, and then she’d kill him. He’d die in the cave of her hatred, but she’d feel him die. She’d feel the last pulse of him inside her.

He dropped his hand to his prick and started to masturbate. She watched him, rough and practised, beat himself off in a dozen quick strokes. As he started to come, she kissed him once on the mouth and walked away.

Night.

Ladon’s imprint was still in the grass. His image was bright among the stars. Heracles was sitting alone under the sacred tree. He no longer understood the journey, or rather he understood there
was
a journey. Until today he had gone about each task unconcerned by the one before or the one after. He had met the challenge and moved on. He did what he had to do, no more, no less. It was his fate. Fate could not be questioned or considered.

Today was different. Today, for the first time in his life, he thought about what he was doing. He thought about who he was.

Ladon had told him to go home. What if he did?
What if he walked out of the garden and turned away. He could find a ship, change his name. He could leave Heracles behind, an imprint in time, like Ladon, that would fade as the grass grew.

What if he bent the future as easily as an iron bar? Could he not bend himself out of his fate, and leave fate to curve elsewhere? Why was he fixed, immoveable, plodding out his life like a magnificent ox? Why did he wear Hera’s yoke? And for the first time he thought it was his own yoke he wore.

He looked up at the stars. There was the constellation of Cancer, another of his enemies elevated by Hera. A giant crab had nipped him in the foot while he was battering the Hydra. He had crushed the crab, but for his pains, there was his foe glittering at him, uncrushable forever.

Cancer the Crab. The zodiac sign of Home.

‘Go home, Heracles’ … no, he would never go home. It was too late.