That’s d’Aulaire’s. As a kid, it was my favorite. I checked it out lit­er­ally every week in the fourth grade. The colors were bright, almost hyperreal, as befits gods and titans. The lan­guage was descrip­tive and direct. D’Aulaire’s told it like it was.

It’s thanks to Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire that I’m a clas­sics major, one of three at Cornell. Sen­sible people study com­puter sci­ence or busi­ness administration. But I’ve always felt more com­fort­able in the old world — the world of gods and titans — and it’s because of this book.

The impor­tant thing is that in d’Aulaire’s, there’s a two-page spread about the Four Winds. It goes like this:

“ZEUS chose AEOLUS to be the keeper of the winds and sent him to live with them and guard them in a hollow cliff, far out at sea.”

(The book explains that Aeolus could let the Four Winds out into the sky through a hole in the cliff.)

“When BOREAS, the North Wind, was called for, he rushed out, icy and wild, tearing up trees and piling up waves in front of him.”

“When NOTUS, the South Wind, was let out, he pressed him­self groaning through the hole in the cliff. He was so heavy with mois­ture that water dripped from his tan­gled beard, and he spread a leaden fog over land and sea.”

“ZEPHYR, the West Wind, was gen­tler than his brothers. When he blew, he swept the sky clear of clouds and all nature smiled.”

(But then...)

“EURUS, the East Wind, was the least impor­tant of the brothers. He wasn’t called for often.”

Now, I have to say, even in the fourth grade, this story seemed strangely truncated. There seemed to be … some­thing missing. But even so, I believed it. For ten years, I believed it!

Now I know it’s a lie and a cover-up, one of the greatest of all time. There was no Aeolus. There was no cave. And Eurus, the East Wind? Well, Hermes — who was, among other things, the god of PR — did a number on this one. The real story was almost lost for good.

I need to go step by step. There’s too much to tell and not enough time to tell it. Emily van Mire is adjusting her glasses, peering out through the window, out to the white-frosted quad sloping down towards the heart of campus, where the dark pines are per­fectly still. There’s a cold draft across her neck.

In the purple-shadowed Garden of the Hesperides, Atlas car­ried the sky on his shoulders. He was not alone there. Beneath the boughs of Hera’s apple tree, there were four dis­tur­bances in the glit­tering earth. Her­cules didn’t notice them when he came and played Atlas for a fool. No one ever noticed them: four bodies in shallow graves in the shadow of the tree. Human bodies, just like yours and mine.

You think they put a hundred-headed dragon there to guard some gilded fruit? Come on. It was guarding the bodies.

It was watching the Four Winds.

They lived long ago, long before Prometheus: four princes of the First City. They sailed sleek ampule-crafts and hunted ple­siosaurs with sonic harpoons. They had airy open houses with boun­tiful veg­etable gar­dens up top and cool flick­ering story-caves down below, all of it pow­ered by ambrosia reactors. They were bold, bright-souled brothers. Three had wives and children; their daugh­ters sailed child-sized ampule-crafts of their own.

When the flood came, they were ready. They had an ark. I mean, of course they had an ark. They were rich.

But Zeus, usurper king of the gods, wanted no survivors, man or giant, rich or poor. He wanted a clean slate. So, he ran the ark against the rocks and cast everyone aboard into the sea. Their fates he left to his brother Poseidon, except for the princes: them, he plucked from the waves.

He split their souls from their bodies, and their bodies he buried in the garden beneath the golden apples. There they lay, trapped and hidden, while their souls ranged and raced the skies, des­per­ately searching. Clouds swirled and storms blew.

Talk about renew­able energy. Boreas ran on pure rage; Notus’s grief pulled him stum­bling forward; and Zephyr was for­ever fleeing death. All of them were fervent, frantic, and really quite insane.

All except Eurus.

He had been the youngest and shrewdest of the brothers. Now, as the East Wind, he qui­etly assessed his situation. He knew the First City was gone for­ever, and he sus­pected his body was gone with it. But... that was an opportunity, wasn’t it?

"Eurus, the East Wind, was the least impor­tant of the brothers."

Who dic­tated that to Ingri d’Aulaire? Who watched over her shoulder as she wrote it down?

“He wasn’t called for often.” Please.

The East Wind’s phone was ringing off the hook.

Eurus was the draft from the door silently opened. Eurus was the rustle of the cur­tains pulled to one side. He was the creak in the attic and the scratch at the window.

While his brothers went mad, Eurus went to work. He became a mer­ce­nary hunter-killer serving man and god alike. He was the orig­inal smart bomb. He was the invis­ible hand. He was the plague a la carte.

The East Wind was the assassin wind.

This is why I can’t commit this to paper. Paper rus­tles the air. It gives you away. And I prob­ably should have said this in the begin­ning: scroll slowly. The less breeze now, the better.

You’re begin­ning to see why I’m so wor­ried about Emily van Mire.

The gods, as you know, did not live in harmony. They seethed with spite and wrath, and they were not above dis­patching Eurus into their own midst. Let me give you an example:

Once, the sun-god Apollo grew jealous when romance bloomed between his sister Artemis and the half-mortal Orion. No one but Orion could keep up with Artemis on the hunt; it was to Orion that she slowly opened her heart. They spent a lot of time together out in the woods.

So Apollo vis­ited the East Wind in his fortress.

Eurus didn’t hide in a cave; he was a wind of the world, and he had a tall octag­onal tower right in the middle of Athens.

There Apollo found the East Wind’s harem: men and women, young and old, a whole society of them — mortal and divine, peasant and royal, from every nation of the Mediterranean, and some beyond. Eurus was, after all, an international busi­nessman.

“Eurus,” Apollo called out, “I would have you kill the half-mortal Orion.” Gods never gave reasons. A breeze stirred his robes, and a voice, or some­thing like a voice, whis­pered:

YOUUU-RUSSS.

“As payment, I offer a sweet melody, never heard by mortal ears.”

YOUUU-RUSSS.

Apollo frowned. “A golden arrow, then. One that I used to slay the dragon Python.”

YOUUU-RUSSS.

He scowled. “Very well. A priestess of Delphi shall be yours.”

Smiling silence.

The East Wind gusted forth from his fortress and curled through the streets of Athens. He was car­rying cargo: a drop of anti-ambrosia: exotic matter from the First City, and deadly poison to the gods.

He raced across the sea — captains cursing their luck as their ships bent off course — and came quickly to Crete. There, in the deep forest, he found Orion. Eurus swooped in close, barely stir­ring the leaves, and released his payload. The anti-ambrosia went like a tiny bullet through the hunter’s body. It burned a channel straight to his heart and Orion was dead before he fell.

Bereft, Artemis went to Apollo, and their bond was restored.

So, I want to be clear: Eurus killed Orion the Hunter. That’s basi­cally like killing Superman and Batman combined. And it was effortless. Who couldn’t Eurus kill?

The gods were about to find out.

The myths aren’t all lies.

The god­dess Athena did, in fact, spring fully-formed from the fore­head of Zeus. This much you’ve heard, and this much is true. But why such a strange birth?

It hap­pened because Zeus had a chat in a cow-pasture with a mortal philoso­pher and — get this — it struck the first spark of curiosity in the god-king’s mind — ever. For the first time, a thought that was not ambition, lust, or cal­cu­la­tion took up res­i­dence in that cav­ernous cosmic skull.

Zeus was not used to feeling curious, and frankly, it was a major distraction. So he gripped the arms of his throne and gri­maced in pain as his son, the forge-god Hep­haestus, pried the curiosity out of his head. They formed it into a girl and set her free to walk the earth. This was Athena. Pure curiosity. The spark made flesh.

From the day she was formed, Athena was an omniv­o­rous observer, a kind of super Galileo/Darwin long before either was born. She made mea­sure­ments and formed hypotheses. She clas­si­fied plants and bent down to watch bugs up close. She counted the sec­onds between her father’s light­ning strikes and the thunder that followed.

Zeus had formed her well: her eyes were like micro­scopes, her feet like seismographs. She could taste num­bers (even, sweet; odd, sour; prime, umami). She could smell questions. She could hear gravity.

Athena was the nerd god.

Zeus cher­ished her, but he wanted nothing to do with her. (And he steered clear of all mortal philoso­phers thereafter.) So instead she grew close to Hep­haestus, who had helped her into the world.

Hep­haestus taught her about gears, levers, springs, and circuits. He built her the world’s first laboratory. She, in turn, wrote new soft­ware for the golden robots that helped him at his forge. They were quite a team, those two: the sci­en­tist and the engineer, the idea and the execution. They were the Jobs and Woz­niak of Olympus. And — get this — they had a startup.

The gods of Olympus were not without limit. They were bound to this world, and to tell the truth, they didn’t know much about it. They def­i­nitely didn’t know any­thing about the universe beyond.

So Athena and Hep­haestus built a tele­scope.

They called it the Gray Eye, and its con­struc­tion pushed them to new heights. Hep­haestus had never ground lenses so vast; Athena had never worked equa­tions so complicated. It was going to be a mountain-top obser­va­tory with a clear view of the stars — a tele­scope even taller than Olympus.

You can see where this is going.

I don’t have much time now, because the hair has risen on the back of Emily van Mire’s neck, and she is sure there’s someone in that tiny office with her. She’s not wrong.

But all is not lost — not yet.

This is where sex comes into it.

No one hated Athena’s tele­scope more than Helios, the sun-god, whose domain defined the upper bound of the gods’ world. With the Gray Eye, Athena would see past him — and then what? Would she dis­cover that Helios was just one among many? And a dim one at that? These were things that Helios already sus­pected; things he was not eager to have confirmed.

And besides, Hep­haestus was sup­posed to be designing deadly sun­beams that Helios could fling at mor­tals (just like Zeus and his thunderbolts)—not working on a tele­scope.

Athena had to be stopped.

The East Wind was about to get a call from an angry star.

This was touchy. Although Eurus had accepted foul assign­ments from everyone on Olympus — everyone except Athena — he had never actu­ally killed a god. Over­reaching demigods, yes. Hated mor­tals, of course. But a full-blooded Olympian?

It’s not that he wouldn’t do it, and it’s cer­tainly not that he couldn’t do it. He would just have to be enticed.

It was Selene who did the enticing.

Selene, god­dess of the moon, obe­dient sister to Helios. She was an enchantress of the old school; glamour was her bread and butter. She showed up at the East Wind’s fortress one night, hand on canted hip, draped in a glossy gray gown that fell in shim­mering folds. Her eyes were silver and her lashes were very, very long.

YOUUU-RUSSS.

“Oh, I don’t want any­thing,” she said, step­ping cat­like into his lair, “other than to meet you, Eurus. I’ve heard stories.”

YOUUU-RUSSS.

As she passed the East Wind’s concubines, Selene raked each with her eyes. None were as hand­some as the god­dess of the moon. “You don’t spend much time with gods, do you,” she whis­pered into the air. “Or god­desses.”

Eurus was silent. Selene’s hair rustled. She smiled, eyelids low.

Oh man; in a dif­ferent world, a dif­ferent life, what a pair they might have made. Selene and the East Wind. You could make a movie out of that. Angelina Jolie as Selene, pale and slinky. Eurus would be com­puter-generated, of course, but George Clooney would do the voice and the motion capture. There would be a heist.

But in the real world, Eurus wasn’t the con artist; he was the mark.

So while Athena and Hep­haestus built the Gray Eye on their mountain-top, Selene seduced the East Wind. He sent his harem away and spent his nights with her. She lounged in a bed of gray and gold cush­ions and whis­pered gossip about the gods. Eurus curled around her, tickled her, stroked her. This might sound a little freaky, but remember, Eurus wasn’t just some ele­mental spirit; he was a man.

And, it was a little freaky.

“Do you know who the most beau­tiful of all the god­desses is?” Selene whis­pered one night. She was arched back, looking up at the golden octagon of the ceiling.

YOUUU.

“No,” she laughed, “but you’re sweet. It’s Aphrodite. She’s as fair as I am dark. And Eurus”—Selene low­ered her voice; this was the voice she used for secrets — “she’s lonely. Her hus­band Hep­haestus spends all his time with Athena.”

Eurus was silent. Listening.

“They’re close, those two. Very close. They’re working on some­thing called a tele­scope.” She paused and pursed her lips. “They hate me, you know.”

YOUUU?

“Oh yes. They say the moon is too bright. It blots out the stars.” Selene frowned, pouting. “They’d get rid of me if they could.”

YOUUU.

She waved her hand. “But don’t worry. We’ll work it out.”

We’re coming to the crux of it now, and it’s a good thing, because Emily van Mire is standing, and she’s pulling on the door handle. But every time she does, some­thing presses it shut. She pulls, and cold air gusts against her, pushes past her bare ankles and elbows. She wants to scream but the breath catches in her throat.

Behind her, some­thing sharp is rising from her desk.

The next morning, Selene was gone, off to wher­ever Selene went during the day, and Eurus was alone in his fortress, wisping around in curlicues, dwelling in mem­o­ries of the night before.

Then Eros, Hermes’ winged intern, flut­tered in; he car­ried a message. “From Athena,” he said with a short bow.

Eurus curled low around the tablet, picked it up and held it aloft. He felt it with fin­gers of air; it was marked with Athena’s seal, an owl in dark wax.

EURUS, it said. I WOULD HAVE YOU KILL SELENE.

And it was signed: ATHENA.

Eurus was the rational wind, the cal­cu­lating wind — but here he lost it. He crushed the tablet to dust in mid-air and spun it around like a tornado. Cush­ions bounced and flew; the walls vibrated.

YOUUU-RUSSS!

The East Wind bolted out of his fortress, straight towards the peak where the Gray Eye was coming online.

From high above the earth, Helios watched a line of dust rise across the countryside, marking the East Wind’s screaming passage. Beneath his blazing mask of fire, he smiled.

Athena was bent into her tele­scope’s giant equa­to­rial mount, snap­ping wires into servo-motors. Hep­haestus was down below, peering into a row of mon­i­tors above a wide matrix of switches. There was a gang of mor­tals helping, too, pol­ishing lenses and mir­rors with soft pads of golden fleece.

"We’re close," Athena called out. Her eyes danced. She looked across to the mortal who was helping her, a bearded philoso­pher from Mycenae named Tri­o­genes who couldn’t meet her gaze. "We’re so close!"

Any other god — even Zeus — would be dead. It was Athena’s gifts that saved her — her micro­scope eyes and micro­phone ears. She heard the East Wind coming, felt his fast angry vibration, and leapt back just in time to see a bead of anti-ambrosia, shining dark and heavy, punch through the tele­scope. Tri­o­genes gaped; Hep­haestus looked up; and Athena’s owl hooted: “Hoo-rus!”

In a flash, she sized up her situation. Your choices aren’t great when you’ve been tar­geted by an invis­ible hunter-killer with dei­cidal intent. She acted.

The East Wind raged around the obser­va­tory, knocking mor­tals off their feet and shat­tering lenses on the tiles.

“Eurus!” Hep­haestus roared. “Stop!” But by the time the words had left his lips, the east wind was already gone. The sky above the Aegean was pulled into loops and spirals; the clouds traced the path of his superhuman search.

Eurus was in every nook and cranny that day. He blew down every door and lifted every rug. But he could not find her.

In the ruins of the Gray Eye, everyone assumed that the Myce­naean dou­bled over on the floor, moaning and clutching his head, had been struck down by grief.

They assumed Eurus had succeeded, because Athena was gone.

In fact, Tri­o­genes was clutching his head because it felt like his brain was going to explode. But that feeling would pass.

Athena was never seen on Olympus again.

So: then came the cover-up. Zeus had loved Athena, but he was embar­rassed by this whole chain of events. At his command, Hermes invented a new Athena and talked her up all around the Mediterranean. Athena the god­dess of war. Athena the patron of the Greeks. There was no reason not to believe him, because the real Athena — curious Athena — was gone.

Without her, the Gray Eye was never rebuilt. In time it crumbled, and no trace remained.

Which brings us to now, and to Ithaca, where Eurus the East Wind, after long searching, has found Athena at last.

Selene is long gone, and Helios too. Even Zeus. All us mor­tals forgot about them (all except mortal fourth-graders with a cer­tain book) and they faded away, replaced by new gods — gods like sci­en­tific the­o­ries and secu­ri­tized mortgages.

But not Eurus. Eurus never gave up. How scary is that? Like the Terminator. The T-1000 B.C.

His per­sis­tence paid off. Finally, he felt a familiar ripple in the air from far away. He caught a trace of her, and he hunted her down.

But I found her, too. I was a step ahead of the East Wind. This summer, we found this story in a cache near Troy. It was scratched in haste, with strokes short and shallow. My pro­fessor said it was, at best, ancient satire; at worst, and more likely, a hoax.

So I guess Hermes got to him, too.

Why did I believe it? Because of d’Aulaire’s, of course. Because the East Wind seemed sketchy when I was nine years old. Because Athena never seemed like much of a war­rior to me.

Then, at a recep­tion for schol­ar­ship win­ners at Cornell, I met her.

She is called Pro­fessor Emily van Mire, and she has a girl­friend and a small house and a dog named Titan, but it is her, unmistakably. It’s her curiosity, her intellect, her pale dancing eyes. It’s her tele­scope, too; the mountain’s in Puerto Rico, not Greece.

I did some snooping. She was a schol­ar­ship stu­dent like me. Her Ph.D took an extra year because her dis­ser­ta­tion was too broad; she just kept adding more.

Then I did some real snooping. Her family on her mother’s side is full-blooded Greek. If you could trace it all the way back, I’m sure you’d find Tri­o­genes, in whose head the god­dess of curiosity curled up small and silent.

Athena lives.

The East Wind still hunts, but his power is diminished. His anti-ambrosia has all dried into dust, so he’ll have to make do.

There’s a pair of scis­sors, the big black-handled kind, floating now in the air above Emily van Mire’s desk. They’re pointed at her neck.

But Athena still has mor­tals on her side.

The door is bursting open and we’re there just in time — the clas­sics majors, all three of us. We’ve got fans — a desk fan and fold-out paper fans, two in each hand — and I’ve got a blow-dryer on a fifty-foot exten­sion cord and we’re huffing and puffing. Our hearts are pounding.

YOUUU-RUSSS.

The myths aren’t all lies, but this is our world now, and Athena is ours, too. This is the Athena we need, the one hiding in Emily van Mire’s head.

YOUUU-RUSSS.

We can blow those scis­sors back into the wall and we can blow Eurus the East Wind — Eurus the killer-for-hire, Eurus the fool, Eurus the enemy of curiosity — we can blow him away for­ever.

Except he’s such an old spirit, and he’s stronger than I thought, and there are only three of us — 

YOUUU-RUSSS.

We need your help. You need to blow! Blow like the wind!

YOUUU-RUSSS.

Athena lives!