The Thief
A thief.
Another niece—or rather, a nephew—had been born.
This time it was a son of the King of Heaven and the nymph Maia, daughter of Atlas, or so the word went. Once the news reached the Underworld, my path was as good as set.
I would have to go set up another table of offerings, of course.
Eunomia had brought the tidings again. The Goddess of Order had become such a regular messenger to my palace that even the ferryman, she joked, now docked his boat at the mere sight of her face.
Only yesterday she had addressed me with the stiffest honorifics, trembling in fear; now she felt comfortable enough to tease me. At last I could breathe a little easier.
When I arrived on Olympus the banquet hall was already roaring. I had expected something modest for a nymph’s son, yet the King of Heaven had once more spared neither food nor musicians. And right in the middle of it all stood a familiar figure, her back turned toward me.
“Mister. Over here.”
It was Kore. The table was already half laid. Reed pen and papyrus on the left, a ball of thread in the center. When I drew out an arrow she wordlessly cleared the far right end of the table for it.
“What do you think he’ll grab this time?”
“Who knows.”
Hermes—god of thieves, messengers, and merchants.
His symbol was a staff, but what would he actually choose?
I kept a straight face and finished arranging the objects.
“They say the baby’s mother is a nymph? Coming from outside Olympus?”
“Lives in a mountain cave, apparently. Prefers quiet places.”
“Quieter than the Underworld?”
“Nothing’s quieter than the Underworld.”
“I’m betting on the staff. I’ve got a feeling.”
“That’s some baseless confidence.”
“My instincts are excellent. I was right about Apollo, wasn’t I?”
“You picked one of two options.”
“If the result is good, it’s skill. So—same stakes as last time? Loser sets the next feast table alone?”
“Deal. Loser handles the next banquet solo.”
“Fine by me. I’m going to win anyway.”
Come to think of it, the twins who had been the stars of the last doljabi were already fully grown.
That was how it went with the gods. Their rates of growth varied so wildly you could never keep track.
Apollo had become a proper god with his own temple and herds of cattle, while Kore, who had helped with that very doljabi, still looked about fifteen.
At last today’s guest of honor appeared.
Maia stepped forward cradling a swaddled bundle, and Zeus raised his cup high.
“My son Hermes! Drink your fill and celebrate!”
Hermes.
Another name I could never fail to recognize. God of messengers. Of travelers, merchants, and thieves. And—
Before the thought could finish, the doljabi began.
The infant who emerged from the swaddling cloth was extraordinary from the start.
Barely half a day old, yet he opened bright, clear eyes, surveyed the entire banquet hall in one sweep, and beamed at the gathered gods.
Gasps rose on every side; everyone leaned toward the baby. Goddesses passing the swaddling cloth stopped in their tracks, cooing over how sweet he looked as they peered at his cheeks.
When Maia set the child before the table, the betting reached a fever pitch. Gold coins! No—the harp! The staff, I tell you!
Yet even seated before the offerings the baby did not seize anything. He gave the reed pen a light poke, rolled the ball of thread, then simply rested his hands on his knees again.
A murmur ran through the watching gods. No one had ever seen a child take nothing at all.
“The gold coins are gone!”
A servant’s cry turned the hall upside down.
The pile of gold that had been heaped in the center of the table had vanished without a single coin remaining. When? How? Everyone had been watching only the baby.
No—thinking back, they had all been watching only that smile.
The gods eyed one another’s seats with suspicion while hapless servants crawled under the table, searching the floor. The coins were nowhere. In the middle of it a goddess shrieked that her bracelet had disappeared as well.
The search did not take long. While the swaddling cloth was being turned out, the baby had been thrust into my arms by accident; moments later gold coins cascaded from its folds.
A whole hank of thread came with them, and last of all the bracelet tumbled free with a bright clink. From the safety of my arms the infant watched his loot spill out and laughed with the most innocent face in the world.
Silence. Then uproarious laughter.
“Hahahaha! Look at this little rascal!”
Zeus clutched his belly.
“He didn’t choose—he cleaned the table out! Half a day old and already this skilled—he’ll go far!”
Few fathers would boast so proudly of theft, yet the banquet hall was already a sea of laughter. Some clapped; others quietly secured their own wine cups first.
They wore the faces of people who had no idea what would be stolen next at this feast. I briefly wondered how to record the doljabi result, then decided simply to write “everything.”
“Invalid. It’s invalid. He didn’t grab anything.”
“Sweeping it all up still counts as grabbing.”
Kore, who had bet on the staff, pouted, and so the next banquet table fell to her alone. Her look of pure injustice was so earnest I nearly lost the fight not to laugh.
Of course. He was exactly who I knew he would be.
The Hermes I remembered had slipped from his cradle on the day of his birth and gone straight to thieving. Even the seedling matched the myth perfectly.
I was still chuckling as I loosened my hold—when I felt it.
Something missing.
My hand moved of its own accord, searching the inside of my robes. The familiar place was empty. One gold coin with a slightly worn edge—the very coin Kore had pressed into my hand that day—was gone.
I searched again. Nothing. Even after rummaging through every fold of cloth, nothing.
Surely not.
My gaze drifted toward the cradle. In that brief moment I had held him? The nerve to pick the pocket of the King of the Dead himself.
“What’s wrong?”
Kore asked beside me. I arranged my face into something casual.
“Nothing. I think my coin got stolen too.”
The words were barely out before Kore was already moving.
Before the servants could stop her she crouched in front of the recovered heap of gold. One sweep of her palm across the pile, then she dug straight into a single spot.
Among dozens of coins her hand never hesitated.
“This one.”
She held out the worn-edged gold coin. I almost asked how she had known, then thought better of it. She turned toward the cradle with the most serious expression and said,
“Anything else is fine. Not this.”
A newborn could not possibly understand, yet the baby miraculously stopped laughing.
Kore placed the coin in my palm and folded my fingers over it one by one.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. So did she.
In silence we finished clearing the table. The soft sound of the reed pen settling into its chest. The roll of the thread. The gold coin went into a pocket a hand’s breadth deeper than before.
The commotion was not over.
As the feast reached its height a messenger burst in, gasping. Apollo’s entire herd of cattle had vanished without a trace. Fifty head, gone.
The tracks, strangely, ran backward, and at the pasture gate only a single pair of enormous, unfamiliar sandal prints remained.
The gods murmured about what bold thief could have done it; some had already started a betting pool on the culprit. While Apollo stormed out of the hall in a rage, the newborn in the cradle slept on, utterly peaceful.
One more theft whose culprit only I knew.
Of course I kept my mouth shut. What good would come of accusing a newborn? I held no personal grudge. The cattle would be back soon enough. If memory served, the price of one harp.
And only I knew what that little thief would grow up to become. Guiding the souls of the dead to the threshold of the Underworld would one day be among his duties.
In other words, a future colleague. The fact that our first meeting had been a pickpocketing still rankled a little, but I could always use today’s story as drinking material later. I was there at your first theft.
As the feast wound down we cleared the remaining offerings, as always.
While packing the objects one by one into the chest, Kore suddenly asked,
“Mister.”
“What?”
“What did you grab when you were a baby?”
My hands paused.
“At your doljabi. Yours.”
“There wasn’t one.”
“Come on, don’t be modest. Thread? Gold?”
“There really wasn’t one. For me.”
I needed a moment to choose the words.
“The moment I was born, my father swallowed me. There was no time to grab anything.”
Cronus had swallowed every child as soon as they were born, and this body had been no exception. Of course it was the original owner of this body who had lived it. I had only read about it in books.
While I spoke, my fingertips absently brushed the pocket where the coin now rested.
Kore’s hands had gone still. The noise of the feast seemed suddenly far away. I regretted it at once. Not something to say to a child.
“It was a long time ago. Everyone knows the story.”
“……”
“Wipe that look off your face. As you can see, I’m fine.”
“Then all this time—”
“Hm?”
“You’ve only ever set other people’s tables for eons. Never once your own.”
“Setting tables is fun for its own sake. And if we’re counting, my brothers never got one either.”
Kore looked up at me for a long while. Then, with the face of someone who had made a decision, she nodded.
“Then let’s say I did your doljabi for you.”
“What?”
“At my doljabi I grabbed you, didn’t I? So that day you had a doljabi too. You were the one who got grabbed.”
What kind of logic was that? Yet she herself could not have been more serious.
“It’s late, but for gods an eon or two isn’t really late at all.”
I could find no reply and ended up laughing instead.
At the sound of it Kore finally laughed too. The half-packed ball of thread rolled free; we both bent to pick it up at the same moment and nearly cracked our foreheads together.
For a doljabi held eons after birth, it wasn’t half bad.