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Phoebus Apollo Shootafar, patron god of rhetoric, archery, music and a dozen pillars of civilized human thought. Defender of Troy and slayer of the great hero Achilles. Author of divine inspiration and lord of the sun; was lounging on Mount Olympus, attempting to compose poetry whilst absently writing with his fingers in the fragrant air.
“Thy drops of life with flowers, last of spring, do fall…” he muttered to himself, his voice a dreamy tenor.
Apollo considered himself to be the most beautiful of the gods, and found, as he lay on soft cushions with his golden-skinned limbs stretched out and his glowing locks of hair wreathing his face on the pillow, the utter delight in his being that only truly narcissistic individuals enjoy regularly.
A frown drew the bow of his lips as he tried to recall the rest of the rather lazy poem he had thought of earlier whilst admiring the red crocus blooms on earth. It had been something about the bitter sweetness of death, like the crocuses that naively bloom too early, the dainty, pretty things are mercilessly frozen by the returning winds of Boreas.
The orange light of sunset quickly receded and the celestial wheel above him turned, Orion pursuing his quarry across the sky once again, alerting him to a new divine presence.
“Brother, you are becoming lazier and lazier,” said a smooth and steady female voice that rippled like moonlight, “sunset came two seconds ahead of schedule today.”
Apollo reluctantly opened his large, celestial blue eyes, and glanced at the radiant, seemingly young woman before him. “Good evening Artemis,” he greeted her. “If you must know, I’ve been suffering from a lack of inspiration lately, I have found myself detached from human passion.”
He had his eyes fixed upwards at the stars, hoping that the thought of the tragic stories of many of them when they had been human, might bring tears to his eyes as they had in the past. Thus, with his attention drawn elsewhere, he did not see Artemis rolling her eyes to the heavens and giving a small disbelieving shake of her head. She needed no such passion for the hunt, as it provided it’s own inspiration, nor did she believe Apollo needed such inspiration to dutifully carry out his assigned job. With her characteristic restraint, she swallowed the reproaches on her tongue, as she knew he would not heed them, and instead offered advice that she thought he would readily accept. “You know what advice father would give,” she told him, drawing his eyes to her, “you ought to do as he does, find yourself a young mortal lover and break his or her heart.”
Unbeknownst to his twin sister, Apollo already had a beautiful, young mortal on his mind, but an abundance of disastrous past experiences made him wary.
“Coldly breaking hearts may be a hobby to the other gods,” he scoffed, “but not to me.” He gazed wistfully at the dappling stars, mind already wandering down to earth. Artemis rolled her eyes again and left to seek the company of more rational, female individuals.
Perhaps it was on account of his sister’s advice however, that Apollo did soon surrender to his longings. It was a day early in the Piscean month, the winds had just turned warm and the young green buds had begun to appear on the trees. The god appeared on earth in his becomingly radiant human form and sat beneath the shade of a laurel tree beside a cobbled road, resting his back on it’s trunk with his lyre in his lap. He played the instrument as skillfully as any human possibly could, singing sweetly the passionate words that came to him on the spot.
Around him spread the rolling hills of farmlands dappled with cattle, before him lay the shady forest, and in the distance behind him were the stone roofs of the great town of Sparta. It happened that Apollo had chosen that particular road and laurel tree for a reason, and not a quarter of an hour had passed before a young man, emerging from the forest with a bow and a quiver on his back, heard Apollo’s song and was enraptured. He drew nearer in a trance, his grip on his bow became so lax that he nearly dropped it in his distraction. He approached the otherworldly stranger timidly, smiling to show that he was friendly, and enjoyed his music.
When Apollo finished singing, he lay the lyre across his lap and smiled at the boy without saying a thing. The boy, who looked younger than he really was, with plump, rosy cheeks, sparkling brown eyes, and soft black hair, was called Hyacinthus. “I loved your song,” he stammered, “it was so beautiful.”
Apollo (who, it must be reminded, made an utterly ridiculous suitor and repulsed many potential love interests with his lack of subtlety), then responded shamelessly “you are the one who is beautiful, if you don’t mind me saying. The song was inspired by your beauty.”
The boy’s cheeks flushed easily, a pink rosy color, and he managed a bewildered “thank you.” He hesitated, shifting his weight from foot to foot, before self-consciously dropping down to sit cross-legged in front of the stranger, setting his bow aside.
“Are you a god?” He asked, awed to be in the presence of such radiance, and shivered with excitement when the stranger nodded and smiled.
“Phoebus Apollo has admired you from far away on Olympus for many long months,” he told the boy, “wondering, and hoping, and debating…” Apollo, with his flair for the dramatic, trailed off.
He saw the recognition in the boy’s eyes, as he reconciled his uncanny musical skill with the golden, glowing complexion of his skin. Hyacinthus leaned forward in fascination, drawn in by the azure depths of the god’s eyes. “What did you see?” He wondered, his voice falling to an intrigued whisper.
“Everything,” the god answered. “I saw you outrun, outride, and outclimb all the boys your age, and I saw you advance quicker than all the rest in your training, even as you were constantly distracted by endless fascinations of the world around you. I saw you become the only one persistent enough to train the wild stallion you and your uncle captured when you were just a boy and they were all more experienced men, how you find endless joy in running through the forest barefoot, bringing your arrows under the guise of hunting, but you seldom endeavor to catch anything. I saw that there is more life in you than in all of the men and women of Sparta combined, and they can hardly keep up with you. They don’t understand when you come dictating to them with animated excitement about the birds you saw or the tree you found, or speculating where the waves come from when there is no wind on the shore.”
Apollo had gravitated closer and closer to the boy as he spoke, his voice growing quicker and softer, yet more impassioned. “Tell me all about what you saw and learned from your adventures in the forest today,” the god begged, “I would desire nothing more,” then he fell silent and waited.
Hyacinthus was frozen and wide-eyed with the delight of someone who has finally found everything he needs to keep him satisfied. The warm spring breeze picked up around them, ruffling the boy’s light hair and rippling Apollo’s silken locks. It smelled of green grass and flowers. The boy licked his lips, and his gaze finally flickered away to the lyre in the god’s lap.
“Will you teach me to play that?” He asked, and met the god’s eyes again with a wide grin. Overcome with triumph and delight, Apollo gave him an impossibly wide and bright grin in return, wondering drunkenly if he ought to have been the god of love.
On Olympus, some time later, the real goddess of love was slumped in her seat and playing footsie with Ares under a lavishly decorated dining table. The ornate table was as long as a whale’s back, laden with lush bouquets of flower arrangements, pearls, jewels, and other bright and beautiful things surrounding urns of nectar and wine, and plates of ambrosia.
Around Aphrodite sat the other gods of the pantheon, and at the head of the table with his brother Poseidon by his side, sat Zeus Chronides himself. The king of the sky seemed to hesitate in the act of bringing a goblet to his lips, and scanned the rest of the table with a frown. “Is there someone missing?” He asked. By his side, the god of the ocean smirked, “brother,” he said, “after all these eons have you finally begun to notice our brother, the Lord of the Underworlds’ absence?”
Zeus shook his head, furrowing a brow in genuine confusion as he silently counted off each of his children and relatives at the table (there was his daughter Athena, his brother Poseidon, his wife Hera, his son Hephestaus…). It took a few more moments for him to come to his realization.
“Where is my son Apollo?” He wondered. Then he called across the table, “Artemis, where is your brother?”
Artemis laughed and responded, “he has taken up with another mortal lover.” She shook her head in mock disappointment, “I don’t think we shall be seeing him on Olympus again while the boy is still alive and tolerant of his presence.”
Zeus grunted in annoyed dismissal and returned disinterestedly to his meal, but Aphrodite sat up straight, abandoning her and Ares’ game of footsie. “Ah yes,” she sighed, resting her delicate chin on her hand.
“Hyacinthus is such a dream.” A nonexistent breeze seemed to ripple her hair dramatically as she spoke. “A love between a proud god and a mortal boy, how romantic.” She gazed solemnly at nothing, her eyes unfocused. “Those romances always end in tragedy,” she added, though she didn’t seem particularly let down by the prospect.
“Apollo will make you regret it if you interfere,” Artemis warned. Her words were not protective, she was merely stating a fact. Aphrodite seemed to waken from her trance. “I know,” she said, while sharing a beguiling smile with Ares across the table, “but I do hope it ends in tragedy.”
Over the course of that long, seemingly unending spring, Apollo discovered human pleasures, remaining in his human form both day and night, eating mortal food and sleeping in a humble yet heavenly bed.
In the past, the god’s presence had always been spread across the land, making itself known in many places at once. In one particular moment, a sliver of his being might have lounged on Olympus drinking nectar while another part summoned a muse to a blind poet, another inventing a new method of making music, while yet another attempted to seduce a beautiful forest nymph. Now, all of his consciousness remained bound in one place, save for the small necessary piece of him that guided the sun safely across the sky each day. It was all the better, to have all of his attention focused on his lover and their simple life.
Hyacinthus would lead the god through the woods and across the sides of mountains, they ventured far and wide together. The boy became utterly fearless with the reassurance of the power of the god beside him. When the mortal had training or duties to attend to, Apollo, who was superior in skill with the bow, would hunt for them and bring the finest game home for their dinner.
They would each take turns telling one another tales at night, while the other listened with rapt attention, wide-eyed and awed by the other. They would engage in sport with one another, both being very proud and eager to prove his abilities, racing one another on foot and on horseback, testing who could climb a tree faster or throw a javelin farther. Yet neither one minded losing to the other, and they each delighted in witnessing the skill and capability of the other.
The god began to harbor thoughts of asking his father to make Hyacinthus immortal, as he had done for his mother Leto. However, as lovely as the mortal was, he was still young, and Apollo was certain that he had yet to become even more lovely with age. Therefore, he would wait until he felt the time was right, certain that the life-lusting boy would agree when the time came for him to ask.
Consumed by his devoted passion, and drunk as he was on his own contentedness, the haunting presence of the West Wind went unnoticed by Apollo. Had he not been so blind in his human form, he might have sensed another deity’s presence in that breeze which smells halfway between cold rainstorm and warm spring blooms. He might have noticed the way the wind always ruffled posessively through Hyacinthus’ hair that spring, sometimes pressing his tunic close to his skin, and always picked up, buffetting the long grasses in delight when the boy sprinted through them laughing and free. The West Wind was named Zephyrus, and he had jealously loved the boy, who was the human embodiment of the coming of spring, for years. He suffered in silence, watching Apollo steal all of the boy’s attention and love, helplessly wishing to take that which the far more powerful god had claimed for his own.
It was a warm afternoon towards the end of spring, and Zephyrus’ role would soon be taken over by his brother Notus who reigned in the summer months. He watched, disconsolate and livid, while the companions threw a discus in a grassy field. First one would throw, and the other would try and catch it, then they would switch places. When Hyacinthus finally caught the discus Apollo had thrown, he gave a shout of triumph, leaping excitedly into the air.
“Now, he said,” planting his feet, “I will test how far I can throw it.”
With his legs spread in a wide stance, he wound up in one direction to gain momentum, then pivoted to the opposite direction with his lean, muscular arms thrown out. Once, twice, he spun around, and then released the discus from his hand and watched it soar into the sky across the entire length of the field, and come to land on the other side. Apollo immediately sprinted across the field to retrieve it, and returned, panting, to a very smug Hyacinthus. “It must be difficult to keep up with me in your old age,” he said, “not even a god can throw as far as I can.”
Apollo gripped the boy’s shoulder and smirked, the golden locks in his face darkened to a honey color with his sweat. “Such hubris my love,” he teased, “I will teach you not to contend with the gods.” He then stepped away, expression growing serious in concentration, planting his feet as Hyacinthus had done. He prepared and pivoted the same way, and spun thrice through the air, his feet leaving the ground as he threw with all of his human, and just a touch of his divine strength.
Hyacinthus immediately took off running after it like a dog after a wounded bird.
Apollo stayed in place, bringing up a hand to shade his eyes and watch the discus recede into a speck in the sky, begin to descend, and disappear from sight. The air around him grew strangely empty and his smile faded.
Zephyrus acted impulsively in his jealous wrath, cold and detached as any of the elements. He lashed out with a harsh gust of wind, and blew the discus abruptly out of the sky and drove it directly into the side of Hyacinthus’ head.
From where he stood in his human form, Apollo could not hear the cracking open of his skull or the final gasp of his breath. He saw the boy suddenly crumple to the ground in the distance and instantly sprang into flight towards him. As he ran, he heard, with his immortal senses, the snipping of a string of fate. It made his feet stumble, and he almost fell, his vision growing too blurry to see.
By the time he knelt over the boy’s limp figure, he knew the body was already empty and the death, caused by his own hand, was irrevocable.
The sun faltered in it’s path and darkened, throwing the earth into shadow as though a cloud had covered it.
Apollo held the body close and they both shook together with his sobs, his form beginning to glow with light as his human shape faded away like dust brushed off of gold. His tears fell into the boy’s hair, mingling with the blood. He longed desperately for the escape of true mortality, in that moment, he no longer wanted anything to do with life.
Swallowed up by greedy despair, Apollo hardly noticed when the body disappeared, and he was left clutching at lush green earth.
When he did become conscious of the absence, he drew a shocked breath and lifted his face, wiping the tears from his eyes in order to see. He found himself suddenly surrounded by crimson, purple, and snow-white flowers. Their colors were pure and vibrant and they each had many, many small blooms per stalk. The flowers grew thick and luscious all around him, their blooms brushing and caressing his skin, and seemed to embrace him. More of these novel flowers grew scattered around the whole field, where there had been only grass before.
A youthful maiden who wore a pink gown and petals in her auburn hair appeared before him.
“How lovely,” she said softly, her eyes shining. Apollo recognized Persephone, the fair goddess of Springtime.
She knelt down in front of him and gently wiped the tears from his eyes. “He cannot die because you were a part of him,” she told him, “every year these flowers will bloom, and you will sense him near you.”
Some of the sunlight had returned when the flowers appeared, and the air was warm again in the late, orange hour before sunset. Apollo fell into Persephone’s arms and there she comforted him.
Apollo returned to Olympus, pained and withdrawn from grief for some time, but quietly performed his godly duties. He himself composed no verses or lyrics for the loss of Hyacinthus, only for the memory of his love.
He made sure that from then on, the story of the boy’s death and rebirth was remembered, and humans would always see lovely hyacinth flowers and be reminded of him.
After cold, deathly winters, and after the horrors of war and the trials of remorse, loss, and despair, the hyacinths would always grow and people would remember.