Downfall of the Gods Read Online Free Page A

my—”
    “I know you did.” He scowled at me. “Well? Did you forgive him, like I told you?”
    “Conditionally.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Dad,” I said, “sit down. People are staring.”
    He sat down quickly. “Conditionally,” he said. “What sort of condition?”
    “It’s perfectly fair,” I told him. “Just like in the Covenant. Sometimes, when they’ve been really bad or you don’t believe they’re truly sincere, you make them prove themselves. More to the point,” I went on quickly, “how dare you come checking up on me like this? It’s insulting.”
    A passer-by dropped a two-groschen in Father’s hat. “Bless you, sir, bless you. The ship you thought was lost will come safe to port in two days’ time.” The man gawped at him for a moment, then hurried away. “Charity is good,” Father said, when I raised an eyebrow at him. “It enriches the giver as well as the receiver. We ought to encourage it. And I wouldn’t need to check up on you if you did as you’re told. What condition?”
    N OW , THEN . A BOUT me.
    I was born—Sorry, I’ll have to be careful here. Wars have been fought and men have been burnt alive over differences in nuance in accounts of how and when I was born. For obvious reasons, I’m reluctant to endorse any one version as against the others. It’s awkward. I love talking about myself, but one has a responsibility to the weak-minded and the faithful.
    I live at home. Not all of us do. My uncle Thaumastus lives at the bottom of the sea. Likewise my aunt Feralia, who hardly ever leaves her tastefully appointed palace in the Underworld. They claim they have to be on site at all times for the proper performance of their duties. I don’t believe them. I think they saw an excuse to get away from the rest of us, and grabbed it with both hands. I can make no such claim. Love, laughter and joy are everywhere, as Father constantly reminds me, and home is centrally located, in easy reach of all civilised nations. I have a room of my own, if you can call it that, but we’ve never been great ones for knocking on doors in our family, so I might as well sleep in the Great Hall for all the privacy I can expect. I own the clothes I stand up in, when I wear a body. That’s all. What does a god want with possessions, Father’s always saying. He’s quite right, of course; though that doesn’t stop him hoarding all sorts of junk in the treasury of his temple at Blachernae. He thinks we don’t know about that. The idiot.
    Ah well. Naked I came into the world, and what’s the use of owning things when you’re bound to outlast them? If I had a diamond necklace, contact with my soft white breast would wear the stones away in no time. Anyway, what good are things? No attire or ornament could possibly make me any more beautiful than I am already. I do no work, so I need no tools. Nothing in the world, not even being thrown off the ramparts of heaven and digging a mile-wide impact crater, could conceivably harm me, so armour and weapons would be pointless. Cutlery and tableware; we eat with our fingers in our family. We need nothing, have no use for anything. Therefore, we have nothing. Lucky us.
    Correction; we do have something. We have each other.
    Lucky, lucky us.
    “I WON ’ T DO it,” Pol said. “Absolutely and definitely not.
    No. No way.”
    I smiled at him. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
    “You’re mad,” he said. “Anyway, Dad’ll never agree.” “Actually—”
    He stared at me. “You’re joking.”
    “He thinks it’s a splendid idea,” he said.
    “But he can’t. It’s—it’s wrong .”
    “Define wrong . I was always brought up to believe it
    means contrary to the will of the gods. Therefore—” “It’s wrong,” he repeated. “It’s one of the things we don’t do. You know that.”
    I widened the smile. Not for nothing was I appointed Goddess of Charm in the last reshuffle. “Yes, but it’s not us doing it, is it? That’s