Old Tricks

They know what it is. They can’t ignore it in their minds, and the corner of every eye is staring at it, a golden apple sitting at the very center of the long table in the great hall. They know what it represents, and what it is here for. But they can ignore it with their bodies.

The great men in fur tunics laugh as they hoist tall horns of mead, the same color as the apple. They point to their axes and swords that sit against the walls and boast of what they will do should they find the trickster. The old men smile ruefully as they watch, thinking that the tricks of some gods are always the same. The women … old and young, beautiful and plain, clever and wise or simple and happy … for whom the evil of this trick is meant to be most infectious, promise themselves that they are better than this. It is a promise they have often made, and often broken, but not this time, they say. Not this time. This is too cheap, too easy to see for what it is.

We will be better.

It is amazing, they tell themselves when the feasting is done and the heads of even the stoutest men are dizzy and the queen of the realm mutters half-sleeping ribald jokes about the elves that live below them on the great tree … it is amazing, they tell themselves … that the Greeks ever fell for it. A Golden apple at a feast with the words “To the Fairest” inscribed on its skin.

The Greeks! The most brilliant of Gods, the wisest of civilizations, the most advanced technology … all brought to ruin by such a scheme. How could they not know better?

The one-eyed king stands. Taps his great spear on the ground. The men turn to look at him, and the ravens on his shoulders. It is because, the one-eyed king says, we know that the end of the world is coming. That is why we laugh at this trick. The Greeks did not know this, they believed themselves immortal, and at the center of all things, and so they waged total war over nothing but vanity, thinking there were no consequences.

But we, the king says, we know that the dragons are coming. We know that the ground will tremble when the dead come, and that the sun and moon are chased by wolves. This is our difference, this is why we will leave the great hall tonight as we have every night, with only the violence that matters to show for our revelry. With only longstanding grudges held, and our bellies full.

“The Olympians,” he said, his one eye unblinking, “are fools.”

He picked up the apple, and tossed it into the fire, and long when the night was done it lay there, and it lays there still.

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Benjamin’s collection of short fiction “A Guide to Bars and Nightlife in the Sacred City” is available.

“Benjamin Wachs reveals a distinctive and highly personal flair for storytelling that will engage the reader’s total and rapt attention throughout.” — The Midwest Book Review