Pan

As a god, there were many things I feared. Pain, losing the faith of my believers, eternal imprisonment, and meeting a force stronger than me and the other gods. But one thing I was sure I would never have to fear was death.

I’ve heard of aging and dying gods, but the Greek pantheon was supposed to be forever immortal. Even our enemies- the Titans- could not die, so for them we had to design prisons and tortures they could never escape. But for the first time in all of our history, one of our own had fallen. My own son Pan, god of the wild, was dead.

None of us could be sure how it happened. Some of us suspected that the birth of Jesus Christ, the demigod child of the mortal Mary and the God of the Jewish faith, had something to do with my son’s apparent death. I wanted to visit Mary, perhaps in the form of an angel, to steal her child to see if he was responsible, but Zeus forbade me from doing it. 

Zeus was the most powerful of the Olympians, but I could have sworn I saw a glint of fear in my father’s eye when he heard my plan. Something about the baby Jesus and his father scared him enough to avoid them, even if that meant forgiving them of an unforgivable crime. I wanted to ignore his order and charge with the other gods, but I knew it would be foolish to do so. None of us had proof that Jesus or his father was responsible, so killing the baby would have made us the transgressors, and might lead to a war we couldn’t win.

As I walked with the others and saw Heracles lift my son’s casket over his head, I doubted that Pan could be returned to life. One of my roles is as the guide to the afterlife, so when a mortal dies, I am the one to bring them to the Underworld. There was nothing of Pan for me to transport to the Underworld, so at first I thought my son could still be alive.

I told the other Olympians that this “death” was just a trick of my son’s, a joke that had gone too far. Just like his father, I said, forcing myself to smile. Always looking for a way to fool others for his amusement! 

The gods didn’t respond, but I saw their sympathetic faces and knew that we were all thinking the same thing. Maybe after gods die, there isn’t a place for them to go to, and that’s why Pan was forever lost to me. We all thought it, but for my sake no one vocalized their thoughts. 

We walked up the mountain, and I kept glancing at my son’s casket. It was crafted by the blacksmith Hephaestus himself, and was beautifully made. Pan’s casket was decorated with pictures of his life. I saw myself and his pregnant mother at the bottom of a mountain, my hand firmly holding hers as she went into labor. I saw the horror on his mother’s face when she glimpsed into the bundle she held, and was met with the wild and ugly face of our child. I saw her run away, screaming in terror, while I held up my son, a big smile on both of our faces. Pan was hideous, but his unconventional appearance brought me great joy, and now that joy was immortalized on his casket.

There were other scenes of his life on the casket, but my focus was only on the ones of his birth. When I held Pan, I thought I had finally found a match for my mischief, someone who would pull tricks on the other gods with me for an eternity. But now we were nearing the cave, and ready to leave his body there to rest forever.

I entered the cave’s entrance and saw my mother waiting for us. I had originally wanted Pan’s mother to give birth inside of this cave, like my mother had, but little Pan was too impatient to wait for us to reach the cave. He came out of the world before he could meet his grandmother, and due to my eagerness to show him to the other gods, I had run off to Olympus. 

This was the first time I had stepped into the cave and seen my mother since childhood. She looked much smaller than I had remembered her. As a child, I always saw her as a colossal, possessing all of the knowledge there was to possess. She was my only source of the outside world, and she would entertain me with stories of the gods that I would one day join when I reached adulthood. Like Pan, I was impatient as a child and snuck out one day to go to Olympus and I haven’t been back since.

When I looked at my mother, I felt guilt for not visiting her after all of this time. I kept telling myself I would go to the cave and tell her the tales of everything I had done in return for her stories, but there was always something else to distract. A new game, a new threat, a new opportunity. But what did it matter? We were immortal, I could visit her after thousands of years if I wished to. Staring at Pan’s casket made me wonder if that was true.

My mother walked towards me and uttered no words. She didn’t seem hurt or glad to see me, just solemn about why we were all here. She nodded to me and pointed at the back of the cave. Heracles carried Pan’s casket to where she pointed and laid it in on the ground, and the funeral began.

The gods all took turns saying something nice about Pan, usually about his sense of humor or his insatiable lust for life. Even the usually silent Hades had something to say, and talked about what a tragedy Pan’s death was. His words unnerved me the most. What were we doing? Pretending to be mortals, like we had an afterlife we would go to after our demises. Hades was the god of the Underworld, and even he had no clue where Pan was, if he was anywhere at all. 

After Hades, it was my turn to go to the front and speak. I looked at the crowd of gods in front of me and couldn’t find anything to say. Usually my head was bursting with witty replies or clever sentences, but my tongue was like stone. If I opened my mouth, I thought only dust and sand would come out.

“Pan was my son,” I said hesitantly. “He was-”

A knocking from behind me interrupted my speech. I turned around and saw Pan’s casket shake from each knock. I heard murmurs behind me, and once the cloud of grief and fear left, I yelled triumphantly.

“You see?” I said, beaming and pointing at his casket. “What did I tell you? We can’t die, Pan was just playing a trick on us!” I cupped my hands over my mouth and shouted, “Come on out, Son! You did it, you fooled us all!”

The casket’s lid flew towards the top of the cave and hit the ceiling, falling back into the ground and creating a large thud. Immediately I saw the horns on top of my son’s head poke out of the casket, and then his whole body rise. He leaped with his powerful furry legs and landed on his hooves. He saw the crowd, and smiled mischievously like he always did. But something was wrong.

His eyes were altered and somehow made him seem like an entirely different being. Pan didn’t watch us like we were the gods he had known his entire life, he looked at us like a god who had seen a woman he wanted to bed and would bed, even if it was against her will. 

“Hermes,” my mother said, “I don’t think that’s Pan.”

“That’s impossible,” I said, my voice thick with denial. “That casket was made by Hephaestus, nothing could have broken into it!” 

But even as I said this, I was also convinced that the thing that stood in front of us wasn’t my son.

Apollo and Artemis were the first to act. They summoned their bows- gold and silver respectively- out of thin air and nocked their arrows, aiming it at the thing posing as Pan. They shot at it, but something went wrong. Right before they let their arrows go, “Pan” snapped his fingers and caused the two archers to yelp in pain. As a result, both their arrows missed and they fell to the ground.

The handsome Apollo lost his brown tan and became pale as a corpse. His muscles faded and the god was as fragile as glass, ready to shatter at any second. Artemis wasn’t faring any better. Her stomach shrunk and she became extremely malnourished, her entire body whitered and aged past recognition. 

All of us watched their transformation in horror and held our breaths for what would happen next. “Pan” barely took a second glance at his work. A completely alien voice came out of his body. “Now that I’ve got your attention, let me introduce myself.”

“What did you do to my son?” I asked. “Where is he?”

“Don’t worry, Hermes, you’re looking at him right now. You Greek gods can’t die, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be conquered. I’ve taken over your son’s body, and for now on you’ll be mine to command.”

Zeus, our king, was angered by the thing’s audacity. “You dare,” he said, “to order us around!”

The thing did not shake in fear like so many others would have done. “You’ve seen what I did to Apollo and Artemis, Zeus. What chance do you have against me?”

“I am the king of the Olympus! I will not be spoken to this way!” He reached out his hand, and a flash of light sparked the entire cave. In his hand was a bolt of electricity, Zeus’s signature weapon. The same weapon that could vaporize mountains.

But witnessing this did not scare “Pan.” “Tell me, Zeus,” he said mockingly, “if you can’t even kill Jesus, a baby, what chance do you have against me?”

The gods gasped in surprise. Apparently the birth of Christ did have something to do with Pan, but none of us was sure exactly what. Zeus must have understood more than us because once “Pan” mentioned the demigod, he dismissed his bolt of lightning and stood empty-handed. 

“Good choice.” Taking his attention away from Zeus, “Pan” addressed all of us. “As your new leader, I only ask you to do what you already excel at: making the lives of humans miserable.”

We all stared at him questioningly.

“Don’t act so innocent,” he spat, “you know what I’m talking about. All I ask is you continue your rapes, murders, anything you can think of to punish the humans for daring to think that they deserve anything good from this world!”

The gods were silent. “Pan” seemed to take this as acceptance and walked towards the entrance to leave. 

“Wait,” I called out.

He turned to face me.

“Who are you? Who are you really?”

Smiling devilishly, it said, “Call me Lucifer.”