An Unreturnable Gift

I really thought my luck was in when this gorgeous woman strode along the beach one sunny afternoon and made a beeline for me. If only I had known then what I know now.

It seemed that she was as taken by me as I was with her – it was a case of mutual fancying right from the off. I said all the usual stupid stuff when you want to make waves with a beautiful woman, and she didn’t tell me to get lost, so things just progressed from there.

She said that her name was Dawn. There was something vaguely familiar about her and I asked if there was any chance that I had seen her before.

“Many times”, she said, “but only in the early mornings before now”. Not surprisingly, at the time I had no idea what she meant by this, but I was to learn very soon.

We made love on the sand and I suggested that she stay over at my place for a night of passion. “I can’t do that”, she said. “I have a day job that means a really early start for me.”

“A day job?” I asked

It was after that that things started to get seriously weird.

“It’s the most important day job there could possibly be”, she said. “You see, when I say my name is Dawn, what I really mean is that is not so much my name as my job title.”

“Uh?”

“My actual name is Eos. I’m the Goddess of the Dawn. It’s my job to open the portal of the Sun Palace so that Apollo can drive the chariot across the sky that contains my brother Helios, the Sun God. Just before that happens I paint the sky with the rosy colours that everyone on Earth thinks are so beautiful. Every morning when you haven’t overslept you have seen me at work.”

This news did not make me desire her any the less, so when she made her offer to me to join her in the Sun Palace so that I could always be next to her I didn’t hesitate, fool that I was.

Those first few months together as husband and wife were wonderful beyond measure. We were deeply in love and never apart. We saw no reason why anything should ever change.

One day, Eos said that she wanted to arrange a very special gift for me, but this meant she had to leave me behind while she went somewhere that I was not allowed to go. I was not happy about this, but she insisted that it would be well worth the wait.

When she returned she announced that she had been to see Zeus, the Chief God, and he had agreed to her request that I should become an immortal. Eos had feared that the day would eventually come when I would die and she would be left alone once more, but now that was not going to happen. We would go on as we were, being blissfully happy for all eternity.

This was the best news I could ever have hoped for. We celebrated as only a goddess and a newly anointed immortal can do, one result being that Eos was soon pregnant with the first of our two sons.

The bliss continued for several more years, until one day I saw a worried expression cross my beloved’s brow. I could tell that she was much less happy than I had ever seen her before, and this caused us the first anxiety we had known as a couple.

Her mood darkened as the weeks went by, until the day came when she said that she was going to have to make another appointment to visit Zeus on Mount Olympus. On her return I could not believe just how concerned she looked. She sat me down and gave me some terrible news.

“As you know”, she said, “Zeus granted you the gift of immortality, but as the years have passed by I have noticed changes in you that scare me stiff. The fact is – you are getting older.”

“Well, of course I am”, I said. “Everyone gets older”.

“I don’t!” she said. “Helios doesn’t, Apollo doesn’t – none of the immortals ever ages by a day. We stay in tip-top perfect condition for the whole of our never-ending lives. I had always assumed that the same would apply to you.”

“OK”, I said, “so I’ll go grey and lose my hair. What’s the problem?”

“But it’s not just that!” she said. “You know exactly what happens to mortal humans as they get older and older – their faculties fade one by one as their bodies get worn out, and eventually they die. But what happens if your body wears out but you don’t die?”

“Why did you go to see Zeus?” I asked.

“I went to ask him to take back the gift of your immortality”, she said. “He refused. In fact, he said it was impossible – once a god makes a gift to a mortal it can never be retracted.”

“Well”, I said, “bully for him. I have absolutely no wish to die.”

I could not have said a more foolish thing. As the years rolled on the true horror of my situation eventually struck me and I came to realize that the expression ‘a merciful release’ had a huge amount of truth behind it.

That second visit to Zeus was a long time ago, and the ravages of the years since then have taken a terrible toll, as I am now twice as old as the oldest person I have ever known. I can just about see to write, but only just, and it takes me such an effort to move the pen across the paper that I do not think I will ever write anything again. I can hardly hear either, and my other senses are fading fast. My body is racked with pain from all the organs that no longer function, not to mention the fact that my few remaining teeth are rotten and never cease to ache.

Eos is as young and beautiful as ever, but it is clear that I am now utterly repulsive to her and she will come no closer to me than is absolutely necessary. My voice is a pitiful rasping wheeze, so she does sometimes have to approach to within a foot or so in order to catch my words.

My greatest wish now is that I lose my mind so that I cease to be aware of what or who I am. Can you imagine being blind, deaf and dumb, and constantly racked with pain, with no hope of relief for all eternity? Being a vegetable must be a sort of death, and it is the best hope I have. But that would not help Eos much, would it? An eternally beautiful goddess casting her radiance across the morning sky, and having to care for a husband who can never appreciate her and whose very appearance sickens her?

Zeus has come up with another bright idea, according to Eos. He reckons that my voice is more like that of an insect than a human, so he is willing to solve the problem by turning me into one – a grasshopper to be exact. In his warped mind it would not take much to turn my parched, brown, withered skin into that of a grasshopper, and the sounds I made would not be far removed from what I produce now.

Zeus thinks it’s all an enormous joke. Apparently he told Eos that my immortality meant that I could never croak, so I might as well chirrup for eternity instead.

I gather that he laughed long and loud at his little witticism. Strange to tell, Eos and I did not.