We’re thrilled to reveal the cover of Fit for the Gods: Greek Mythology Reimagined, edited by Jenn Northington and S. Zainab Williams.
Featuring stories by a bestselling, cross-genre assortment of some of the most exciting writers working today, Fit for the Gods is an anthology of gender-bent, queered, race-bent, and inclusive retellings from the enchanting and eternally popular world of Greek myth—available August 1st from Vintage. Check out the cover below, and read S. Zainab Williams’ “Dion and the Maenads”.
Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, and the other denizens of Mount Olympus feel almost as present and larger than life today as they did when they were worshipped as gods. Humanity has been telling and retelling stories about the characters from Greek and Roman myth for centuries—heck, the Romans liked the Hellenic originals so much, they remade them faster than Marvel remakes Spider-Man movies. And from Virgil’s Aeneid to Xena: Warrior Princess to Percy Jackson to The Song of Achilles, the obsession has never waned.
Yet Fit for the Gods shows how these stories still have a power of metamorphosis that would impress Ovid. Here you’ll find Atalanta’s wild hunt reimagined as a daring space battle; a sex-swapped take on Theseus and the Minotaur; a story that explores the character of Tiresias with a complex, fascinating, modern understanding of gender; a chilling feminist takedown of Apollo from Daphne’s POV; and the entire Greek pantheon reimagined as dangerously clever, bored AIs.
Brave, bold, and groundbreaking, the stories in Fit for the Gods will be like ambrosia for those craving fresh interpretations of their favorite myths, and give long-time fans a chance to finally see themselves in these beloved legends.
Featuring stories by: Marika Bailey • Alyssa Cole • Zoraida Córdova • Maya Deane • Sarah Gailey • Zeyn Joukhadar • Mia P. Manansala • Juliana Spink Mills • Susan Purr • Taylor Rae • Jude Reali • Suleikha Snyder • Valerie Valdes • S. Zainab Williams • Wen Wen Yang
Buy the Book
Fit for the Gods
Jenn Northington is the co-editor of the Locus Award-nominated anthology Sword Stone Table, a former bookseller, and a current reviewer, podcaster, and editor with Riot New Media Group.
S. Zainab Williams is a writer, editor, and illustrator based in Asheville, NC. A podcaster and director of content for Book Riot, and a member of PEN America’s Literary Awards Committee, she spends most of her days thinking about how to make the world of books and reading more inclusive and progressive.
DION AND THE MAENADS
S. Zainab Williams
Dion blinked thick tears out of her eyes and scanned the wreckage of beer cans, red cups, oily paper plates, and sweaty bodies. It had been exactly twenty-four hours since the gods suspended her and the Maenads from entering the halls of Olympus.
In a nearish bathroom somewhere down the main hallway of the sorority house, Mai was making a Pizza Bros. sacrifice to the porcelain god. Dion recognized her telltale gurgle. If the pantheon could see them now.
Zeus! That undying monster. That absolute predator. Boy, would he be furious. Or maybe he’d be proud. There was only one thing you could predict about him, gods save the girls.
Damn Zeus, thought Dion. And damn his complicit entourage that chooses silence over doing the right thing. As usual.
Only the Maenads had come through and backed her up in that hallowed wasteland. Just because her predecessors, countless incarnations of Dionysus the First, had played respectability politics didn’t mean she had to. Wasn’t she the best of the demigods so far? Didn’t they want a fresh perspective? Hadn’t they invited her to Olympus to contribute this very thing?
Dion had spent too much of her youth feeling guilty for slinking back to the mortal world to avoid acknowledging the harm done to the god-king’s victims. But it was the bravery of mortal women that had forced her back to face the truth and all the gods at last.
Sinking into the cracks of someone’s musty couch, Dion hugged her boxed wine close, ready to wallow in red fantasies, when her best friend stumbled into the living room and kicked up the settling gloom. Mai wiped her stained lips with the sleeve of her cardigan. She looked like a baby chick in yellow cashmere, and the memory of their first thrift store haul when they were teenagers (some twenty years ago, by Geras!) brought Dion some rueful cheer.
“Don’t know how many times I have to tell you not to mix your wine and your spirits,” said Dion.
“May is panting under the kitchen table, and Mei can hardly lift her head,” Mai croaked. “Make us better already.”
Dion wagged a finger at her bestie. “We have to eat what we serve. It’s important, Mai.”
“I ate it and I threw it up. Make with the health.”
Dion sighed change into the air—a bit of blessing almost as good as a steaming bowl of phở—and she and Mai were soon joined by May and Mei. The three of them looked ruffled but alert.
When the Maenads stood side by side, you couldn’t help but assume they were related, although they looked nothing alike. Mai, short and sturdy with bleached white hair, was Japanese and Korean and spoke with the singsong lilt of a Valley girl. May was a tall Afro-Latina—Puerto Rican, but best not ask her to speak Spanish—and a retired rivethead whose reverence for Trent Reznor only occasionally inspired jealousy in Dion. Chinese Malay Mei, with their carefully formed curls and dimples, never failed to remind Dion of Wizard of Oz–era Judy Garland. Mei looked like they only ever listened to music their parents would approve of. Everyone trusted them, and that’s what made Mei especially dangerous. They were, all three of them, dangerous.
The Maenads draped over one another. Not physically—not always—but empathetically, their moods and sentiments overlapping and braiding. They had a persistent read on one another, and they could call upon this gift to navigate and harangue and support one another. Dion had once longed to be a member of the Maenads. While she was similar in many ways, including, but not limited to, being completely incapable of fitting neatly into a box, and while she’d quickly claimed her place as know-it-all older sister (by mere months), her godhood always held her slightly apart. In fact, because she still hadn’t found her groove as a god, separate was her current and, as far as she could tell, eternal status.
Zeus had swooped into her life to tell her she was Dionysus incarnate twenty-two whole years ago, and it still felt new. While Dion rarely thought about her forbearer, she often pined for Ariadne, abandoned on the abrasive shore of Naxos. Call it what you will—Dionysus’s phantom heart still beating for his lost love, perhaps—but Dion empathized with her, the Cretan princess lifted to a place among the stars, imprisoned in the heights of cold, dark space.
The Maenads had saved her from an existential crisis. They’d met and become fast friends in a Gothic Lolita LiveJournal community. She had been drawn to their loyalty, and they, to her chaos. She had offered them eternal shelter in her temple as her BFFs, and they had accepted.
Now here they were, loitering in a sorority house after their traditional break-out-of-a-bad-mood bender (a warm-up, really), freshly and forever thirty-six. Thirty-six was the agreed-upon Goldilocks age when you got serious, but not too serious; when you could still be a hot mess. Hot mess was their speed—but the time for serious business had arrived. Dion heaved herself off the couch and stood before her fellow elder millennials, gripping the handle of her boxed wine like the shaft of a scepter.
“If the Olds of Olympus think they can send us to our rooms and give Father a pass, they’re wrong,” Dion announced. “We’re going on the bender of all benders. We’re going to expose this whole charade, and we’re going to make them show up.”
The Maenads each grabbed a red cup from the ruins of the coffee table. Dion filled them to the brim with Merlot, and the Maenads raised their cups to the sky.
“This one’s for the gods,” said Dion. She threw back her head, positioned the spout, and let the wine flow.
Paper crinkled and slapped the air as tourists fanned themselves with glossy winery maps highlighting the Willamette Valley’s finest. Summer had decided to peak unreasonably early, and the bus’s air-conditioning had died, along with everyone’s sense of humor. Only the driver laughed at his jokes about tree stumps and filberts.
Dion registered muttered complaints. This was Portland’s cheapest wine tasting tour—what had these people expected? She had not only expected the busted bus but its passengers as well: broods of junior-level professionals in their late twenties and early thirties, and one thrifty family visiting their drinking-age daughter. Dion eyed the dad’s lime-green fanny pack.
“Fuck is that stink?” May’s gravelly voiced rumbled from the neighboring seat.
Dion felt passing pity for May, who severely lacked an appreciation for fake nacho cheese dust. She stuck her head around the tall seat back in front of her.
“Pass the bag,” said Dion.
Mei sucked gold dust off their fingertips before handing over the chips. May sneered as Dion crunched.
“There’s beef jerky,” said Dion.
“Not interested.”
“Two drinks in and you’ll be hunting down stale oyster crackers—you know it, I know it, we all know it,” said Dion.
Back when they were teens, May used to tell the rest of them she was hypoglycemic when she got irritable, but over time Dion came to understand that her friend didn’t enjoy the offerings of mall food courts or any fast food and thought hypoglycemia and hanger were synonymous.
“I’d kill for a big, fat, bloody steak,” May said to no one in particular. “Marbled and buttery and dripping.”
Mai popped up in the seat next to Mei’s to stare down at Dion and May.
“Who’s our target?” She didn’t even attempt to keep her voice down. Didn’t matter, absorbed as everyone was in their own suffering and thirst.
“Everyone is our target,” Dion said through a mouthful of chips. “Everyone on this bus and every boozehound we meet along the way. No stuffy types and”—Dion graced May with an archly malevolent smile—“no insufferable cynics, please. We need wonder, belief, and, above all, inebriation. Skip anyone using the wine spittoon.”
“Or anyone drinking dessert wine,” Mai said with a gag.
Mei crossed their arms. “Don’t be a jerk, Mai,” they said.
“Oh shit, I totally forgot you like that stuff,” said Mai. Mai absolutely knew they liked that stuff.
“”ere’s nothing wrong with a good port,” Dion said in hopes her expertise would nip the argument in the bud, rare as it was for expertise to win a battle against personal opinion.
“Sure, sure, a good port, a good pineapple wine—what’s the diff anyway?” asked Mai.
Mei threw their arms above their head. “I was drunk, and it tasted good in the moment!”
“Oh my god, you two have zero chill,” said May, fingers splayed at attention on both sides of her head, looking not entirely unlike a horse with funky blinders when she stretched her neck and rolled her eyes.
“Who needs chill when you’ve got dance moves like these?” With an open-mouthed smile, Mai proceeded to perform a tragic cross between the sprinkler and the Carlton.
“Stop antagonizing, Mai,” Dion chastised, but the Maenad was rewarded with applause from the less wilted passengers.
May practically disappeared into her seat, while Dion shook her head and stuffed the bag of chips into a tote bag with Wine Aunt printed in a looping red font across cream canvas. The bus couldn’t have pulled up to their first stop sooner.
“Everyone ready?” Dion asked the Maenads. They looked excited. Maybe too excited? Oh well. By Dion’s estimation they were overdue for some mischief.
They’d all thought they were in for a new adventure when they were promoted and allowed to cross Olympus’s threshold years ago, the old guard having need of new blood—younger, more diverse iterations who might sit at the table and help them solve the impossible problem of how to reach a modern, less familiar generation. Dion and the Maenads hadn’t been the only recruits. There were Pan and the Nymphs, for instance. But that Gen Z cohort eternally dithered between self-righteousness and abstractedness. Dion had tried to hang with them, but she was sure they fashioned new lingo out of thin air for the sole purpose of confusing her. Kids excited about decoder rings. Dion snorted. And. And! Pan and the Nymphs were practically teetotalers. They’d rejected a glug of Dion’s best (in a customized corked bottle, no less) in favor of CBD gummies purchased down the road. Circus had long ago perished on the doorstep of Olympus.
Unfortunately for Dion and her circus-thirsty friends, they would have to continue to wait for debauchery, which was taking forever to meet them at their first winery of the day. They’d arrived around eleven thirty, and yet everyone insisted on swirling their wine for eons, practicing pranayama with their wineglasses in between noncommittal sips as if the delay might deliver them to a more conservative drinking hour. Dion wanted to slap them. What was the point of brunch if not to give morning drinking the thumbs-up all around?
THese tourists forced Dion and the Maenads to waste time with the sobering banality of a visit to the gift shop. They had to do something to maintain their charade as civilized people. They needed their prospective disciples to like them, or at least be curious, and sloppiness would make them a hard sell.
Things didn’t pick up until their second stop, when the lightweights showed early signs of ditziness. The first bubble to pop was the drinking-age daughter of the thrifty family. Dion clocked the symptoms of the young woman’s escalating buzz right away, and was calculating the expense of bringing a dubiously attached neophyte into the fold, when the lamb’s searching eyes locked on hers. Everyone else had a satisfactory party or had found one to join, while this tipsy saint looked ready to flee Christian summer camp.
“What’re the chances she’s never talked to Black and brown folks?” Mai said, picking up what the tasting room was putting down.
The young woman took her first uneasy steps toward Dion and the Maenads with one strategic glance over her shoulder to make sure her parents were still preoccupied at the counter. Dion overheard the couple squabbling over which of the cheaper wines to buy for someone—a boss, or an in-law, or someone else they felt obligated to consider but didn’t particularly like.
The young woman stood before them, lagging a beat behind an introduction to stare down into her glass in puzzlement. She could’ve sworn she’d had only a drop left. Dion’s hand reached over the pinot noir.
“Hi, I’m Dion,” she said. “And this is Mai, May, and Mei.”
“Are those nicknames?” The young woman giggled. She caught herself and cleared the air with a hand. “Those are very pretty names. I’m Nicole.” Dion forgave her for the moment and shook on it.
Dion and the Maenads watched Nicole’s brow furrow. She’d come to the meeting unprepared, and she tripped over her words as she pushed them out on the fly.
“Have you ever done anything like this before? I mean wine tasting. Here or somewhere else maybe?”
Dion softened her eyes and turned up the brightness of her smile. “A few times. What brings you and your parents here today?”
“Oh.” Nicole barely spared her parents another glance. “I just graduated from college—PSU. They wanted to do something for me while they were out here visiting from Florida. I kind of wanted to go with my friends, but Mom and Dad wanted to check out the Willamette Valley, and my room-mates were busy with their own stuff anyway.”
“Their loss,” Mei said, cocking their head and shrugging their shoulders ever so cutely.
Nicole lit up, and Dion could practically hear her carefully coifed good-girl waves relating to Mei’s shiny, suddenly near-perfect-match hair.
“You’ll find good company in us, if you want it,” Dion said seductively.
“Hey, princess, making friends?” Nicole’s dad appeared out of the crowd and clapped a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. Nicole’s mom stood just behind him like Her Lady of Perpetual Concern. She managed to produce a grimace of encouragement.
While Nicole again searched for her words, her dad regaled them with the story of his daughter’s graduation and a full breakdown of the ceremony, including what they’d eaten for dinner that night. May looked pained throughout the recitation, while Dion recalculated the cost of recruiting Nicole.
“Now let me ask you something,” said Nicole’s dad.
Dion blinked a few times as she surfaced from deep slumber.
“What’s all this?” Nicole’s dad waved a hand in front of Dion’s face.
The Maenads bristled. Nicole stared wide-eyed into the space just beyond Dion’s right ear, while her mom squeak-laughed like someone startled by a loud fart at the museum.
Dion tried to give the man a moment of silence so he could think about his words, but Nicole’s mom was at the ready.
“Tom is Irish, German, and French,” she blurted out. “He’s taken a real interest in learning more about his background, and he’s naturally curious about other multiethnic peoples.”
Tom pushed on, not bothering to acknowledge his wife’s attempt to mitigate.
“I’m sure people have told you you’ve got a real different look,” he said. “What are you?”
Dion nodded knowingly. People sure had told her that. And a follow-up demand to identify herself was the gold standard among such people.
“I am the product of South Asian diaspora and the Atlantic slave trade,” she said. And then she grinned at the man’s pink nose. “But, to you, I am a god.”
Tom snorted. “Is this another identity thing? Jaysus. Nicole here tried to explain that pronoun stuff to us, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of the sci-fi she-shim universe y’all are living in. What’re these kids going to come up with next, Alice?” he asked his wife.
“Oh my god, Dad.” Nicole covered her face with her free hand.
Dion’s nose flared as the thick iron tang of bloodlust radiated from the Maenads. A whisper like chiffon ribbon wound itself around the group as Mei exchanged a thought with Dion, who gave Tom a hard look and recalculated once more. Her smile flicked back on.
“Bet it’s been a minute since anyone invited you to a party, Tom—we’re hosting a little soiree after this wine tasting tour. Free drinks, free hors d’oeuvres. Everything top shelf. We booked a tricked-out barn on a lush winery with beautiful views and an amphitheater. You and your wife—Alice, is it?”
“Alice,” Alice agreed dreamily. Dion knew the woman wasn’t looking at her but at the specter of a gorgeous evening out.
“You and Alice and New Friend Nicole should come on down and continue the celebration,” said Dion.
“Isn’t that nice? You see, Nicole,” Tom said as he rapped his daughter on the shoulder. “You worry too much about saying the wrong thing. Say what you want, and the good eggs will float to the top.”
The arched brow May produced would’ve put Maila Nurmi to shame.
To Dion, Tom added, “But as nice as that all sounds, I’m sure the three of us’ll want to get back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep. Hell, I’m already too tipsy.”
“Mm, the spirit moves in mysterious ways,” Dion drawled.
“Speaking of moving, looks like our group’s about to leave without us. Let’s get to going, girls.”
Dion and the Maenads watched the family leave, Alice pleading “beautiful views,” Nicole crying “just for an hour,” Tom shaking his head. Fumes rolled off his gyrating skull in thick, dark tendrils. They reeked of chardonnay and entitlement. Dion clenched her teeth, Zeus’s holier-than-thou voice echoing in her head. Leave it alone, he’d often warned.
The god of wine took a deep, clearing breath, turning Tom’s fumes into a tempest that whipped around the room. Outside, the wind howled through the vines, and the tipsy tasters squealed and shouted as they fled into the bus, shawls and caps and skirts flying. At the tail end of Dion’s inhale, Tom’s fumes funneled up her nose and disappeared. Dion experienced a second of inebriation with a dangerous chaser of deep insecurity before the sensation blessedly fizzled away. Mei would get theirs tonight. They all would.
The sound of a wineglass shattering on polished wood was music to Dion’s ears. Nobody else paid any mind to the shout of “Party foul!” in the distance. Her audience was rapt.
“And that’s how I fucked with Pentheus,” Dion concluded. She put an arm behind her as she bowed to applause.
“That’s cute and all, but Dionysus you are not,” said some dude dressed like a hopeful applicant to the school of dark academia. “I still have my copy of d’Aulaires’, and you look nothing like him. No offense, but firstly, Dionysus was a guy. Secondly, he was Greek, not Black.”
“Okay, firstly,” said Dion, “that’s not how you pronounce d’Aulaires, and secondly, Greek is not a race. But I can appreciate a fact-finding mission. If it’s proof you want, it’s proof you’ll get.”
A woman swaddled like a boho-chic baby in layers of colorful silk clapped her hands and cried, “I’m game.”
The woman wasn’t part of their group but had shown up at the vineyard where their party bus had stopped for its final tasting with only the desire to treat herself, Dion had learned during her recruitment tour of the room. She was some kind of playwright, she was celebrating the completion of a new play, and she was in search of good times and inspiration.
“Bring on the show,” called the playwright.
Dion had to resist the urge to rub her hands together like a cartoon villain.
“You’ll have to find your way to the after-party for that,” said Mai.
“To the hills, to the hills,” Mei chanted eerily.
“Call your friends and tell them to meet up with you,” May commanded the crowd. “Invite whoever you want as long as they’re not assholes.”
Nicole raised her hand. “Even if we wanted to go, some of us are on tours,” she said as she scanned the room. She needn’t have worried. Tom was too busy staring at a glass of water, unable to hear his own trickling thoughts past the roar of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” on permanent loop in his head, while the task of reminding her husband of the last time they went out on the town (in the late nineties) kept Alice preoccupied. “We don’t have any way to get to the after-party or back home,” Nicole continued.
“Not a problem,” Dion said authoritatively, like the grown woman she was pretending to be. “Tell your drivers you’ll be staying here and leave the rest of your unforgettable night to me and my friends. We’ll pick up you and your crew at dusk.”
“Uh, what?” Dark Academia guffawed. “We can’t tell our drivers to abandon us and hope some random person who thinks she’s a god doesn’t leave us stranded.”
Dion wasn’t taken aback by the young man’s resistance. She’d encountered one or two of him at each of their wine stops. While the Maenads had used their stockpiles of charisma and Dion had wielded her godly power of persuasion to charm so many individuals under the influence, some people were beyond help.
“You’ll just have to take that leap of faith.” Dion shrugged, and as she turned around, she added, “This round’s on me.”
May their cups be full, thought Dion. She practically floated away on the gasps and sighs of her audience.
“Time to bounce,” Dion told the Maenads. They strutted across the tasting room, mission almost accomplished.
“You think we have enough?” asked May.
“Half of the last tasting room were on their phones calling friends,” said Dion. “Same with all the others. We’re good.”
The four of them slid a glance at Tom, who wobbled at the tasting table beside his wife. He looked one part baffled and one part trashed.
“You mean it, Tom? We can go to the party?” Alice asked.
Tom nodded, the wrinkle between his eyebrows deepening as Cyndi spread the gospel between his ears.
“See ya later, Tomcat,” said Dion. The Maenads bared their teeth as they walked out the door.
The gilded sun was preparing to tuck its day-drunk head under a blanket of deep green vines when Dion and the Maenads arrived at the farmhouse. They’d found the place on one of those glamping apps and paid a pretty, fabricated penny for the chance to stay at a working winery and vineyard. In exchange, the owners got a distant but comforting view of four quiet women having a cozy evening on the property and in their empty amphitheater (available at additional cost), no matter what actually happened on that side of the vineyard.
Mai ran off without warning the minute the immortals’ feet touched the sweet, dusty lane. That’s just how Mai was. Dion shook her head at her friend. Then she gathered old vines from a pile ready to be burned and twisted bits of the stuff into crude, boxy shapes. She set them on the ground.
“Go on,” she said, pointing at them. Mei and May took a step back, their ears popping as the crude shapes ballooned into two school bus–size woodie wagons.
“This is some serious Cinderella shit,” May said with a nod of approval.
“Right?” said Dion. “On, O joyful, be fleet,” she said to the wagons. She was waving the vehicles down the lane when Mai reappeared, presenting the hide of a cartoon deer.
“Absolutely not,” said May.
“What in Persy’s underworld is that?” asked Dion.
“I can’t decide if it’s cute or ghastly, but I think I like it,” Mei declared.
“It’s a costume,” Mai exclaimed. “May or Mei can be the ass, and I brought these as a consolation prize for our third.” She brandished a pair of plastic light-up deer antlers glued to a headband.
May snatched the antlers out of her hand. “Sorry, Mei.”
Mei shrugged on the deer’s ass. “It’s kinda cozy in here,” they said. “Come on in.”
Mai hurried to join her half to Mei’s. As the severed halves became one ugly deer, the animal folded in two with an explosive “Oof!” The fuzzy antlers smacked the floor as the back end caved in and re-formed anew. A sweatier, dustier Mai now took up the rear, while Mei helmed the monstrosity.
Dion pinched her chin as she considered the result. “Okay, well, we’ve all been very productive here. But how about we start prepping for our guests?”
Mai’s furious face dropped like intestines from the deer’s midsection. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“Serving wildness and revelry and everything else I like about you, I suppose, Mai.” Dion sighed. “But also, we can’t have an outdoor fête without a bonfire.”
Dion and the Maenads threw armloads of pine cones and old, dead vines from a big mound into the bonfire pit beside the amphitheater. They listened to the satisfying crackle until it was interrupted by a distant hum and the crunch of rubber against packed earth.
“Friends,” Dion said, her face alight with fire. “Our guests have arrived.”
Dion spun around and examined the purple silk jumpsuit that had replaced her skinny jeans and blouse.
“So extra,” said Mai. “I like it.”
The four of them strutted down the lane until they reached the woodie wagons, now brimming with drunk wine tourists and more sober friends.
“Welcome to the after-party,” Dion shouted at them as the doors sighed open.
Every person stepping out of the buses looked amazed and grateful to have arrived in one piece. Dion pursed her lips. Her kind of magic and vehicles didn’t mix well. She made a mental note to set up a ride share next time.
Dion needed to loosen things up. “Drinks anyone?” she asked. One hundred hands shot up.
Dion and the Maenads dipped behind a copse of trees, reappearing with armfuls of red cups. As the crowd handed them around, the friends filled the cups out of plastic wine sacks that never seemed to empty. Once every person had been treated, the godly cohort led the charge up the sloping vineyard to the farmhouse near the amphitheater.
“Everyone’s so quiet,” Mei whispered.
“Make them shotgun their wine,” said May.
“Hmm, I don’t think barking orders to glug is going to be helpful here,” said Dion. She took one look over her shoulder at the motley crew and knew exactly what they needed. She started humming a tune and waving her hands.
“Yay!” Mei the deer head squealed, front legs prancing.
“Heyyyy, I know that one,” Mai the rear deer said, and set her back legs stomping.
May turned her kohl-inked eyes to the sky, antlers beaming bright as Vegas, and groaned, “Thanatos, claim me.”
Dion belted out the first line of “Dancing Queen.”
In no time, everyone had joined in, dancing and singing like they’d tapped into a shared premonition. Almost everyone.
May clamped her lips shut as she turned her pained face to Dion. “Dion. You are so tragic.”
“Girl, I know,” Dion shouted above the din of Swedish pop. “But one finds joy where one must when living in the darkest timeline.”
And this merry band was wild with joy. Dion tasted it on her tongue, more rich and more supple than any vintage she’d sampled that day.
“We’ve got dolmas, we’ve got grape sorbet, we’ve got wine—red and white—we’ve got everything you need and more,” Dion announced as she poured chardonnay for Alice. Tom stood beside his wife, scrubbing his ruddy face with his hands. He blinked at the crowd cavorting around the bonfire.
The revelers had grabbed bits of old vine, and they’d begun to light the frayed tips. Dion tried to recall whether she’d seen any fine print about arson in their booking agreement. Meanwhile, Alice moved on, towing her husband behind, oblivious to her daughter skipping around the fire in her bra and knee-length skirt.
“Ah, youth,” said Dion.
May strode up, followed closely by two halves of a drunk deer.
“The time has come,” they said as one.
Dion looked around. “I suppose you’re right. Maenads, to the stage.”
Dion and the Maenads leaped onto the amphitheater stage.
“Hey, party people,” Dion spoke into the mic. “I said hey, party people, it’s time for a show!”
The playwright whooped and made for the steps, gathering the crowd in her wake.
“I knew I liked her,” said Dion. “Come oooooon over!” she sang into the mic. “I told you all I was a god, and now I aim to prove it.”
Near the front of the crowd, Dark Academia frowned—a poor attempt to disguise his curiosity. Tom, on the other hand, made no attempt to hide his feelings. The haze and the ’80s pop had cleared, and his waking mind lasered in on Dion and the Maenads. Tom broke free of Alice’s grip and bulldozed his way through the crowd.
Mei wandered up to the mic. The deer head dragged on the floor in front of them. “I think we have a volunteer from the crowd,” they said into the mic.
Dion swept an arm in Tom’s direction as he scrambled onto the stage. “A round of applause for our volunteer, Tom.”
Their audience cheered and whooped and clapped. They whipped their flaming wands above their heads as they hollered and hooted. Tom froze onstage. He stared at the revelers, his face getting redder and redder. He charged at Dion and snatched the microphone from her hand.
“Has everyone gone mad?” Tom’s screech echoed in the mic’s feedback. “This isn’t a god y’all are looking at! These aren’t nymphs or whatever the hell they’ve been blabbing about being all day. These are little girls with big mouths.” Tom swayed and clutched his mottled sweating face. “Now I don’t know what these mongrels did to my drinks to get me here, but I’m getting out, and the rest of you should get out too before they steal your information, or brainwash you, or microchip you or whatever it is they’re up to.”
“Would you like the honors?” Dion asked Mei.
Mei opened their arms wide and received Dion’s gift. Dion had brewed the curse, but it had been blessed by the whole crew. Mei hugged the hissing, spitting, bristling spell to themself and then hugged Tom. They held him tight until it sank into his bones. Tom recoiled, falling backward as if Mei had sunk their sharp teeth into his peach flesh.
Mei giggled as thick vines bursting with glossy fruit slapped across the stage, gyring and shushing as they reached for Tom. A pool of dark red pinot oozed from the stone. A large looming shadow with a long snout scratched its clawed paws against the floor as it let loose a bellow.
Tom scrambled up. “Is that a bear?” he panted. “Did you bring a bear here?”
Dion and the Maenads watched him. He stared back at each one of them, beetling his brow at last at Dion. Her curly black hair glinted blue in the unnatural moonlight. Tom studied her face and seemed to realize she was bored. Bored! He swung around, loose-jointed, to glower at the people to the left of the stage. “Look around! Look at what they’re doing to this place. Look at what they’re doing to you.” He pointed a shaking finger at Dion. “She’s a monster. They all are. So what’re ya doin’ just standing there?” he whined at them. “Do you want to be MEOW MEOW MEOW? Are you MEOW?”
Tom’s marble-green eyes widened. His whiskers twitched. Something was very wrong.
Dion cupped a hand around her ear and crouched way down to Tom’s height. “What’s that, Tomcat?”
Alice and shirtless Nicole approached the stage, blinking intently at their feline husband and father, who, tail twitching, continued to mouth off to the crowd.
“He’s all yours if you want him,” said Dion.
“Is he…” Alice faltered.
Dion shook her head mournfully. “Unfortunately, he’ll be back to normal by tomorrow.”
As Alice and Nicole gathered their hissing, spitting bundle of fuzz, Dion and the Maenads reclaimed the stage.
“I am Dion, daughter of Zeus!” Dion punched the air with a fist, and the crowd cheered.
“And, together, we are Dion and the Maenads, scourge of Zeus!” She pumped her fist, and the crowd cheered louder. “You all know the stories, and even if you don’t know them all, you know Zeus. Zeus the rapist. Zeus the manipulator. Zeus the cheater. Zeus the terror of women and all humankind.”
“Zeus sucks,” shouted Dark Academia.
“!at’s right,” Dion said wryly. “You won’t find half the stuff I know about Zeus in d’Aulaires’. History has pardoned and turned a blind eye to his bullshit behavior, but we’re not going to let him get away with abuse, are we?”
“Hell no,” shouted the playwright. “Tell it like it is.”
“We’re not going to let him hurt and oppress and exploit. We’re not going to let him sit comfy in his high seat enjoying that rarified air, empowered to make messes of other people’s lives.”
“Cancel Zeus,” Mai shouted through teeth bared in a brutal grin. The Maenads’ eyes dilated as the crowd took up the chant.
“Cancel Zeus! Cancel Zeus!” Backlit by the roaring pine cone fire, they whipped the air with their grapevine wands.
Dion and the Maenads raised their drinking cups as one. “Cancel Zeus,” they proclaimed.
One hundred drinking cups miraculously filled to brimming joined theirs in a toast. “Cancel Zeus!” The crowd roared and drank every last drop.
“Bring the mayhem, bring the magic,” recited Dion and the Maenads.
A blinding bolt of lightning cracked the night sky, and its accompanying thunder shook the earth. The deed was done; the warm-up was over. If the crowd screamed, no one could hear.
Like the coiled vipers the gods ascribed to them, Dion and the Maenads crouched low as they faced the epicenter of the storm—that absolute beast, that undying monster, that party pooper. The four of them balled their fists, chaos, danger, and vengeance swarming out of them like a fury of yellowjackets. They gathered the strength of their believers and held it for one last beat as that being came into focus.
“Time to take it home?” May rasped.
Dion widened her ferocious grin. “Time to tear it down, friends.” She hurled a bottle of wine at the figure.
Dion and the Maenads sprang, vivid as neon, screaming a battle cry into black velvet before they cannonballed into the searing light.
Excerpted from Fit for the Gods, copyright © 2023
