Two storeys, upper-level balcony, separate entrances. He might have to do something about that, Harry realized.
Bird Palace, the box read. The word palace had caught his attention. Surely this was what he needed. Plus it was only £29.95, which was a good deal.
–
The cashier grunted as he heaved the heavy cardboard box over the counter.
“That’s a mighty birdhouse,” he said in that special voice reserved for talking to the elderly.
Harry nodded. It certainly was.
“Getting ready for the season?”
Harry nodded again. Then, since more seemed to be needed to fill the silence as the clerk busied himself with the credit card, he added, “Looks like I’ve got a long-term guest in the garden. Best to make him comfortable. It’s the decent thing to do.”
The clerk laughed, handed back the card.
“Something special? I’m a bit of an ornithologist myself.”
The printer whirred and spat out a receipt.
“It’s a little god.”
The cashier wasn’t looking at him. If he had looked he might have wondered.
“Never heard of it. These names they come up with. There’s a bird called a blue tit, can you believe that?”
–
The little god had shown up three days ago. Had just been sitting in the large blue planter that morning with his back against the stem of the miniature orange tree. Harry hadn’t even noticed him at first, tiny thing that he was.
When he went to water the tree, hose in hand, he saw the god. Only Harry didn’t know that it was a god at that point, naturally. The small figure didn’t even get up, just looked at the approaching nozzle as if nothing could hurt him.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Harry said, and immediately felt stupid. Hardly the appropriate thing to say if you see a tiny man sitting in your large blue planter. “Who are you?”
That was a better, although probably not particularly sane, thing to say. He also lowered the hose, out of politeness.
The little god didn’t get up, but he smiled. Tiny, very white teeth showed in his browned face.
“I’m Zeus, Harry.”
Harry nodded, thinking. He felt like his brain was immersed in molasses or some other thick fluid, a sensation he was familiar with. Sometimes, in those rare moments when we see ourselves clearly, he wished that this were different.
He opened his mouth, closed it again. He felt silly standing next to the blue planter with the hose hanging limply from his hands, so he let it drop.
“What are you?”
That seemed like a good follow-up question.
A look of annoyance crossed the tiny face; annoyance mixed with something else. Harry, never a good judge of such things, wasn’t sure whether it was amusement or condescension.
“Zeus,” the tiny figure repeated. “Ring a bell?”
Of course Harry knew who Zeus was. Some Greek god. Or Roman? No, that was Jupiter.
“It does,” he said, slightly annoyed himself. “Unfortunately I fail to see how it relates to my question.”
The tiny man seemed to be fighting the temptation to cover his face with his little brown hands.
“That’s me,” he said. “Zeus, as in the god Zeus. Head of the Greek Pantheon. Heard of me, Harry Wright?”
“How do you know my name?” Harry asked, somewhat irrationally surprised to hear his last name, even though the tiny man had been using his first name ever since their conversation began. Everyone always called him Harry. Maybe he emanated Harry-ness.
“Omniscient,” Zeus said, and pride sang in his voice. “Comes with the territory.”
Harry had to sit down at that, and so he did, straight down on the cold grey tiles in front of the large blue planter. A bit of water from the hose soaked through the seat of his trousers, but he didn’t notice.
“You’re a god.”
The little god smiled again and this time, Harry was certain, it was a smile of kindness. He saw those a lot. In school, almost half a century ago, that was how his teachers had smiled when he’d finally understood something.
“Yes, Harry.”
“What are you doing in my garden?”
The smile vanished, as if a light had been suddenly switched off.
“Hell if I know.” Zeus shrugged. His eyes wouldn’t meet Harry’s. “Nice tree. I like oranges.”
–
And that had been it. Harry had probed some more, after that, but not right away. Having a little god appear in your large blue planter wasn’t something men like Harry Wright took in their stride, and he needed some time to think first. But Zeus either didn’t know or didn’t want to tell why he had suddenly appeared on the terrace of 27 Goosemeadow Lane. And he got downright testy when asked why he was only three inches tall.
–
“Do you like it?” Harry asked Zeus. The birdhouse rested on the grass, assembled and ready to be put up on a tree. Harry stood a little further back, worried that he might step on the little god. Surely that carried some sort of penalty.
“It will do.”
Harry’s face fell. He had been hoping that his guest would like the new house. It was certainly a lot better than a shoe carton on the windowsill, which was what Zeus had been living in these past three days.
The god refused to sleep in the actual house, or even to come inside. He said that he didn’t like the ambiance, but Harry privately suspected that the furniture intimidated him.
Suddenly Zeus laughed.
“It’s fantastic. Really. I was just pulling your leg.”
Harry thought that was a funny expression, coming from someone barely the size of his foot. He smiled.
“How much did it set you back?”
“Wasn’t so bad,” Harry murmured, somehow unwilling to say that the palace had cost £29.95, not counting the five percent he got off because of the shop’s loyalty program. He was talking to a god, after all.
Zeus just nodded and walked up to the palace’s front door, which Harry had carefully installed. Privacy was an important thing, Brenda used to say.
“I like what you did with the interior.”
Zeus was halfway through the door, and his voice sounded strange coming from inside the birdhouse. With the god mostly invisible, Harry suddenly realized that his guest didn’t sound like a tiny three-inch man. He sounded like ringing brass bells and wind and giant halls of marble.
Zeus reemerged, breaking the spell just as an army of goosebumps was making its way up Harry’s spine.
“I think we should put it up on the oak. Fine, sturdy tree. Has many years left in it.”
Harry blinked, mildly confused. He had never asked Zeus how long he intended to stay in his garden. Well, it didn’t really matter; his mother had always been very firm about teaching her oldest son the basic principles of hospitality, so the god was welcome to stay as long as he liked. He didn’t eat much, anyway.
“How high?” Harry asked.
Zeus shrugged.
“Three feet, maybe? Do you have a lot of cats in the neighborhood?”
Harry thought for a while.
“A few.”
“Four feet then. I’ll need something to get up, maybe a rope ladder or something.” Zeus seemed almost apologetic. Harry wondered whether under all his godly demeanor, Zeus was a little ashamed to be imposing on him as he was.
“I can do that.”
The power drill hummed into life in Harry’s hands as he approached the tree. Mere nails really wouldn’t do to hold up the palace of a god.
“Will you get cold in the winter?” Harry asked, partly because he cared and partly because this seemed like a good opportunity to find out whether the god intended to stay with him for that long.
“I think I’ll be fine. A few blankets would be nice, though.”
The tiny god had no trouble making himself heard over the shrill scream of the power drill close to Harry’s ear. Such was the size of his voice.
“I only asked because they had these heat lamps on special offer. For terrariums, you know?”
–
It was what was to be the last warm day of the year, late in October. Harry was sitting on the terrace, reading the paper, while Zeus was sitting on the table, peeling a kumquat. Harry had had to lift the little god up on the table, something that he did almost automatically nowadays and that neither of them ever commented on. Three-inch tall people had a hard enough time holding on to their dignity, even if they were gods.
“You’re retired?”
Harry put down the paper, slightly surprised. Zeus hardly ever asked questions, and even rarer were questions about Harry. It wasn’t that Zeus was impolite, he just knew everything. And Harry’s life was hardly the most interesting topic to talk about.
“Yes, for three years now.”
Harry frowned. If Zeus was omniscient, why did he need to ask? After a while — Zeus was still peeling his kumquat and hadn’t said anything else — it came to him. He wanted to talk.
“Used to be a carpenter, before that,” Harry added, giving the god a chance to pick up the conversation. Nothing. “Not what it used to be, mind you, nowadays it’s all laser cutting and MDF and online billing. When I started out we were three men in a shop. The master and us two apprentices and all the customers we could wish for.”
Zeus put down the kumquat and looked at Harry.
“When I started out it was all temples and other gods and sacrificing bulls and lambs in our honor.” He looked away and picked up a piece of peel that was as large as a beach towel to him. Harry thought the god might be crying. When Zeus looked up again his eyes were dry, though. Maybe gods didn’t cry. Harry thought of his Bible lessons, but couldn’t remember any relevant passages.
“And you’re a carpenter, of all things,” Zeus added.
His tone was still odd, but it had changed from sadness to playful accusation. Harry didn’t get it.
“You used to live in Greece?” he asked instead. It was the only question he could come up with.
A shadow crossed Zeus’s face.
“Greece, yes. Everywhere really. Mount Olympus was more of…” He stopped and scratched his chin. He was growing a beard. “…the town hall, I guess. Seat of government, that’s all really. Too cold to live on. We often had snow way into June, would you believe it? Down in the bay everyone was sweating like a mule, and we had to keep the fires stoked. I liked Egypt.” His voice trailed off.
“I’ve been to Morocco once,” Harry volunteered. With Brenda.
“Morocco, yes, nice place. We used to call it Mauretania, of course. Same thing, in the end.”
A thought occurred to Harry.
“Didn’t you…” He paused. Zeus was hard for him to gauge; he never knew what would offend the god. “Didn’t you have trouble with the local gods? In Egypt, I mean.”
The small man wasn’t offended. On the contrary, he laughed.
“Hell, no. We never had trouble like that. I stayed out of their temples and they out of mine. Not like the Middle East nowadays. And in any case, by the time I got to Egypt they were… diminished,” he added after a pause. Harry looked up at something in the god’s voice. Not sadness, not exactly, but a kind of thoughtfulness. Zeus was staring at his tiny hands, balling them into fists, and didn’t notice Harry’s look.
“That’s what happened to you?” Harry asked gently.
Zeus didn’t say anything for the longest time. Harry thought he’d done it now. He felt sad; he rather liked talking to the god. He didn’t talk to many people these days, really.
Harry was about to pick up the paper again — anything to distract himself from the sad god — when Zeus spoke again.
“One,” was all he said.
“I’m sorry?” Harry was confused again.
“I’ve got one believer.”
“Me?” Harry asked. The question of why Zeus lived in a birdhouse in his garden, of all places, was never far from his mind these days.
Zeus laughed.
“Hardly.” Out of nowhere he produced a tiny picture, smaller than a stamp, and held it up for Harry to see.
“Her name is Eleni Papadopoulou. She lives on Crete.”
Harry leaned forward. His eyes weren’t as good as they used to be and the photo was so very tiny. On the picture — color, he noted, although the edges were yellowed with age — he saw the leathery face of an old woman. Her salt and pepper hair was done up in a neat braid that hung over her shoulder and she was wearing a simple black dress or blouse. In the background he saw fields and an old stone wall.
“The last believer in Zeus, father of the Greek gods. I die with her.”
Zeus picked at the kumquat peel.
“There are others, of course. But they don’t believe, they just worship.”
Harry didn’t know what to say after that. There really didn’t seem to be much he could say. After a while he picked up the paper again and Zeus went back to his kumquat.
–
In late winter, just before New Year’s Eve, Zeus came into the house for the first time. The snow was over a foot deep outside and Harry wondered how the god had made it to the door. As it was, he came in through the old cat flap that Harry had never nailed shut and sat down by the radiator. Later, once he had stopped shivering, he climbed up on the sofa. Neither of them said a word.
–
It was summer again. The little god loved summer. And citrus fruit. Harry tried to make sure that there was always enough of the latter, but he couldn’t do much about the weather.
He had moved the chair and table to stand down by the oak a few years back. That’s where they now remained all year long, come rain or shine. Of course Zeus had, for many years now and without ever actually saying anything about it, moved into the house as soon as the first snow of winter began to fall. Pride was a funny thing.
But in the summer Harry would sit in the chair under the tree and Zeus would sit on his little wooden balcony and they would talk. At some point, Harry didn’t quite know when, life with the little god had become very comfortable.
Not today, though. Zeus had been silent for the most part. Not like him, really. They had been talking a lot about foreign politics lately and the god usually had a snide remark or two about the Middle East. It always reminded Harry of someone complaining about a nephew who couldn’t get his life together. But then he usually also complained about the Greeks.
“Are you alright?” he finally asked, after they had been silent for entirely too long.
Zeus nodded and stroked his beard. A nice, long beard it was. White and wavy, matching the god’s long white hair. These days he looked exactly like Harry would have imagined him, sitting in the halls of Mount Olympus on his golden throne. Except that he was only three inches tall, of course.
“She’s got cancer.”
Harry immediately knew who Zeus meant. The topic of Eleni Papadopoulou was one that they didn’t talk about very often, but that always hung above them like a blade waiting to fall.
“Is there anything you can do?”
Zeus laughed, a strangled sound that seemed to want out despite the god’s best efforts.
“Hardly. I could try to become a surgeon, but I don’t think the medical council would admit me.” The same choked laugh again. “It’s metastasized, at any rate.”
The chair creaked as Harry leant back. He ran a hand through his thinning hair. This wasn’t good.
“There’s nothing else?”
“I’m a three-inch man, living in a bloody birdhouse. Do you think there’s anything else?”
Zeus’s anger evaporated at quickly as it had come.
“I’m sorry,” both men said at the same time.
The god laughed, for real this time. “It’s not your fault.”
“How long has she got?”
“Maybe three months, maybe less,” Zeus said and spread his hands. “Omniscience only goes so far, I fear.”
Neither said anything for a while. Harry was thinking. It wasn’t a new thought — living with a god for as long as he had was bound to raise some questions of faith — but suddenly the old thought had become much more urgent.
“Could I believe in you?”
A small smile played around the corners of Zeus’s mouth, neither sad nor happy.
“I don’t know. Could you?”
–
Eleni Papadopoulou died on the fourth of November that year.
Zeus was already in the house, even though it hadn’t snowed yet. Harry thought the god was afraid of being alone. He didn’t say so, of course. Dignity.
Harry knew that it would happen that day. Zeus had told him, strangely communicative as he had become regarding his last believer ever since the diagnosis had been made, about the failed chemo and the operations and about how the doctors had finally allowed Eleni to go home to die at the beginning of the week.
Her last breath came and went and Zeus stayed where he was. A sigh and a nod, relief mixed with sorrow, was the only notice that he gave of her passing. It was like a thunderclap in the silence that had been hanging over the house.
Harry looked at the tiny god, tried to see if he was bigger or smaller now, but Zeus looked much as he had all these past years. He concluded his faith was a good as Eleni’s, neither stronger nor weaker.
–
Harry would have been 98 the year he died. Zeus had been living with him for over 30 years, mostly in the house now, although he still went out to the birdhouse in the hottest days of summer.
“You’re going to die soon,” Zeus told him one day.
Harry nodded. At 97 one expected this kind of thing.
“What have I got?”
“Age.”
They laughed at that.
“What will happen to you?”
Zeus shook his head.
“The usual.”
They had talked, once, of the other gods. Of Hera and Poseidon and Hades. Of Anubis and Quetzalcoatl and Enlil. The ones that had diminished and faded before.
The usual.
“Have you ever tried believing in yourself?”
–
Harry died on a Sunday. Not in Goosemeadow Lane, but in a hospice, in a sunny room facing the gardens. Zeus was there; he had hitched a ride in the holdall that Harry’s niece had packed when they took him to the hospice.
“It’s time.”
Harry didn’t answer, but he smiled.
“I’m sorry.”
And so, Harry died.
Zeus stood on the bedside table for a while, by the vase of flowers that Harry’s niece had sent.
He looked down at his hands, made a fist and then stretched his fingers out again.
“I think I can do this, Harry.”
Verena Kyratzes is a writer and narrative designer mainly working in video games, creating interactive stories for games like Serious Sam 4 and The Sea Will Claim Everything. She divides her time between Germany and Greece.