Hephaestus and the Cage

The sound of weeping filled all the heavens. It was a wailing, painful sound that shot through and around the clouds, over all the kingdoms of the earth, and even up to the ears of the gods themselves on Mount Olympus. They really hated that sound. Athena had her ears plugged with olives, and Poseidon covered his with seashells; Hephaestus tried to hold hammers over his, but strong metal only makes the weeping vibrate louder.

“What is it, what is it?” cried Dionysus, the youngest of the gods, entering the garden where the others were already gathered. “We must do something! This weeping, it’s driving me to madness!”

“You are already halfway there,” said Zeus, who had called them to meet here. The Father of the Gods, of all people, was permitted sarcasm. “But this sound that we cannot bear- it is the weeping of our creations, mankind. All humanity is crying out all day long as if in agony, and I cannot figure out why.”

The gods looked down at the Earth. The garden of the gods was on the edge of Olympus, with an excellent view of the world of mortals below it, if the deities were willing to crane their necks a little. They saw with divine sight the lives of the humans down below. Their eyes were not wet with tears, strangely, nor were their mouths all open in wailing. But still, the gods heard them crying, every man and woman weeping inside himself as he went about the work of their day.

“I think that the cry we hear,” said Hera, “is not one made with mouths. Their hearts are in agony. That is what we hear.” The wife of Zeus always understood empathy. She had suffered much in her life and marriage, and pain was to her almost a native language.

“But what to do about it?” asked Dionysus, again. “We cannot listen to them cry for eternity! Why, why are they doing it?”

“Because they are in pain!” Hera answers. “They cannot help it. When a human is hurt, it is their heart that weeps, more than it is their eyes. And we have given them soft hearts, that feel all the little blows and bruises of life. They cry because their loved ones leave them, because their beloved die, because they are given souls like the gods but made to live in bodies like animals and they long for eternity. What else could the poor things do but weep?”

“We must remove their hearts, then,” said Zeus.

Athena agreed. So did Dionysus. But Hephaestus shook his head and said “No, my king. Without hearts, humanity will not create, and their crafts will have no passion.”

Poseidon too argued, “And without hearts, they will never feel the call of the sea, to sail, and to explore.”

And Hera said, “And without hearts, they cannot love their spouses and children. They will never care to pray to us.”

“Fine, fine!” Zeus said. “You all batter me down. Then how will we make them quieter? We can hardly hear for all their misery.”

They all tried to come up with ideas. Athena wanted to wrap the heart in a thick cloth, to muffle it. Poseidon said they might drown it in water, and laughing Dionysus suggested it would be more fun to drown it in a little wine. Ares got the closest to a good idea when he brought up a shield. They all seemed to be of the opinion that it needed to be covered, somehow. But Hephaestus all the while said nothing, and stroked his unkept beard, and sat amidst the flowers of the garden. At last he said:

“I have an idea, my king.”

Zeus prompted. “Say on, then, blacksmith.”

“What the human heart needs is a cage.” He crushed a flower under his heavy hand. “See, we cannot hide their hearts away entirely. Then they would feel nothing, and we may as well have taken them out! But we cannot leave them free- then they will be exposed to all the pains of life. The heart needs a cage. Something to protect in places, but leave just the right gaps for the important things to slip through and strike at them where they can truly feel it. Then they will still create, and explore, and offer us prayers.”

So Zeus ordered Hephaestus back to the forge, to make what he had spoken a reality, and there the clever smith of the gods forged a prison. He fashioned it out of the same things humans are already made of, bones and flesh, but made the bones thin and spaced so that the weight of great moments would still crush through them, and sharp words could still slip through them like blades, and longed-for dreams could still seep through their gaps and reach the center.

Hephaestus presented the first rib cage to Zeus, and said “Look, we will put the human heart in this! It is just enough to protect it from the world rubbing it raw. But some things will still get through it, when their old loves die or their dreams come true or they feel the rush of a romance-” here he glanced side-long at the god of love, whose arrows would slide in perfectly- “and in those rare moments, their hearts will still be like the hearts of gods. They will feel- and know all the ecstasy and pain of it! But now we have learned that a man cannot live with his heart open always, or the harsh world we have made will crush them, and their weeping will again fill the heavens.”

So Zeus decreed that it should be so, and ever since that day, every girl and boy has been born with a rib cage of bones around their heart.