Years ago I wrote an odd little novel (available on the Kindle here). One of the main characters was a woman called Penelope Penultimate (there’s an adventure of hers to listen to on this page here), who was a free-wheeling Indiana Jones sort of an adventurix. Since the story took place in 1917 it was clear she was something of a remarkable women.

Receiving a large twice yearly dividend from the aglet business she was able, however, to strike out by herself. She became a sort of adventurous governess. She would take small groups of young woman under her wing, let their parents imagine she had a suitable finishing school, and take them off to jungles, islands, mountains and rainforests. There she would do her best Ray Mears impression and, barring a snakebite or two, would bring the girls back to England three months later with a superior sort of education under their belts. (Belts they’d probably made themselves from one of the biting snakes.)

Anyway, I only mention this because a very different project I’ve been working on (on and off) for years. A thing called The Book Of Artemis: a set of long narrative poems, the beginning of which is below. Artemis and Penelope are incarnations, I believe, of the same mythic spirit. (They have many attributes in common, although Miss Penultimate has the addition of the human heart which Artemis lacks.)

I recently had some good news which ties in with this theme that has threaded itself through years of work. A children’s book of mine (an odd little story about a boy who runs away from the circus in order to join the library) has been bought by Bloomsbury for publication next year (I’ll mention this again when it comes out). And what is on Bloomsbury’s colophon? Why, it’s Diana, drawing back her bow. And who is Diana, but yet another incarnation of the Artemis/Penelope Eternal Champion? I can’t really think of a happier or more fortuitous fit between a publisher and myself.

(Diana isn’t on the children’s colophon though, that’s a dog fetching her arrow. As far as I’ve discovered the dog is nameless, though I hope it’s Nigel Spiggot.)

Anyway, leaving all that to one side, here’s the first section of the story of Callisto in my telling. I may post subsequent sections later, if anyone asks.

(But for anyone reading this who’s not interested in epic narrative poems about Greek gods, then I promise the next entry on this blog will be something lightl, fluffy and silly.)

from The Book of Artemis

Callisto

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i.

Any nymph with half a brain will spend
one hundred years, or two, with Artemis –
trooping through the woods to earn a name
and learn some skills that might turn out to be
of use in later years, off on her own.

It’s good to have a god on one’s CV –
it smacks of something serious in the past,
of being taken serious for oneself
by someone whose insight’s impeccable –
(gods have eyes that watch one deep inside).

In later life a nymph will be a tree,
a stream or spring or mountain brook that falls
with laughter from the rocks, and if it’s known
this nymph was seen at times with Artemis –
well, that’s genius loci with some pedigree.

So Callisto, one of many, joins the gang –
a child of a hundred years or so –
follows where a hundred others led,
pledges her bow and slingshot to the woods
and to the golden god she gives her heart.

It goes like this – the night that she arrives
she turns up late – she didn’t lose her way,
but in the dark of evening she confused
one track for another and had spent
more time retracing paths than going on –

and when she gains the camp the nymphs have made
she finds them all a giggling clique of girls –
all shrieks and blushes and sudden spurts of hush
as whispers blossom out of snipered looks
over their shoulders at what has just rolled in.

All her mother taught her is proved wrong –
this isn’t the dream of comradeship she’d dreamt –
a prinking wall of pouting postulants
which split like wood might split, along the grain,
as she steps up – her shyness locked up tight –

and shuts behind her, quick as thirty girls –
all synchronised in single-minded spite –
form thoughtlessly, but perfect just the same,
a barrier of shoulders, shrugs and sneers
with Callisto pushed out on the other side.

She would’ve cried, would’ve broke in tears
if she could know how little was this harm
compared to what will find her later on –
petulant nymphs are hardly the world’s end
(except for mortal men at times, it’s said).

As it is she sniffs and shuts her eyes,
scrunches up so that the tears don’t flow,
and stands there just inside the firelight –
half-listens to the talk and half-ignores
the gossip about things she doesn’t know.

Then rising from the centre of the throng
is Artemis – taller than the girls,
but small and boyish, quiet all the same –
a strange divine confusion of perspective:
great at once, but not a striking form.

(Callisto and her mother had once watched
Apollo simply streaking past their grove
on some mission, with some great goal in mind –
and he was dishy, handsome as the sun
and twice as bright and golden and so smart –

her heart and her mother’s were swept up
in the slipstream that sighed behind that god.
They hadn’t seen him again, but they knew
his royal bearing, his princely personage,
his golden hair, and sighed themselves to sleep.)

But Artemis is subtler than all that –
her hair kept short for dashes through the woods,
her body lithe, her limbs not long, but neat,
her face unthought about – boyish plain.
Then her grey eyes catch Callisto’s green –

Callisto? she asks, thumbing her paperwork.
The final nymph of this induction stands
and only hears the word – her name – and blinks
with pleasure-riddled puzzlement because
this small goddess has called her ‘beautiful’.

In the language of those days that’s what her name,
Callisto, meant – in fact, ‘most beautiful’ –
and though her mother spoke the name each day,
it is this god who nails the meaning down
and lets the word pass comment on the nymph –

or so it seems, at least, to poor Callisto,
who at the word is smitten head to toe
with feelings that surpass mere admiration,
that pout about her heart and flip her tongue –
she nods at the question and looks down.

What is it with this small and boyish god?
What is it pulls her breath to come up short
or slicks her lips with sudden nectar’s taste?
A coup de foudre is dangerous at best –
when gods are in the mix it’s for the worst.

Oh! she thinks I’ll suffer for this love –
meaning she’ll put up with all the shrugs
of all the girls in order to stay close
to the perfect this and that of Artemis
(hands or breasts – Callisto loved it all).

So Artemis says her name, and she replies
by nodding with a blush to stop her tongue
from rolling out and dropping silly words –
and the goddess ticks her off and turns away.
Callisto spends her night in sleepless dreams.