Callisto was a bear, her father a wolf, and her son a hunter. What kind of dreadful world can lead to such a travesty of events? The same kind of world that breeds a father that would murder his own son to lay his flesh upon the table to test a stranger’s knowledge. The same kind of world that would see a woman cast out by her religious order for having the misfortune to be raped. The kind of world that has gods who think turning you into a bear is fair, and who think doing the same to your son is avoiding a tragedy.
Uncertain and pained about her future, she said this to me over coffee, no sugar. The shop we were in was loud with all of the sounds of the modern world; cell phones twittered, doors chimed, laptops chattered. I thought about all of the time that stretched between Callisto’s epoch and now, and how none of that had made the world less random or cruel, only more exact in its explanations. This caused me to remember Callisto’s tale as an explanation of the circumpolar nature of two constellations. I reminded my companion that, after transforming them into bears, the gods had hung Callisto and her son in the stars.
That would complete their cruel fate, she said, to be hung forever in the firmament, as something they never were.
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Image courtesy of Bryant Olsen.
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