When the clock strikes seven, Athena puts down her knitting needles and folds her arms. It is a clear signal that the evening, pleasant as it was, has come to an end.
The members of the Tuesday night knitting circle, mostly women, tuck away their projects and rise to leave, slinging puffy jackets over their shoulders while chatting with each other. Athena is a silent boulder in the current of conversation.
Call me when you get home.
You are absolutely not walking to the T alone. I’ll go with you.
Athena knows what they are really talking about. The shadow of the empty chair is a long one. One of their number, Julie, was found dead in her apartment last week.
Julie is only the latest in a string of murders across the city. Young people, mostly women, found tourniqueted and violated. Strangely, the doors of their apartments were left open, as though the murderer had casually let himself in and out. The Strangler—that is what the news has taken to calling the killer. The police have no leads.
Athena pauses at the threshold of her shop, the warmth of the interior mingling with the cold of the outside, watching as the members of the knitting circle walk in twos and threes through the winter slush to their cars or the nearest T station. The storefront is perched on Mass Ave along the vibrant river of headlights. Beyond it is the city of Boston, glowing like all the stars of the sky come to earth, like the Greek campfires outside the walls of Troy.
Cars swish past, and a runner flies by on the sidewalk. Above Athena’s head, vivid letters spell out the words Boston Yarn Supply.
How can they sell enough to pay the rent? One commuter asks another as they tromp past the glass windows through the graying snow.
Athena smiles. It takes divine intervention to run a small business in a large city, no matter the era. Her magic has faded and atrophied, but some things remain to her. The shop’s survival is one; the war cry is another.
Closing her eyes, she envisions row upon row of warriors with glinting bronze helmets and shields. A challenge rises from the phalanx, and they thump their spears on the dry earth. She sends out the silent cry into the January air, a silver thread snaking through the darkened byways of the city until it reaches the one who walks with murder in his heart. The Strangler.
Athena draws him like a beacon, one apex predator challenging another. He will hear her wordless call and follow, even if he doesn’t know what compels him.
Suddenly, the weight of her decision hits her, and Athena shivers. Once she might have turned her enemy into an insect or rained fire down on his city, but things are different now. Many centuries have passed since the sacrificial fires were extinguished for the last time. Having exhausted much of her remaining magic in the war cry, she is left to fight the Strangler hand-to-hand. Her immortality is cold comfort: over millennia, Athena has learned that there are many worse things than death.
In a silent flutter, an owl lands nearby. There are a good number of them in the city, nesting in parks and green spaces, fellow refugees from a lost world. The owls remember their ancient ties with Athena, and she receives them fondly.
He is coming, the owl warns.
“I know,” Athena replies.
Like the owls, she is adaptable, swift and quicksilver enough to find her footing anywhere. And now she has them to think of.
Her people. The ones who frequent this little yarn shop, who come here to talk and relax, and to weave something new through the skill of their hands.
Destroyer of evils, the poet called her once, when she strode the hills outside Athens. Her customers simply call her Athena, the yarn shop proprietress, who never smiles but nonetheless knits a blanket for every baby born in the neighborhood. The yarn shop is no proper temple, but these are still her people. The Strangler has cruelly taken one of their number, and the goddess has a duty.
Athena flicks off the lights and glides through the darkened shop and up the stairs. While she makes her preparations, the enemy stalks the night, drawing ever closer.
A slight noise alerts her to his presence. Athena sees him through the owl’s eyes: an unassuming white man of middle height. The Strangler. He wears a delivery driver’s uniform, which must be how he gained entry into those apartments. The occupants would have let him in freely, never knowing his true intentions.
The door to the shop swings open and heavy boots tread across the floor. Taking cover in the shadows, Athena picks up a set of size seventeen aluminum knitting needles, about the heft and sharpness of a hoplite spear. She is, after all, the goddess of war as well as weaving.
It is all over quickly, with perfectly executed blows to his heart and throat. Athena dithers momentarily between a stab to the windpipe and a puncture to the aorta before she remembers she has two needles and there is no reason she cannot do both.
“For Julie,” she whispers in the Strangler’s ear as his consciousness fades.
Athena leans against the wall, arms sticky with blood. In the window above, the naked trees send their claws into the gray underbelly of the city sky. Cold seeps in from the open door downstairs, but Athena is flush with victory. She has won. Her people are safe.
Athena has lost so much over the centuries, but she has gained things as well: perception, humility. The knowledge of the value of a human life, like a beating heart in her hand. The importance of protecting her people. This is what she will fight and kill for, though the death will never be her own.
