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Then with a light flick he spun the Kosmos off Heracles and held it over his head.
    Heracles quickly picked up the apples.
    ‘Better make yourself comfortable mate. I’m not coming back.’
       
    For a second Atlas did not speak. Then as he studied Heracles’s grinning face, he realised he had been tricked. Wily Heracles had no brains but plenty of cunning.
    What could Atlas do? He wanted to hurl the universe at Heracles, crush him, annihilate time and make the story start again.
    ‘Come on Atlas’, said Heracles, ‘you’ve had your fun.’
    Slowly, so as not to spill one drop of milk, Atlas lowered the Kosmos back onto his shoulders, and bent himself under the burden. He did it with such grace and ease, with such gentleness, love almost, that Heracles was ashamed for a moment. He would gladly have dashed the world to pieces if that would have freed him. He saw now that Atlas could do justthat, but did not, and he respected him but would not help him.
    ‘Goodbye Atlas,’ said Heracles, ‘and thanks …’
       
    Heracles turned away in his lion skin, swinging his olive club, the apples at his belt by his side. As he pushed the stars out of the way and began to fade though the warp of time, Atlas saw his past, present and future, disappear with him. Now his life had no demarcations, no boundaries. There was nothing, and wasn’t nothing what he had wanted?
    But why was nothing as heavy as nothing?
    He turned his head, and just for a moment he didn’t see the universe balanced there on his back. It was himself he was carrying, colossal and weighty, little Atlas desperately holding up the Atlas of the world.
       
    Then the vision was gone.

But Through
     

    Heracles delivered his apples to Eurystheus.
    Glad to be rid of his grocer-duties, he struck south, and founded the hundred-gated city of Thebes, in honour of his birthplace.
    Honour or not, birthplace or not, Heracles soon tired of being a city-dweller. Leaving behind his fine clothes and all-night feasts, he dusted out his lion skin (now a little threadbare), and travelled until he came to the Caucasus Mountains. Here, Prometheus had been chained alive for more time than anyone could remember.
       
    Heracles knew he was close to Prometheus’s rock-face prison, when he saw the griffon-vulture circling overhead in the first light of morning. Every morning thevulture tore out Prometheus’s liver, and every night, his liver grew back again, so that he should never escape punishment for stealing fire from the gods.
    Not wishing to be seen, Heracles hid behind a rocky outcrop, and watched as the vulture swooped closer and closer. Its curved beak began to graze, then puncture, the pale flesh of Prometheus’s stomach.
    His face creased in agony, yet not crying out, Prometheus flattened his back while the vulture ripped open his stomach muscles and put its whole head into the man’s gut to tug out the liver. While it rummaged there, it flapped its great wings to keep airborne, and used the man’s hipbone as a perch for its claws.
    The liver hanging half in and half out of the bloody wound, the bird gave a fierce pull, and Prometheus cried out. The liver dangling from its beak, the vulture flew straight upwards, dripping spots of blood and tissue onto the stained rock.
    Prometheus fainted.
    Heracles came out from his hiding place and helda skin of water to Prometheus’s lips. Prometheus revived and thanked Heracles, and out of pity Heracles covered the wound from the blinding sun and the flies that tormented Prometheus through the day.
    Prometheus asked Heracles if he had seen his brother Atlas, and Heracles suddenly remembered the manner of infinite gentleness with which Atlas had resumed the impossible burden of the world. Gently, Heracles wiped Prometheus’s brow and promised to intervene with Zeus that day for an end to the punishment.
    Good as his word, he set off, leaving his water flask and a reed straw.
       
    When Heracles wanted something he