Nyx in the House of Night

NIGHT SERIES

    Karen Mahoney
There also stands the gloomy house of Night;
ghastly clouds shroud it in darkness.
Before it Atlas stands erect and on his head
and unwearying arms firmly supports the broad sky,
where Night and Day cross a bronze threshold
and then come close and greet each other.
    SO BEGINS the House of Night series, with a quotation taken from Hesiod’s Theogony. From the very beginning, the reader of P.C. and Kristin Cast’s popular series is clued into the fact that Nyx—who is known as Night personified both in the books and in our world’s mythology—is at the very center of events. It all comes back to her, as we see time and time again throughout the series.
    Nyx, Greek goddess of night, is traditionally known as a primordial god, one of the creators of the world. Before there could be Night—and, therefore, also Day—there was only Chaos, and it was Chaos who conceived a daughter and named her Nyx. In turn, Nyx gave birth to a daughter, Hemera (Day). As we can see from Hesiod’s version of events in the epigraph that opens the entire series, Night and Day “come close and greet each other” as they fulfill their designated roles. When you find the full passage from which the extract is taken, however, it becomes clear that the reference is literal, [1] rather than just metaphorical. Nyx does indeed share a “house” (or a cave, in some versions) with Hemera, but they can’t spend quality time together. “When one comes home through the back door,” Judika Illes says, in her Encyclopedia of Spirits, “the other leaves through the front.” As Hugh G. Evelyn-White translates it:
And the house never holds them both within; but always one is without the house passing over the earth, while the other stays at home and waits until the time for her journeying to come.
    We haven’t yet heard anything significant about Hemera—or Day—in the House of Night series, apart from a slight nod to her in the very first book (right after Zoey is Marked, a dorky kid who witnesses the event runs off “to Mrs. Day’s room.” I can’t help but smile at that pairing of Night and Day on the same page, although Mrs. Day herself isn’t significant). But perhaps Day’s absence is appropriate considering how the two goddesses must live such separate lives.
    As with all mythologies, there are other versions of how Nyx came into being. One of the Orphic myths (writings ascribed to Orpheus) even says that Nyx, rather than being brought forth as the eldest child of Chaos, existed from the very beginning of time . She appeared in the guise of a great black-winged bird, hovering eternally in darkness—perhaps as though she were the night sky itself. (I find this image to be remarkably evocative of the Raven Mockers from later books in the series, though those great black-winged “bird men” are creatures of darkness , rather than creatures belonging to the personification of Night—a difference we’ll be looking at later on.)
    We first meet the House of Night series’ Nyx in the opening book, Marked , when Zoey Redbird (previously Zoey Montgomery) is found in school and Marked by a Tracker from the House of Night. As is the custom, she is formally greeted and summoned to take her place as a vampyre fledgling with other “trainee” vampyres. It is on these opening pages that we are shown how significant Nyx is—and will become:
Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!
    When Zoey first encounters the Goddess, in one of the most powerful scenes in the opening book, Nyx tells her:
I have Marked you as my own. You will be my first true Daughter of Night in this age . . . Zoey Redbird, Daughter of the Night, I name you my eyes and ears in the world today, a world where good and evil are struggling to find balance.
    The reader is immediately made aware that Zoey is special; she has been set apart as something other, something more than just the usual breed of fledgling. She is a Daughter of Night , and just as Nyx has had many children according to myth—children who play hugely important roles in the workings of the world—Zoey finds that she, too, will be forced to become a part of events far greater than she could ever have imagined.
    Nyx is an interesting choice of goddess for the vampyres to worship; she is firmly rooted in Greek mythology, and yet large parts of the House