Hero began to puff up. “I wasn’t scared. I was going to fight . . .” Then he paused and shook his head. “Actually, that’s not true. I was really scared. I wouldn’t have escaped if it hadn’t been for Pecklion. He stayed by my side and I mounted him just in time. I-I hoped Tazo had found you. I’m sorry, Pippa.”
Pippa nodded. “Me too.”
“I didn’t mean . . . I mean . . . There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Me too,” Pippa repeated. She could hardly hold it in. “Hero, I found the horses!”
Before Hero could respond, however, a voice replied:
“And I’ve found you.”
Pippa spun around. Morpheus! The god was standing in front of them, his horn in one hand. He looked far less sleepy than before. In fact, his eyes glinted with pleasure.
“I knew following the taraxippoi would lead me to you. They always find those who are lost.” He reached a hand toward the colt. “How pleased she will be with me.” He grinned.
“You can’t take Tazo,” cried Pippa. “You can’t give him to Poseidon to turn into stars!”
“Stars?” Hero gasped.
“You figured it out,” said Morpheus, in his syrupy voice. “Well, almost. Clever mortal. Too bad your fate has been determined. And it isn’t a pleasant one.”
With that, instead of shaking or blowing the horn he was holding, he put his hand in it and pulled out a fistful of dust.
Poof! He threw it at them.
Before Pippa could say anything, or do anything, the silvery drops, fine as mist, sprinkled over her like the tears of stars and immediately her eyes closed into darkness.
Darkness . . . so thick she could touch it. A kiss . . . The glint of a coin . . . A promise, muffled by the gurgle of a well, “I will be back.” The kind of terrible, dreadful promise she knew would be broken even as it was made. Then quiet. She was hungry, cold, scared. Her heart felt as broken as the promise. She cried out, but nobody came. The darkness surrounded her, starless and stark and smothering. She couldn’t breathe. . . .
Pippa woke, gasping, and sat up. She reached for the coin in her pocket to comfort her. As she traced the outline of the winged horse with her fingers, her hammering heart calmed. It was just a nightmare.
What had happened?
Slowly, she remembered. Morpheus had found them—her and Tazo, Hero, and Pecklion. They had been on the side of the mountain. Under the stars. Under the horses. But now, where was she? Where were the others?
She rubbed her eyes and peered around. It was dark, though not the same impenetrable darkness as the nightmare. The floor was damp, and the air smelled of mold. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out Hero lying beside her. They seemed to be in some sort of prison, for the wall in front of them was made of metal bars, and at the end sat a guard, hunched and thin. At the other end was a heavy wooden door, with a smaller door cut in it.
She couldn’t see Tazo or Pecklion. She looked behind her, hoping she might glimpse them, only to gasp.
There were others in the darkness. Not horses. But others. Enormous others.
Pippa stood and took a step toward them, hardly daring to breathe.
Could it be?
There, in the shadows, their wrists and ankles wrapped in enormous chains fastened to the stone walls, were those whom all mortals both loved and feared. The gods and goddesses!
There was Athena, goddess of wisdom, her brown hair limp, her chiton muddied and torn, but her long graceful neck and high nose still raised proudly. Beside her, Aphrodite was chained too. Even in the squalor of the prison, she was beautiful in her simplicity, her chiton neither dyed nor decorated and her hair falling to the floor in golden tangles.
Near them was Hephaestus, god of blacksmiths, his scraggly beard snarled with bits of metal; and Demeter, goddess of the harvest, bits of stray wheat caught in her hair. And there was Ares, god of war, who had caused Pippa so much strife during the race. For once he was without his silver helmet, the scars that crisscrossed his face gleaming white in the dim light. They were all there and clearly displeased.
“Hic . . . hic . . . hic . . .” Dionysus, god of festivities, was hiccupping uncontrollably. “What a hic punishment, trapped hic here without any wine. They could easily push a bottle through that little door.”
“Punishment?” harped Ares. “Punishment is listening to you.”
“Punishment is wearing the very chains you forged, locked within the very bars you constructed,” said Hephaestus. “I never should have built this holding cell for Zeus. I told him Tartarus was enough of a dungeon.”
“At least there it would be darker,” complained another—who had to be Hades, based on his dark and gloomy demeanor and the serpent belt wrapped around his chiton. “I can’t handle all this light.”
“We’d better not be sent to Tartarus,” spoke a goddess, who Pippa didn’t recognize at first. She was very beautiful, with a crown of drooping peacock feathers. “Or I’ll never speak to my husband again!”
“Hera, dear,” started Aphrodite.
Hera—Zeus’s wife! “Don’t dear me! The least Zeus could do is send some attendants. . . .”
“Attendants? Zeus? He has nothing now, like us,” spat Ares.
“Then who hic are those over there?” Dionysus pointed right at Pippa.
“Those aren’t attendants. I recognize that one,” growled Ares, glancing at Pippa, his eyes catching hers and narrowing.
“Of course you do, Ares,” said Aphrodite, her voice calm and soothing as ever. “It’s Hippolyta from the race.”
“Pah!” he spat. “But what is she doing here? And who is that with her?”
He gestured with his chin to the boy.
Hero stood up, shakily. “H-H—”
“Hero,” said Pippa.
“Hero? That’s your name? Ha! No mortal is ever really a hero,” griped Ares.
Aphrodite ignored him. “My dear child,” she said to Pippa. “What are you doing here?”
“I—we—came to return a winged horse.”
“A winged horse? Here?” Athena’s eyes brightened.
“He was taken from us, by Morpheus,” said Pippa. “I was training him so Zeus could ride him, but we lost our map and then we were captured, and now Poseidon has him. I’m sure.”
“Me?” came a bellowing voice from one corner of the prison. “I don’t think so.”
Pippa spun around. Her eyes went wide.
There, in a far corner all by himself, his ankles and wrists wrapped in triple the chains of the others, was the god of the sea.
Nineteen
“Poseidon?!” Pippa burst out.
Poseidon’s beard, usually dripping with sea water and tangled with seaweed, was dry, but his eyes were surprisingly wet. His cloak, iridescent as an abalone shell, was torn and there was a gash across one of his cheeks.
Pippa didn’t understand. “But you’re the one who had us captured. You shouldn’t be here. Zeus said . . .”
“Zeus doesn’t know everything,” interjected Athena.
“Zeus doesn’t know anything,” pouted Poseidon.
Athena glared at him. “Don’t speak ill of Zeus. If you hadn’t started all this . . .”
Poseidon slumped. “Yes, yes, I know. But this wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out.” He gazed at Pippa and Hero. “A mortal would understand. Have you not wanted to be someone other than yourself? Even for a day? Have you never felt that life treated you unfairly?”
Hero stiffened and stayed silent. Pippa was silent too. She had felt that way, of course. Many times.
“Yes, I see it in you both. Searching for who you truly are. It is a mortal’s quest. So why not a god’s too?”
“Because we are ideally suited to our roles!” said Athena.
“We are who we are!” roared Ares.
“You must learn to love yourself,” added Aphrodite softly.
“I know that now,” said Poseidon. “I would give anything to be back in the sea. But you can�
��t place all the blame on me.”
“What . . . what do you mean?” asked Hero.
“Nyx,” replied the god.
“Nyx?” whispered Pippa. Goddess of the night? The piece of darkness on the chariot—was that a piece of Nyx’s cloak?
“I went to Nyx, in the Underworld, to get her help,” explained Poseidon. “I knew the winged horses were the key to defeating Zeus. Without a horse—his or any other—he would struggle to find a way to attack with his lightning bolts. So I sought Nyx, the goddess with the power to transform the horses. I wanted her help to get rid of them, at least for now, so I could take the throne.” He rubbed his beard. “Why should Zeus be king and not me, his brother, or one of our other siblings? Nyx understood. Her daughter, Hermera, goddess of day, brags relentlessly about how much brighter she is than her mother. Which meant that Nyx was only too happy to add more stars, more constellations, to brighten her sky.
“All was well, at first. With the winged horses gone, I easily seized the throne—”
“Ahem,” coughed Ares.
“Well, yes, there was the darkness. Nyx did help with that. And getting the relics,” said Poseidon. “But I filled the palace with sea monsters, as well as the winged horse stables, didn’t I? And I couldn’t know she and her children were going to put you all in the dungeon. I was deciding how best to help my brothers and sisters when—”
“Ha!” interjected Athena. “Help.”
Poseidon ignored her. “—when Nyx appeared again. The extra stars had blinded her to anything but her own glory. She turned on me too. She cast another spell of darkness and took my relic. She has them all now.”
“My spear and helmet!” griped Ares.
“My hiccup cup,” added Dionysus.
“Your cup is not a relic,” admonished Athena. “Not like my owl.”
“Or my trident,” continued Poseidon. “Then Nyx imprisoned us here.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” cried Pippa.
“Not without our relics, and not in these chains,” said Poseidon.
“You’re not in chains,” said Aphrodite, staring at Pippa’s wrists. “Perhaps you can do something.”
A grim voice came from nearby: “Mortals save you? That almost makes me laugh.”
The prison guard had turned her chair toward them. She had a face that looked like it had never worn a smile, and she was thin as a skeleton, with stringy hair and sharpened teeth. She reminded Pippa of a splinter or thorn, the kind a horse might have in his hoof, causing slow and perpetual pain. She leaned on a cane of metal. No, not a cane. It was a key.
“You will be stuck here forever or until my mother moves you to Tartarus, the prison of the Underworld. And I will be stuck too, watching over you until the world ends. I will languish and no one will care, not even my mother.” The guard’s lips trembled, and her eyes filled with tears—black tears—that spilled down her face.
Pippa shrunk back, nearly stumbling into Aphrodite.
“That is Achlys, goddess of misery, one of the daughters of Nyx,” said Aphrodite. “She has the particular effect of spreading woe, especially to mortals. It’s best if you ignore her.”
But it was too late. Looking upon Achlys and hearing her words had planted a seed of despair in Pippa. She suddenly found herself worrying about Tazo, thinking the worst. He wasn’t there, so that meant Nyx had him and it was only a matter of time before he, too, was turned to stars . . . if he hadn’t been already.
“So there’s no way to escape?” said Pippa, struggling against the urge to cry.
“Perhaps one day,” said Aphrodite hopefully. “If we believe and keep love in our hearts.”
“Love! Ha! Love will never free us,” roared Ares. “Especially not if we are moved to Tartarus.”
As the gods and goddesses began to bicker, Pippa huddled with Hero.
“One day to the gods and goddesses could be centuries to us,” said Pippa. “We’ll never escape.”
Hero, however, pointed to the little door, built within the big one, that seemed to be for providing prisoners with food and drink. “It’s large enough for us to crawl through.”
“We can’t slip through there, not with Achlys on guard,” said Pippa. “And it probably doesn’t matter anyway. Tazo is likely turned to stars, or dead,” she choked. “It’s . . . it’s all my fault. I should have stayed in the mortal realm. A trip to the temple would be a better fate for Tazo than what’s in store for him now.”
“Hey, hey,” hushed Hero.
But it was too late. A tear slipped out from her eye.
“Ah,” breathed Achlys. “You are crying. Crying because you are in the dungeon. Come, let me wipe your eyes.” She extended a long fingernail, cracked and dirty.
Pippa clutched Hero’s hand and shrank back farther.
“Of course, you are frightened of me. I am frightening. I am disgusting,” said Achlys. “That’s right, you should stay back, far away from me.” And with that, Achlys, goddess of misery, slumped against the key, her head hanging toward the floor.
Pippa let out a sigh of relief. But Hero didn’t. Instead, he stood up tall, a glimmer in his eyes.
“Pippa,” he whispered, “I have an idea.”
Twenty
“Misery loves company,” Hero whispered.
“What do you mean?” Pippa asked.
Hero opened his mouth as though to explain, then shook his head. “You’ll see.” With that, he strode toward the bars, toward Achlys.
“It’s time to tell my story—the real one,” he began as he sat down on the floor in front of the guard. She didn’t say anything, didn’t even look up.
“My story begins before I was born,” Hero said. “My great-great-great-grandfather was Hercules, the legendary hero. My family worshipped him as if he were Zeus. When my mother was pregnant with me, an oracle told my father that I would be the next hero in our family.”
Achlys still didn’t look up. “Go away,” she said.
Hero ignored her and continued, “My father, determined that I should follow in Hercules’s footsteps, placed two deadly snakes in my cradle, hoping I would strangle them with my bare hands, like Hercules did when he was a baby.”
Behind Pippa, the gods and goddesses had quieted their fighting, and she could tell they were listening to Hero’s story now, puzzled as to what he was doing.
“Of course, I couldn’t strangle them,” said Hero. “I wasn’t like Hercules. I was just an ordinary baby! One of them bit me.”
“N-no!” stammered Achlys, who finally looked up at him.
“I should have died then. I almost did. But I lived—barely. I was sick and weak all through my childhood. I didn’t have any friends. No one wanted to play with me.” A tear trickled from one of Hero’s eyes.
Achlys reached a hand through the bars and caught the tear on her fingertip.
Hero didn’t flinch at her touch. “Things only grew worse. My father continued to test me, to give me impossible challenges. I stood no chance. I was—I am—my father’s biggest disappointment.”
Tears were now streaming from both his eyes, and Pippa felt her eyes getting wet as well. How could a parent do these things?
“When my brother was born,” continued Hero, “he was everything my father wanted. He looked like a hero. And he was stronger than me.”
Achlys now hung on his every word. Tears streamed from her eyes too. “That is a sad story.” She reached through the bars and clasped Hero’s hands in her own. The key fell to the floor with a clang. Hero let her touch him and even squeezed her hands back. “Tell me more,” said Achlys.
All at once, Pippa understood. Misery loves company. Hero was keeping Achlys company, keeping her occupied, to give Pippa a chance.
Hero kept talking. “Soon, both my brother and my father were ordering me about, making me do all the tasks in our oikos they did not want to do. I was forced to do their bidding, until I decided to do something about it. . . .”
Pippa wanted to
stay and hear more, but she couldn’t waste this opportunity. She crept, as quietly as she could, to the far end of the bars where the small door was and knelt down, half listening to Hero as he went on.
“I stole my father’s most prized possession, the Nemean cloak, Hercules’s cloak. And I traveled here to prove him and my brother wrong.”
“So your story changes into a happy one?” complained Achlys.
Pippa froze, fearing that Achlys, no longer distracted by the sad tale, might return her attention to the prisoners and spy her.
Hero seemed to sense this and let out a loud sob. It sounded fake, but as he continued, his crying began to sound genuine.
“Does it look like I am wearing the cloak?” choked Hero. “No. Everything has gone wrong.”
“It has?” said Achlys. Once again, tears filled her eyes. “Tell me, tell me.”
No wonder Hero was so upset when the cloak was lost; it wasn’t really his, Pippa thought, and wished she could tell him she was sorry, that he was a hero to put up with that kind of father, to be so positive despite all he’d been through. It even made sense now, why Tazo and Pecklion seemed to like Hero so much. Not because he was like Hercules but because he wasn’t. He wasn’t some creature-slaying hero. He was just a boy, like Bas. But now was not the time to tell Hero all of this.
Pippa pushed open the door flap, which was big enough for a plate of god-size food—or a small mortal. Slowly, slowly, on hands and knees, Pippa crept through.
She was free! She stood up, her heart pounding, and gave a furtive glance back at the cell and the gods and goddesses.
Aphrodite was smiling. Athena nodded. “Go!” she mouthed.
While Hero continued his story and Achlys cried, Pippa ran, as lightly as if she were a winged horse skimming the ground, holding her breath until she rounded the corner and the prison disappeared from sight.
The hallway was dark, lit by only a few oil lamps built into the walls. A set of massive stairs loomed in front of her.
As she struggled up them, her thoughts spun. She was free, but now what? She couldn’t stop Nyx by herself. She could tell Zeus all she’d learned. And maybe she could rescue Tazo—if Nyx hadn’t already turned him into stars.
The Colt of the Clouds Page 10