The Immortal Fire

by Anne Ursu

Gym was no better. They were doing fitness testing, and since Charlotte could not participate, it was her job to sit on the hard bleachers and record everyone’s times for posterity, as if posterity cared a whit about how long it took the Hartnett eighth graders to run from one orange cone to another. At one point Chris Shapiro sidled up next to Charlotte and made some comment about how it was too bad her accident didn’t make her any less funny-looking. Charlotte rolled her eyes and then added two seconds to his time.

  All morning she wondered about the world and what was happening to it now. She couldn’t figure out the connection between all the events—had Poseidon decided to let all the sea gods loose to unleash mischief? Was he looking for Charlotte and Zee? Was he punishing humanity for Charlotte’s sins? How many people were going to suffer because of her?

  And then, finally, it was time.

  As the Hartnett eighth graders moved en masse to the cafeteria for their meaty goop and tater tots, Charlotte and Zee walked away from them and down two flights of stairs, where Mr. Metos’s new office was. Whatever power Mr. Metos had that allowed him to keep getting employment near Charlotte whenever he needed it did not, apparently, extend to getting a decent office. They’d stuck him in a narrow gray hallway in the school basement, in between storage rooms. The sound of the boiler echoed through the hall.

  “Ready?” Charlotte asked, her hand poised at the door. Her stomach churned. Everything seemed to depend on this moment.

  Zee nodded.

  Mr. Metos sat behind a big, old-looking wooden desk on which perched a school-issue computer. Charlotte couldn’t imagine that was going to get a lot of use; Mr. Metos seemed to think calculators were too modern to be bothered with. There were three boxes of books in one corner, and a file cabinet stood in the back. The room was dark and dingy, with one small egress window in the back providing a small bit of sunlight.

  Urged on by Mr. Metos, the cousins sat down in two metal folding chairs. Charlotte didn’t know there was something that could make her body ache more, but the day was just full of surprises. “I am so glad to see you,” he said, his voice soft. “I have to apologize. I am very sorry for leaving you alone. It was deeply irresponsible of me. I meant to keep you safe, and all I did was endanger you. I mean to make up for my failure. First, Charlotte, what happened to you? I need to know everything. It’s very important. Leave nothing out.”

  “Mr. Metos,” Charlotte interrupted, straightening, “we don’t need your protection.”

  Mr. Metos raised an eyebrow. “You don’t? So those injuries of yours, they were from a car accident?”

  Charlotte flushed. “Mr. Metos, we want to come with you. We want to join the Prometheans.”

  Mr. Metos’s eyes widened. “Join the Prometheans? Goodness, is that what you thought would happen?” He sounded genuinely taken aback. “I see. Well, I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. But that is no job for young people. You two must live your lives. You’re young, you’re just—”

  “Children,” Charlotte finished, her heart sinking.

  “Mr. Metos,” Zee interjected, “we can’t just live our lives now. We know the truth, we saw the Dead, we know how the gods are. We can’t just sit around and do nothing, can we?”

  “That’s exactly what you’ll do,” said Mr. Metos, a flash of anger in his eyes. “I don’t want you involved in this!”

  “We are involved!” Zee said, his voice as forceful as Charlotte had ever heard. “Do you know what happened to Charlotte?”

  Mr. Metos gazed at Zee. “That is what I am trying to get you to tell me.”

  Zee exhaled and glanced at Charlotte, who shrugged. As Zee got up and started pacing around the room, Charlotte told him the whole story. She told him of Zee’s kidnapping by Philonecron, of Poseidon’s plan to lure her onto the sea, of the Siren and the cruise ship, Charlotte’s adventures on Poseidon’s yacht, her efforts to get his trident in order to defeat the Siren, and the ultimate confrontation that sent Poseidon into the watery depths, entombed in the tail of the creature that he had sent to destroy the ship.

  Mr. Metos came as close to a real facial expression as Charlotte had ever seen. “This is all true?” He looked from Charlotte to Zee. Both nodded. He leaned back in his seat and exhaled.

  “I—” He shook his head again, eyes fixed on a point on the floor. “We learned about the cruise ship and the Ketos, but too late. Our eyes were…somewhere else. I never dreamed…I see I was even more negligent than I thought. It’s all my fault.”

  “No,” Charlotte said. “No, you see, we don’t need protection. We can take care of ourselves just fine.”

  Mr. Metos looked grave. “No,” he said. “Charlotte and Zachary, you defied an Olympian. Word of this—” He stopped and continued, as if to himself, “I must inform the others. We may have to move up the timetable.”

  Zee came back to sit down. “Timetable?” Charlotte asked. “For what?”

  Mr. Metos did not answer. “You really handled Poseidon’s trident?”

  Charlotte nodded again, even though it was not a question, really.

  “And”—he eyed them carefully—“you do not know what became of it?”

  “Well, it was, you know, in the Ketos,” Charlotte said. “He swallowed it. I’m sure Poseidon got it back eventually. Once he, you know, extricated himself…”

  Mr. Metos shook his head in wonder. “An object like that…”

  “Well, it only worked for a little bit,” said Charlotte. “Only Poseidon can use it. It only works for a little while once it gets out of his hands.”

  “I suppose that is a blessing,” Mr. Metos said. “If that got into the wrong hands…And Philonecron, you know nothing about what became of him?”

  “No. Not since we blasted him off the ship.” One of Charlotte’s last acts with the trident had been sending Philonecron shooting through the doorway of the ship out into the open sea. It was pretty fun.

  “And Poseidon, the last you saw of him, he was being dragged under the sea?”

  The cousins nodded. “Why?” asked Charlotte.

  Mr. Metos looked at them, as if considering. “It sounds impossible,” he said finally. “I am still not sure I believe it. But Poseidon is…missing.”

  “Missing?” the cousins echoed in unison.

  “Yes. Missing. There is no sign of him. Naturally this has caused some…disruption within the sea realm. For all his faults, the Lord of the Seas maintained a certain…order. The prospect of his rage was a powerful deterrant.”

  “I’ll bet,” muttered Charlotte.

  “Is that what’s going on?” Zee asked. “The tsunamis, the windstorms…”

  “Yes. Some of the gods are…having a little fun. While the cat’s away, the mice will play….”

  “What about the hole in the sea?” Charlotte added.

  “We don’t know. No one knows. It doesn’t seem possible that it’s unrelated to Poseidon’s disappearance, but…”

  “So it’s only going to get worse?”

  Mr. Metos nodded. “I would imagine so. All the…activity is concentrated around the Mediterranean now, but I fail to see how it will stay contained there. One god’s misbehavior begets another’s.”

  Charlotte’s stomach tightened. “You think…that could all happen here, then?”

  Mr. Metos gazed at her. “You can rest assured we are working on it. We are keeping watch, that is our job.”

  “But,” protested Charlotte, “we can help. We want to help.” We need to help, she added silently. An image popped into her head: Maddy and her parents running for their lives.

  “You can help me by staying safe,” Mr. Metos said, his voice on the border between firm and angry. “For once, I want you two to listen to me. What I need is for both of you to be on alert. Keep your eyes out for anything unusual, no matter how small it may seem. You must let me know.”

  “Are you expecting something?” asked Zee. “About us, in particular?”

  Mr. Metos gazed at them impassively. “Ju
st be on the lookout.”

  That sounded promising. When they left Mr. Metos’s office, Charlotte and Zee walked down the hallway in silence for a few moments. “So, what do you think that was about?” Charlotte asked finally. Just be on the lookout. It occurred to her suddenly that Mr. Metos might have very real reasons to think they needed protection.

  “I don’t know,” said Zee. “But we’re going to find out.”

  Charlotte shot him a tired look. Right, Zee. But…“How do you propose we do that?”

  “We’re going to sneak in and search his office,” Zee said. Charlotte stared at him, and he grinned. “When you were telling the whole story about Poseidon? I unlocked his office window.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Epic

  AFTER HAVING TURNED THE SECOND MOST POWERFUL god in the whole Universe into a sea cucumber, Philonecron found himself feeling a little bit giddy. Could you blame him? It was all he could do not to go storming up Olympus that very moment and take what was rightfully his.

  Soon he was on top of the water, riding Poseidon’s chariot toward shore. Naturally he made a few modifications, turning the chariot and horses pitch-black. It went so much better with his coloring. As he sped along on top of the choppy sea waters, moving toward shore, he noticed the water in his wake turning black. He could not help but feel the poetry in it. It was a metaphor made manifest—magnificently so, as it had always been one of his dearest wishes to spread darkness wherever he went.

  As he rode along, holding the horses’ reins in one hand, he gripped his trident in the other, feeling its gentle warm hum against his cold flesh. It liked him, he could tell.

  The sky above him was still dark with night, and the large round moon tipped the waves with white light. It illuminated strange shapes in the water—odd debris. It was not until he saw an enormous, expressionless golden head bobbing up and down in the water that he realized what he was looking at—the head was from a statue of the trident’s previous owner (and as hollow as the one it represented), and this was the wreckage of his yacht.

  He could not help himself—as the blank eyes stared dumbly up at him (though no more dumbly than the god himself ), he turned the trident on it and exploded it. And then, a few yards away, he saw a muscular golden torso—and BAM. And a few yards beyond that, a floating lounge chair—and ZAP!

  Philonecron sped through the night, pointing the trident this way and that, as bursts of light shot from it toward the flotsam and jetsam from the yacht. He heard a gleeful laugh in the night air, and he reflected that the owner of it sounded like he must be very, very happy indeed—and then he realized it was he, Philonecron, laughing from the pure joy of it all. And then—

  “Hey! What are you doing with that?”

  Philonecron whirled around in the chariot to find himself looking down at the insipid form of Poseidon’s son Triton, who was floating on one of the yacht’s inflatable life rafts. Philonecron pulled the horses to a stop while Triton blinked at him stupidly, fingering his conch shell horn, his fish tail flapping, his horse hooves shuffling around on the raft’s surface.

  “Oh, this?” Philonecron purred. “Well, you see, your father gave it to me.”

  Triton frowned. “He did?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Philonecron, eyes innocent. “He was going to go away for a little while and wanted someone who would take proper care of it. He said since his own son was too worthless to use it, he would have to skip a generation, as it were.”

  The boy’s knuckles turned white around the conch shell. “He did not!”

  Really, it was worth it just to see the expression on the boy’s face. Shock, horror—but not disbelief.

  “Oh, all right, no, he didn’t,” admitted Philonecron. “You see, I took it and then turned him into a sea cucumber. And now it’s mine, all mine. Isn’t it marvelous?”

  “I’m telling Uncle Zeus!” Triton said, beginning to back away slowly on his raft. Unfortunately for him, there was not very far to go.

  “No, no,” Philonecron breathed, “that would not be wise. We must be discreet, yes? For, you see, I am planning to march up to Mount Olympus and use this to overthrow your uncle, and when I do that, it’s very important that he’s not expecting me.”

  Triton gasped, as if to suck in the whole sky, and lifted the horn to his lips. But it never got there, for Philonecron swung the trident forward—he was getting really fast with it now—and where there was once was a fish-tailed centaur on a life raft, there was now just a very small, fish-tailed weasel with a tiny conch shell around its neck. As Philonecron urged the horses on, the weasel blew on the shell and it emitted a small squeak.

  Forward he went, through the night, blasting yacht debris as he moved, wielding the trident this way and that, aiming at targets farther and farther away. It was a magnificent ballet of destruction, and Philonecron the prima ballerina. He began to hum a triumphant melody as accompaniment, and soon the whole sky was his orchestra—trumpets and tubas, flutes and French horns, clarinets and chimes, bassoons and contrabassoons, snare drums, tom-toms, tambourines and timpani—and he providing the cymbal crash. He didn’t just point and shoot; he could spin, he could twirl, and land his shots with accuracy and panache. Zip! Zap! The trident was a part of him now, part of his body, his mind, his very soul, and he knew then that the two of them would never be parted.

  Here and there he encountered refugees from Poseidon’s fateful party, their formal wear soaked and tattered. He had met so many of them in his time on the yacht. They laughed at him, they sneered at him, they taunted him—as if any of them would have fared any better against the malevolent machinations of his spot-faced, squeaky-sneakered nemesis. He dealt with them all, one by one, turning them into toads and snails and urchins and eels and pucker-mouthed sucker fishes and sucker-mouthed fish pucks—bim, bam, boom, bibbidi, bobbidi, boo!

  The sea swayed for him, the moon bowed for him, the stars sang out, the wind whipped through his hair, the sky opened up to its boundless infinity. Normally it all would have seemed oppressive, but he understood, now, the beauty in it all. It was for him, there was a whole Universe out there, for him and the trident, too—for them, together, forever—there were barbarous giants locked under the sea, traitorous Titans holding up the earth, murderous malcontents chained up in Tartarus—he would free them all to attend the coronation of chaos for the new king of it all. Demons and Dragons, Cyclops and Gorgons, Chimera and Hydras. Wham! Bam! Alakazam! Eternity! Infinity! Destiny! Take that, and that, and that—

  The next morning Philonecron woke up to find himself lying on the sandy beach of a small island, the trident cradled in his arms. He found himself, oddly, clothed in some kind of straw skirt and wearing a short-sleeved collared shirt with a plague of tropical flowers festering on it. Around him a bevy of strange small sea creatures skittled and scuttled and writhed and wriggled. A few feet away a great Minotaur was passed out on the beach, seaweed tangled in its horns. Next to it dozed a giant Hydra, one head resting on the Minotaur’s bull chest, a plastic flower necklace hanging limply around each of its necks. Two Harpies buzzed around the bright Mediterranean sky, screeching, and a Gorgon sat underneath a tree, gnawing on a large red and green parrot.

  This was probably not as discreet as he would have liked.

  The instant Zeus heard that Philonecron, the greatest genius the Universe had ever known, now possessed one of the artifacts of power, he would surely go into hiding. Philonecron’s plan depended on the element of surprise, on separating Zeus from his thunderbolt—because while Philonecron plus trident were probably not a match for Zeus and his mighty thunderbolt, Zeus without the thunderbolt was almost certainly no match for Philonecron and his most special friend.

  Above him, the song of the island birds rang out through the trees and with a quick flick of the trident, he silenced them. He needed to think. What he needed was distraction, distraction and a place to hide. The sea gods would help—those that were not now invertebrates. As soon as it got out that Pos
eidon was missing, they would start having a little fun. Perhaps Philonecron could help get things started by sending his new monster friends out into the mortal realm.

  But he should probably take off the leis first.

  The morning sun beat down on him, and he felt so exposed, with Zeus’s sky spread out about him. Another flick of the trident and the island was in eternal night. Darkness spread over him like a warm blanket, and he sighed in relief. Silent birds, monsters roaming loose, eternal night—when he took his rightful place on the throne of the Universe, this was what things would look like, only with more torture.

  Oh, he had such splendid plans. Would you like to hear them? You would? Wonderful.

  PHILONECRON’S ACTION PLAN FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

  The Gods. Some would be destroyed, of course. Zeus he would turn into a dung beetle and squash underneath his finest Italian shoes. The rest he would lock under the Earth, where Cronus and his fellows were imprisoned, and let them spend eternity settling their interpersonal issues. He would probably give some of them a chance to pledge eternal fealty to him, and then throw them in with the Titans anyway, because that would be fun.

  Underworld. Ah, his childhood home. It is true you can never go home again, but you can turn it into a demon’s paradise. Back when he was going to take over the Underworld, he thought he’d throw all the Dead into Tartarus, the Underworld’s chamber of eternal torment. But now that he was older and wiser, he realized it would be far better to turn the whole Underworld into Tartarus and set the Erinyes—Tartarus’s creative and vengeful mistresses of punishment—free to use the entire landscape as a playground. Sometimes you just need more room, you know?

  Earth. There would be only minor adjustments: He would turn the sun black and the moon to blood, dry up the seas, poison the lakes, cook up a few deadly plagues, unleash all the beasts and monsters upon the mortal populations, and then sit back and watch the slow, painful extinction of humanity.

  Olympus. Soon to be called Philonecropolis. Oh, it would be the finest of everything—crafted of obsidian and ebony, velvet and silk. He would assemble a team from the best architects and interior designers—taking hearts from a few, brains from others, a few legs here and there. He would install an orchestra pit near his throne room, calling up the world’s greatest musicians to play for him. Eventually they would drop dead from exhaustion, but then he’d just grab a few more from the pit to replace them. The walls he would line with works of the great masters—and perhaps, for fun, their heads as well.