The Mythniks Saga

by Paul Neuhaus

  “No, you’re not getting off the hook that easy. You’re gonna table the Addie thing for right now and give me an honest answer. Gut choice.”

  El shrugged but said, “Let’s trust him” with reasonable confidence.

  I looked to the others. “Trust him,” Ty said (which carried a lot of weight with me). “Trust him,” Petey said. “Trust him... I think,” Chad said. Finally, I turned to Keri with her tattered clothing and windblown hair. “You’re asking me?” she said. “I don’t have a horse in this fight.”

  “Then it’s settled,” I replied. “We trust him. Head over. I’ve been neglecting a friend.” They went on ahead and I doubled back to pick up Hope from where I’d dropped her. “Are you more or less up to speed?” I said to her.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I’ve been listening. Seems like that all could’ve gone better than it did.”

  “Amen. Hey, I’ve got a question for you: How come you of all people didn’t realize Keri had divine blood?”

  “All I can say is a) I’m more or less wired to find Evils so non-Evils generally don’t fire my alarm, and b) It was buried deep. We’re talking super-latent tendencies. I doubt Keri had any idea at all she was different. Something about the situation sparked her.”

  As we walked to join the others, I said, “Do me a favor: Keep an eye on her.”

  “You think she could turn to the Dark Side?”

  “No. Not exactly. I just feel like we should keep our antennas up.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m in full N.P. mode.”

  “N.P. mode?”

  “Nicky Parsons. Pay attention.”

  I sighed. “After all this over, we’re gonna get you the help you so desperately need. Maybe the ghost of Freud still haunts Vienna.”

  I kind of lost track of where we were. Once you get into the non-urban areas of Los Angeles County, my knowledge stops. I was never much for the great outdoors, although I can enjoy nice mountains and forests in limited doses. The world I grew up in was very different than the world of today. It had a magical ambiance that I don’t see anywhere I go (outside of Pan’s magic pinecone). If I can’t get the lands of my youth, I’d just as soon stay where there’s a TV and a refrigerator. I’ve gotta hand it to Sebastian Squire, though. There was no way he could resurrect that magical ambiance I mentioned (the people of today don’t even know it existed), but Acadine was still pretty damn nice.

  With a few other investors, the venture capitalist had built an authentic ancient Greek village in the cradling foothills of a mountain. And, when I say “authentic”, I don’t mean Disneyland Authentic, I mean authentic-authentic. At least by outward appearances, the place was constructed of vintage building materials and the level of technology was consistent with the time of my birth. Of course, the outward appearance was a dodge since the inhabitants wore modern dress and, inside the buildings, there were computers and other modern conveniences. They weren’t savages, after all. As we got out of the limo, I complimented him on his choice of names. “You’re aware of what it refers to?” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Acadine was a magic fountain—mythical even in the time of myth—where writings could be dipped. The writings floated if they were genuine (which is to say philosophically true). If they were false, they sank to the bottom where, supposedly, they were found and eaten by Hades.”

  “That’s exactly right,” he said approvingly. “Someone knows their Greek lore.”

  I smiled at him. He had no idea who I was. When I thought about who else had come along with me, I had to laugh. Keri was the granddaughter of Hermes. Squire had bagged a Pegasus and was clueless about the other treasures he had right under his nose. I decided to leave him out of the loop, at least for the time being. “What’re your intentions regarding our horse?” I said.

  Sebastian shivered. “I wish you wouldn’t put it like that. I can say without hesitation that I don’t want to know Pegasus in the Biblical sense.”

  Petey rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s a load off our minds.”

  Squire turned to the rapper. “You’re the one that tracked Pegasus down. Got him treatment. Arranged for passage to the States. That was some fine work. I’m impressed.”

  Petey nodded. “I know how to find the right people who can find the right people.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Squire replied. “I’m not sure I could replicate what you did, and they tell me I have nearly unlimited resources. What you did wasn’t just about money. It was about craft. Finesse.”

  M.C. Pliny the Elder grinned and said something that surprised me. He wasn’t taking the other man’s compliments at face value. “Easy there, fella. If you wanna fuck me, it’s gonna take more than a little sweet talk.”

  Sebastian stopped short then decided the right thing to do was laugh. With everyone looking at him (including his own driver), he couldn’t do much more than shrug it off. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get some food. I’ll have my people move Pegasus out of the trailer and into some better accommodations.” As if on cue, three guys and a girl—all in Western attire—got to work on our magic horse. I watched them for a moment or two. As I did, I noticed we had a mountain behind us and a cliff in front of us. The cliff was a near vertical drop-off into the ocean four or five stories below. A more majestic location could not have been had.

  We got the dinner we were promised, an outstanding plate of chicken kabobs, hummus, and Greek salad with pita on the side. A restauranteur’s idea of Mediterranean, but delicious nonetheless. Throughout the meal, I was phasing in and out. Sleep was overtaking me. Sebastian Squire was regaling us with tales of adventure and even some of his philosophy vis a vis the Neo-Olympian movement, but I barely heard a word. The only thing that stuck with me was the fact that he’d changed his name from Sebastian Squingey to Sebastian Squire—for obvious reasons. Deep into the barrage of talk, Petey bumped me with his elbow and said, “You okay, girl?”

  I looked at him and smiled. “I’m okay. Just very, very tired.”

  The hip hop entrepreneur banged his ouzo glass on the table and drew everyone’s attention. “I got a lady over here about to go lights-out,” he said. “You got a place where she can crash?” The so-called gangster rapper was by far the biggest gentleman of the group.

  Squire nodded and said, “Yes, of course. How silly of me. I’ve set aside one of the buildings for your group. There’s more than enough room for everyone. Anyone who’s not quite done with the revelry, wait here. Anyone who’s ready for bed, come with me.” Absolutely everyone stood up, and Sebastian laughed. “Shame on you! Letting me prattle on like that! Let’s get you all some rest. No wake-up call.”

  As we moved through the facility, we entered a hallway lined with the same sort of glass cases you’d see in a museum. My eyes homed in on a particular artifact and I went to it as if it called me. “Is this what I think it is?” I said.

  Squire came over and he was all smiles. “If you think it’s Clytemnestra’s dagger, then it’s what you think it is. In any case, you’ve got an excellent eye.”

  I looked at the gorgeous knife behind the glass. The point had a slight upward curve and the handle was gold and jewel-encrusted. It was one of the most beautiful objects I’d ever seen.

  “Who’s Clytemnestra?” Keri asked.

  Squire started to speak, but I cut him off. "Clytemnestra was the wife of Agamemnon. Agamemnon was one of the heroes of the Trojan War. Unfortunately, before he set out for Troy from Greece, he sacrificed his own daughter to the gods, so he and his armies would have good fortune. That didn’t sit well with Clytemnestra for obvious reasons. When Agamemnon came back from the war, his wife—along with her new lover—used this very dagger to slit Agamemnon’s throat.”

  Chad whistled. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you Greeks are sometimes... extreme in your behavior.”

  I smiled at him. “We were Shakespearean before Shakespearean was a thing.”

  Squire resumed his walk out to the grounds an
d we followed him. We saw that Pegasus, busted wing and all, was settled into his new corral. He was eating and didn’t bother to look up (even though Keri waved her arms and yelled, “Yo, Pegasus!”). At the corral, Squire hung a left and took us into a building that looked like a farmhouse on the outside but had all the modern conveniences on the inside. The bathrooms even had heated tiles, so your tootsies wouldn’t get cold when you showered or shit. I guess Sebastian was only willing to take the roughing it bit so far. I got dropped at my room first and I said, “Much obliged, Squingey.” I may’ve forgotten to mention it, but Sebastian was tall, broad-shouldered and handsome. On his other side, I saw Elijah looking at both of us with what might’ve been jealousy. I didn’t have the energy to either stoke that jealousy or slough it off. With everything that’d happened, whether El should be back in my life or not was far down my priority ladder.

  After I’d been shown where all the amenities were, I was damn grateful to have the door shut and be alone for the first time in forever. I didn’t even bother to pee. I took off Hope, put her on the dresser, turned out the lights and—as was my pre-sleep custom—got into the nude. The bed felt so good. The thread count on the sheets must’ve been like a million, and the covers felt great in the super-cooled space. The conditions were optimal, and mama was ready to take a deep dive into slumberland.

  A knock came at the door.

  “Fuck,” I said to myself. Then, much louder, I said, “Go away!”

  Elijah’s voice came through the door. “Come on,” he said. “No more than five minutes, I swear.”

  I really didn’t want to let him in. I was cranky, and I didn’t wanna do or say anything I might regret. “What do you want?”

  “Just to talk. Scout’s honor.”

  I got up with the blankets wrapped around me, opened the door and jumped right back into bed. “El, I don’t wanna be rude to you, but you have no idea how tired I am. I feel like I’ve been up for a week—and not a nothing-week, but a thrill-a-minute week. You can talk, but you gotta talk fast. And don’t expect me to say anything particularly useful. In fact, I’m surprised I was able to string this many words together without throwing up.”

  My ex- stood in the doorway for a moment, processing everything I said. “Okay,” he replied. “I think I got all that.” Then he scanned the room, squinty-eyed, until he saw a chair in the near-dark. He closed the door into the hallway, grabbed the chair and put it next to the bed. He sat down, sighed and said, “Can you explain to me what’s going on?”

  I threw my head back and made an exasperated sound. “That’s not a fast talk. That’s a very long talk, spanning fifteen years and involving numerous supernatural entities.”

  He blinked at me and replied, “I know, but can you explain to me what’s going on?”

  I laid flat in the bed and glared up at the ceiling, going over quick ways I could bring Elijah up to speed. Seeing no alternative, I dove in. Well, actually, I didn’t dive in immediately. There was an outstanding issue that needed to be addressed. “If you come to me, wanting to have a serious conversation,” I said. “Have the decency not to come dressed as a cartoon pony.”

  El put his hood down sheepishly. “Oh. Right. Sorry.” At least he no longer had ears and a mane, so that helped.

  “What’s your life been like since you told me Addie was pregnant?”

  Not expecting the conversation to be turned in his direction, he thought for a moment. “Like a lot of other guys, I guess. Suburban. Not rich, not poor. Failures and successes.”

  “Yeah, I heard about the pet synagogues.”

  He ignored the interjection. “A daughter I’m proud of. A spouse that grew more and more distant. Actually, scratch that, she became distant almost immediately and stayed that way.” He paused, trying to find the right words. “So, obviously, Addie isn’t who I thought she was. Or even what I thought she was. Can you tell me what she is?”

  “You remember my back story, right? I’m from ancient Greece and I’m thousands of years old and all the tales you’ve heard about gods and goddesses are all true.”

  He nodded. “I was unlikely to forget that, yeah.”

  “So, there was this god Hermes. He ran messages back and forth between Olympus and mankind. You know the drill. Anyway, Hermes had an affair with a nymph. A nymph who was two gyros short of a combination platter. This affair produced a daughter. The daughter, unfortunately, takes after her mother. Her name is Adrestia, although you know her as Addie.”

  “I know but how—”

  “Let me get this out so I can go to sleep. And, you better let Squire and everyone else know that, unless this building is on fire, I am not to be awakened until I awaken on my own. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “So, Adrestia, Hermes’ daughter, grows up and her particular idiom seems to be umbrage. She gets offended; she takes revenge. She’s the Beatles of getting even with people—whether they deserve it or not. Thousands of years ago, I got between Addie and a boy she fancied. And, when I say, ‘got between’, I mean in the most innocent way possible. But, in Addie’s melodramatic mind, I fucked him eight ways from Sunday and poisoned his mind against her. To be honest with you, until I saw Addie again, I’d forgotten about the whole thing. But she hadn’t. And when I say she hadn’t, I mean she carried a grudge for thousands of years, tricked you into impregnating her, and forced me into a fifteen yearlong funk.”

  That last bit gave him pause. “Is that really what happened? The part about the funk?”

  “Yeah, but don’t let it go to your head. I’m starting to think it was a decade and a half of unwarranted self-abuse, and I need to be ashamed of it.”

  He chose—wisely—not to tug at the thread. Instead, he wanted to give me a summation to verify he had it straight in his head. “So, bear with me. You and I had what I’d call an almost perfect love affair, but because you crossed a goddess thousands of years ago that love affair was broken up in the name of revenge. And, because of that, we’ve been apart all this time, I have a daughter who was an accident but whom I love, and I have a wife that’s a full-blown psychopath.”

  “Sounds about right, yeah.”

  “Wait. I wasn’t finished.”

  “I’m sorry. Go on...”

  “As a result of drunken sex with said psycho goddess, my daughter has divine powers too. Apparently.”

  “That’s right. You’ve got it.”

  He sat in complete silence for almost a minute and then he did the same thing I probably would’ve done had I been in his position. He stood up, put the chair by the dresser and made for the exit. “Okay,” he said. “I gotta mull this over. We should probably talk about, you know, other stuff, but my head’s too full. See you in the morning.” He left, shutting the door behind him.

  I was relieved he was gone, but also content that we’d gotten some of the talk out of the way. I smoothed the covers out, stretched to my full length and closed my eyes.

  Another knock came at the door.

  I put my pillow over my face and screamed into it. Then I put the pillow aside and said, “Go away!”

  Through the door, came a small voice. “Dora? Can I talk to you?” It was Keri.

  Just as I thought, Maybe I should let her in, Hope whispered, “Maybe you should let her in.”

  “I know, I know,” I replied, gathering the blankets around me and opening the door again. This time, it was me that pulled the chair over closer to the bed.

  Keri came in, shut the door behind her and sat down. “Thanks for letting me in. I know you’re exhausted.”

  “Oh, I’m beyond exhausted,” I said. I was sitting against the wall with my bedding wrapped around me. I decided to save her a little time. “Lemme guess... You wanna talk about suddenly—at the age of fifteen—manifesting powers like you’re some kind of X-man or something.”

  “How’d you guess?”

  I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t know if I can help you,” I said. “I’m thousands of years old, but I’m st
ill a garden variety human. I don’t have any special powers.”

  “Do you know anyone that could mentor me in the ways of... goddess-hood?”

  I smiled a little broader that time. “Did you know the word ‘mentor’ comes from Greek myth? Mentor was a guy’s name. He mentored Odysseus' son Telemachus.”

  She looked at me blankly. “That’s fascinating. It’s a shame we’re not playing bar trivia. We would’ve totally won the free loaded potato skins.”

  “I fucking love loaded potato skins. But let’s table that for now. Here’s what I can tell you... About goddess-hood. The whole Greek myth trip is one hundred percent real. You’re not losing your mind. You’re part human, part goddess. If you want my advice on how to conduct yourself, here it is: lean into the human side. Your dad is a dork-wad, but he’s a dork-wad with a moral compass. Your mother is one of the most vindictive people on the earth, so I’d steer clear. She could mentor you on how to use your powers, but she’d also try and warp you into something you wouldn’t recognize and probably wouldn’t like. Come to think of it, your grandfather—whom you met, but didn’t realize was your grandfather—would be an excellent mentor too—if you take his chronic masturbation and his guilty feelings about Addie out of the equation. I’m not sure where his allegiances lie right now. I don’t think he knows himself. I guess what I’m saying—if I’m even making sense—is, for the time being, talk to your dad. Or any one of the bronies. They’re all good people. And me too, although I’m not saying I’m good or anything. I do promise, that if it’s within my power, I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

  Keri’s eyes grew huge and filled up with water. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Here come the waterworks.”

  “Uh-oh. Come here.”

  She came over to the bed and I gave her a big hug. She was a goofy kid, but I didn’t want to see her hurting—and I sure as hell didn’t want to see her newfound powers ripping her off the rails. As I embraced her, she said, “Are you sure you don’t wanna be my mom?”