Immortal's Spring (The Chrysomelia Stories)

by Molly Ringle

  “Yes fucking way. And doesn’t it sort of make sense? Hera, along with Zeus, actually did a fair amount back then to undermine our cause, although that wasn’t their intent. Also makes sense that Quentin would be strangely driven by an obsession with immortals, and seek glory in something to do with us.”

  “So Landon, her grandson in this life. Who was he back then?”

  “In the old days I occasionally went down to talk to Zeus and Hera when they were dead, in the Underworld. I’d bring them news they asked for. One thing Hera wanted to know was how her family was doing—great-great-grandchildren and such. She’d mostly lost touch with them, but she wanted to know what they were up to.”

  Zoe began to understand. “Landon’s soul was one of them.”

  “Hera’s great-great-I-forget-how-many-greats-grandson.”

  “What was his name? Where did he live?”

  “Hera was originally from Crete, like Zeus and Hades, and her descendants still lived there.” Niko spent a moment cleaning his fingernail before answering the first question. “His name was Krokos.”

  “So you went to find them for Hera, and…”

  Niko’s lips curved up a moment as she let the sentence hang unfinished. “He was obviously interested in me and in need of affection. So I provided a little.”

  “One of your many loves.”

  “’Love,’ well…” Niko gazed toward the sea. “Wouldn’t say that. Mostly I pitied him.”

  She felt an unexpected twinge of pity too for Landon’s ancient soul—along with fondness toward Niko for being unusually open with her. “But he loved you?”

  “If he keeps on his current path, he’ll end up here in our domain quite soon and we can ask him.” He hopped to his feet.

  She guessed this rare confessional hour was over. “So now you and Ade are off to torment him.”

  “Hmm, I sense reproach. The boy’s fallen under a bad influence, I’m sure you’d agree. But I think he might be malleable. Perhaps we can convince him to help us.” His sinister emphasis on the word “convince” made Zoe uneasy.

  “Make sure you two don’t turn as bad as them,” she said.

  “I won’t let Ade do the dirty work. As for me—well, love, isn’t it already too late?” He smiled, but his eyes had reverted to the haunted look they’d carried too often lately.

  “No, it isn’t. Niko…”

  “We’ll let you know how it goes.” He lifted his chin in farewell, and walked off.

  Chapter Twenty

  A lot was happening in Poseidon’s life. Like, a lot. Liam zoomed through it, eager to get the whole picture like Niko and Adrian and the others had.

  Poseidon finally figured out he wasn’t merely slow to age but actually immortal. That became pretty clear when a man jumped him on a road on the mainland one night, trying to rob him. Poseidon threw him off, but the man lunged at him again, and sliced his blade into Poseidon’s chest, all the way through to his back. In agony, Poseidon crashed to the ground. The thief knelt and swiftly began untying the bag of bronze and jewels from Poseidon’s belt.

  In what he thought was his dying burst of strength, Poseidon yanked the sword out of his body and stabbed the man with it. The thief fell twitching and gasping, and soon went still, blood trickling from his mouth into the dust.

  Poseidon sat dizzily, his hand over the wound in his chest. Blood pulsed out with each heartbeat. Surely he was about to die.

  But the bleeding stopped, and his strength crept back. He wiped off the blood and stared in astonishment at his chest in the moonlight. The wound was closing up, sealing itself. He sat straighter. His dizziness was receding. His breathing, his heartbeat, his strength—all were quickly approaching normal.

  He sat very still, barely even thinking about how a criminal lay freshly dead next to him and he’d have to report it to the nearest town.

  Instead he thought about one of his last conversations with his mother, who had died recently after a long illness.

  “You never get ill,” she had said. “You don’t age. When you’re hurt you heal instantly, or at least overnight.”

  “Mother…”

  “And your strength, and your water miracles—listen, I’ve heard of such people.”

  “I’m just me. I don’t know why this happens, but it’s good, isn’t it?”

  She shook her head, closing her eyes in her feverish weakness. “You can’t stay. Not much longer. You’ve seen how people have started behaving around you. Before long everyone will shun you.”

  “But where am I supposed to go?”

  “Ask around. Not here—on the mainland. Ask about others like you, where to find them. But be careful. Don’t let people know about you. Not until you find the others.”

  For the last few months he’d been recovering from the grief of losing her, and had been helping his sister and nieces and nephews feel more settled. He hadn’t given much thought to finding others like himself, and rather doubted they existed. But now…

  He didn’t return to Skyros this time. Instead he spent a couple of days visiting the nearest two cities, and did some asking around, in which he tried to sound merely like a curious traveler in search of tales. Eventually he tracked down the stories his mother had heard. A priestess who lived in Crete was said to know actual immortals. Poseidon would have thought it just a fanciful invention, except that the accounts matched his own experience eerily: those immortals were people born like the rest of humanity, but they never aged, never got sick, healed amazingly fast, and wielded unheard-of strength. None of the stories mentioned these people controlling water the way he could, but the rest was enough to convince him. There weren’t many of such people, it would seem. One story said just two, another claimed maybe five or six but no more than that.

  Where did these beings live?, Poseidon asked.

  A palace on a mountaintop, some said.

  No, their own island, farther south, said another.

  No, they were itinerant, someone else claimed; moving about and performing miracles—defeating armies singlehanded, and so forth.

  The only thing everyone agreed on was the woman in Crete, the high priestess of Knossos. She was the one who had befriended them all.

  At the shore at Euboia the next afternoon, Poseidon joined the crew of a large ship on its way to Crete. They wouldn’t sail till morning, so he walked alone a while on the shore, in a turmoil of confusion. About to undertake a journey to a priestess to ask about immortality, he felt far more out of his depth than he ever did while swimming alone in the middle of the sea. He clambered over a rocky headland and down the other side to a spot that suddenly looked familiar. Lambent tide pools reflected the last glow of light in the sky. The rocky headland sheltered the beach from the wind, creating a calmer haven here.

  It was the place he had seen the young woman on that swim. And here she was again.

  As before, she sat by a tide pool, but this time her legs weren’t in it. Her back was to Poseidon and she held her hand cupped over the surface of the water, looking down at it, as if watching reflections.

  He tried to reach her before she noticed him, but one rock scraped against another under his foot, and she turned.

  Maybe it was the twilight, but she already looked prettier than the first time he’d seen her, last year. Her eyes seemed to have an extra velvety darkness of lashes around them, and her hair was twisted and pinned in a way that especially became her, with pieces of it coming loose beside one ear.

  “You,” she said.

  “Been looking for me?” He sounded cockier than he meant to, then made it worse by putting a swagger in his step as he walked toward her.

  She looked away in disdain. “I guess Skyros is as boring as they say, if you keep coming over here to bother me instead.”

  Still, she didn’t sound truly scornful, so he sat down next to her. “This time I’m going farther. To Crete.”

  She looked at him again, and her eyebrows twisted up in disbelief. “Swimming?”
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  “No, on a ship.” He looked out to sea. “It’s…all very strange.”

  She swung her hand over the tide pool’s surface a while. He saw the motion in the corner of his eye, and heard the ripple in the water. “So you really swam all the way back to Skyros last time?” she asked.

  She had been waiting here, as he suggested, when he’d returned to swim home that day. She had told him with annoyance, “You’ll probably drown, you know,” but then she’d climbed higher on the rocky slope to watch him as he swam away. Every time he’d looked back, she’d still been there, a little white spot on the rocks, until he couldn’t see her anymore.

  “I did,” he said. “Were you worried?”

  She snorted as if to tell him not to flatter himself. The water rippled again as she moved her hand. “The sea must like you.”

  He looked at her. She kept her gaze turned down to the tide pool. “It seems to,” he said. “I don’t know why. But I feel like it’ll never hurt me, which is not something I can say about other people.”

  She returned his thoughtful gaze a moment. Then she tilted her chin toward the tide pool, where her hand still trailed, and asked, “Can you do this with water?”

  He looked at the pool, and blinked in astonishment. The surface still rippled in response to the movement of her hand, but she wasn’t actually touching it. Her fingers and palm hovered just above the water—and the water pulled in little waves toward her, as if she was causing an invisible tide.

  He cast a long, searching look at this woman. Could she be like him, with all the same powers? Could he persuade her to join him in going to Crete, if so? He suddenly had a thousand questions for her and his tongue knotted up, lost as to where to start.

  Meanwhile she looked at him with fiercer and more fearful defensiveness. Showing him this skill was clearly risky for her. If others learned of it, she’d be labeled a witch, an unnatural, just as he was.

  Rather than answer in words, he clasped her wrist and drew her hand back from the water. As her touch grew distant from it, the ripples died and the pool went still. Poseidon then opened his own palm toward the pool. He didn’t even need to do that; he’d always been able to work his influence with thought alone. But the gesture would make it clear that he was the acting power behind what happened next.

  A bucket’s worth of the water surged up out of the tidepool in a great slosh, and splashed down, half of it washing into the next pool over, the rest scattering in drops on the rock between.

  The woman gasped, then stared at him.

  He shrugged self-consciously.

  She looked him up and down. “The water does like you.”

  “My name’s Poseidon. What’s yours?”

  Her uncanny eyes returned to his. “Amphitrite.”

  They talked until the sun’s light had vanished entirely from the horizon, and stars came out to dominate the sky. He learned she was nineteen, and didn’t have the same powers as he did. Her water affinity only extended as far as the modest influence she had just demonstrated, along with a general feeling of safety in or around water. Though healthier than most people, she did get sick sometimes, and her wounds didn’t heal unnaturally fast. Unlike Poseidon, she had no reason to think she might be immortal. He told her everything about his strange experiences, down to this latest idea of finding the Knossos priestess to learn what he was.

  “Then that’s obviously where you should go,” Amphitrite said. “After that, you have to come back and tell me what she said, because I’ll be dying of curiosity.”

  “You’ll be pining away without me?” he teased—or meant to tease, but hopefulness emerged in his voice.

  “You wish.” She ducked her head, and her hand found his, between them. “Even if I was,” she added, “I’m a concubine, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  The pang to his heart told him he’d be doing more than a little pining himself. “You are?”

  “Have been since I was fifteen. He needs heirs, and his wife is slow to conceive, so I have babies for him and they raise them. Three so far. Two girls and a boy.”

  “It sounds like you hate him. Is he awful? Should I kill him for you?”

  She smirked. “He’s rich, so at least I’m comfortable. When he doesn’t beat me, that is.”

  Poseidon opened his mouth to rage against this boor, but Amphitrite continued in a matter-of-fact way, “Anyway, he’s getting old, so with any luck he’ll die one of these years. Then at least I can become a servant in the household of one of my children, when they grow up and marry.”

  Poseidon grimaced at the starlight dancing on the sea. He’d rarely realized how lucky he was to have been born male, and to have had a mother who hadn’t pushed him into marriage. Instead she had only urged him off the island, to find out how to stay safe and live his unusual life best. But what good was his unusual life if he didn’t help those he liked?

  “You could run away,” he told Amphitrite. “Come with me. To Crete.”

  “I can’t, stupid.”

  “Why not?”

  “I barely know you. This is where I live. You’re crazy.”

  “Well, then how about this: I’ll come back as soon as I can and find you, and if you want to run away later—whether you think I’m crazy or not—then I’ll help you.”

  “Very well,” she said. “But I’ll always think you’re crazy.” Nonetheless, she kept her hand on top of his.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hekate threw herself into the work of establishing centers of learning for the allies of the immortals. The first was in Athens, under the protection and encouragement of Athena, and was presided over by some of the priests and priestesses who had proven loyal in the Dionysia and similar festivals. Athena herself, with occasional help from Hekate or other immortals, oversaw the first several months of instruction. Knowledge seekers of nearly all ages came to learn the truths that only the immortals could give, the foremost truths being the existence of the spirit realm and the Underworld, and that the immortals did not cause plagues or wars, and wished only health and prosperity upon mortals. As for the tree of immortality and other Underworld powers, those were kept secret for now, though Hekate and her friends did of course consider their longest-running and most companionable supporters as candidates for immortality. But the fruit’s powers, they agreed, were too contentious to speak freely of, even in trusted circles.

  Thanatos did grow vocally irate at the word of this new temple. However, within Athens, a well-guarded city where immortals were popular, the enemy had almost no luck infiltrating and causing actual damage. So the Athens Temple flourished, its membership numbers growing every month.

  After so long living with grief and fear—and minor shame about certain Dionysia moments, even though Hermes treated her the same as ever when she saw him lately—Hekate finally began to find life inspiring again. She worked hard, what with errands for murdered souls, taking care of the sick, delivering babies, and assisting at the Athens Temple, but she felt happy.

  Dionysos remarked upon it last visit, curling her hair around his finger fondly. “You’re so alive again. You’re unstoppable. It’s wonderful.”

  “If I had my magic back, then I’d be unstoppable,” she answered. Still, she now felt as contented by the good work she was doing as she had ever felt when exploring her powers.

  But her magic would have allowed her to do even more good. She sometimes thought so, wistfully, when gazing upon a rising moon, or wandering the seashore on a summer night, sand warm under her bare feet, mysterious luminescence sparkling within the waves. Ah, to feel those powers again, and to direct them toward those who could benefit: the students, the suffering patients, the ailing crops or livestock.

  With the success of the Athens Temple, the immortals decided after another year to establish similar centers elsewhere. The Athens priestesses insisted upon Eleusis, a town not far from Athens, on a gulf coast. “It’s a sacred site,” they told Hekate and Athena. “It has a beauty and a magic. Ever
yone feels it. You’ll see.”

  When Hekate arrived at the Great Goddess’ sanctuary in Eleusis, and knelt to dip her fingers in the placid water of its spring, she did feel a hum of something almost like the energies she used to feel. The Eleusis sanctuary was every bit as lovely and tranquil as promised. The hillside overlooked the shining sea. Olive trees and tumbled gray-white boulders lined the roads that led past the town’s houses and up to the temple. Several large stone slabs had been dragged here and set up on end in a circle around the well, and a roof of timbers and stone tiles had been laid across them, with a hole left in the center—where, Hekate assumed, the moon sometimes shone in and touched the water that welled up in the spring.

  The head priestess and her assistants greeted Hekate, and proved themselves even more charming than their surroundings. They already so keenly understood the workings of natural powers that Hekate laughed and wondered aloud if there was anything left to teach them. But there was, of course, since most mortals could only catch glimpses or hints of the spirit realm, and knew little about its details. The group at Eleusis begged her to stay all day and talk to them. By evening, Hekate already felt ready to defend this town against Thanatos with all the ardor of a soldier.

  Which was exactly what she had to do a few months later.

  Thanatos heard of the new alliance between the Eleusis sanctuary and the immortals. A group arrived from another city, six men and women who preached their hate on the streets and shouted threats against the temple of “unnaturals.” Eleusis’ priestess answered with calm defiance, telling the itinerant preachers to go home to their own towns. The threats mounted. Eleusis’ answer was the same. But the priestess, along with the worried Hekate, Apollo, and Artemis, arranged for armed guards during the times when students came to the sanctuary. Eleusis had walls encircling the town, like most cities, but it was a small town with nowhere near the fighting power of Athens. Nonetheless, the guards’ presence worked for a while; Thanatos grumbled but retreated.

  Then on a spring afternoon, when the darkness was falling early behind thick clouds, the enemy returned. Hekate happened to be there that day, sitting under the sanctuary roof with twenty students and six priestesses, priests, and attendants. Everyone was wrapped in wool cloaks, for the wind had been blowing cold all day, and now was picking up and threatening rain. But the students all wore bright expressions as they soaked up Hekate’s explanations and peppered her with questions.