by Joan Holub
She rose in altitude, hoping to pick up speed. Traveling by chariot would’ve been faster than winged sandals, but she didn’t have a chariot. Phaeton did, though. By now she was sure of it. A stolen one. And he also had a big head start.
Pegasus, Zeus’s winged horse, was cavorting up ahead in the sky. As she passed him, she slowed briefly and gave him a quick pat. If only she could ride him, she’d soon catch up with Phaeton. Alas, Pegasus was not for loan and rarely allowed anyone but Zeus to ride him. Too bad she didn’t have her own set of wings, like Eros did!
Pheme looked at the sky overhead. Shading her eyes from the glare, she watched Helios thunder westward. Crowned with the corona of the sun, he stood tall in the chariot, skillfully guiding his fiery horses. His purple robes billowed out behind him.
When the sun set this evening, it would mean that Helios had reached the land of the Hesperides, his westernmost destination. Night would fall, and he would descend into a golden cup that would carry him back to his palace in the east, where the sun would rise again tomorrow.
Who would get to the palace first—him or Phaeton?
Phaeton had said he would remain a mortal unless his family’s mark of immortality were passed on to him. Rumor had it that Helios could send out solar flares to zap any mortals who displeased him. What if Helios wasn’t pleased to see Phaeton? What a mess!
Whoo! Whoo! The cry of an owl drew Pheme’s attention. Fixing her with its large blue-gray eyes, it glided down to fly alongside her. Astonished, Pheme tried to shoo it away.
But as it continued to keep pace with her, she turned suspicious. First of all, no owl had ever flown beside her before. Second, she’d never seen one with blue-gray eyes.
“Athena, is that you?” she asked. Like lots of other gods and goddesses, Athena could shape-shift. And everyone knew she usually took the form of an owl when she did. It was her favorite animal. Unfortunately, shape-shifting wasn’t a talent Pheme possessed. Otherwise she could’ve changed herself into a peregrine falcon now and soared to the sun god’s palace!
After brushing Pheme’s shoulder with one of its wings, the owl then veered gracefully toward an orchard below. Sure that she was meant to follow, Pheme did. If this was Athena, she must want to talk, something she couldn’t do while in owl form.
“Athena?” Pheme asked as she touched down.
“Whoo whoo else?” Athena asked as she shape-shifted back to her goddess form. “I saw your drawing in the office,” she explained quickly. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
Pheme nodded. “Phaeton’s—” But that was as far as she could get before the familiar tickle came into her throat. She swallowed hard as the also familiar feeling of frustration washed over her.
“You were trying to tell us something about him at breakfast, weren’t you?” said Athena.
Pheme nodded. She fixed the wings of her sandals so she could walk in them, then the girls headed onward on foot.
“So you figured out what that drawing meant?” Pheme asked.
“It took me a while,” Athena told her, “but yes. You think Phaeton has taken Artemis’s chariot, right? Dad’s not very good at drawing either,” she added. “By now I’ve gotten pretty good at deciphering the inartistic sketches he sometimes includes in his notes to me.”
“Is that why you followed me? So you could dis my drawing skills? I’ve got to get to Helios’s palace before—” But then Pheme stopped talking, because the tickle in her throat was back.
As she passed a fruit tree, she reached up to pick a couple of pears. She offered one to Athena, but Athena shook her head. Medusa had brought some ambrosia bars to share on their trip to see the Gray Ladies. But Pheme hadn’t had anything to eat since then. She bit into the fruit and munched as they walked eastward.
“This is so annoying!” Pheme said between bites. “I can’t tell you what I need to! Can you take your dumb spell off? It’s important, I promise.”
Looking distressed, Athena shook her head. “I’d remove it if I could. But I can’t. There’s nothing we can do but wait till the spell wears off on its own.”
Pheme had been afraid that might be the case. “I need to go,” she repeated, tossing away her half-eaten pear.
“I’m coming with you,” Athena said. “Together we can travel faster.”
“How?” asked Pheme. “You know I can’t shape-shift.”
“If you’ll just let me cast a—”
“Oh, no,” Pheme said, taking a couple of steps backward. “Not another spell!”
“Just a little one,” Athena promised. “A very little one.” Before Pheme could say another word, Athena uttered her spell:
You shall hitch a ride with me
As a teeny-tiny flea.
Instantly Pheme felt herself shrinking and growing lighter. And hoppier. Boing! Boing! Wow! Now she could hop over a thousand times higher than she was tall. She was a flea! A flea wearing a teeny-tiny chiton and winged sandals. The spell had shrunk them, too.
Ha! thought Pheme, recalling that Athena had called her spell a very little one. Few things were smaller than a flea!
In the meantime Athena had changed back into an owl. Boing! Pheme hopped up onto her shoulder and nestled under one of her neck feathers. Then they were off.
They flew silently for several hours, unable to speak while in bird and bug form. If Pheme added in the hours she’d spent traveling with Medusa to the Gray Ladies’ office that morning, this was the most time she’d ever spent whizzing through the air in a single day.
Eventually the sun began to set. Which meant that Helios had reached the land of the Hesperides. Soon his golden cup would carry him back to his palace.
Athena veered downward as the sky darkened. She was probably tired after hours spent skimming over forests and towns, across rivers and oceans, and above hills and mountains, Pheme figured. And Pheme would be glad for a rest herself. Because even though she wasn’t doing the flying, she was tired of being a flea. It felt, well, belittleing!
As soon as they touched down on Earth, they both regained their goddess forms. Pheme spotted a cave up ahead, and they took refuge inside. Both curled up to rest for an hour or two. At least that’s how long they’d intended to sleep.
Kraak! Kraak!
“What was that?” Pheme sat up and looked at Athena. She was lying a few feet away, still dozing. They’d overslept. It was almost dawn!
Kraak! Kraak! Suddenly a creature with the body of a lion, and the front claws, head, and wings of an eagle appeared from deep inside the cave.
“Oh, no! A griffin!” whispered Pheme. It was headed their way. And it didn’t look too happy to have visitors. No surprise, since cave-dwelling griffins were known to guard treasure. It was probably worried that the girls had come to steal whatever was hidden in the cave—gold, most likely.
“We don’t want your treasure!” Pheme assured it as she inched over to nudge Athena.
Kraak! Kraak! An angry, disbelieving look shone in the griffin’s ruby-red eyes. It flapped its enormous wings at them.
“Wake up, Athena!” Pheme shook the still-slumbering girl, who had somehow managed to sleep through the griffin’s loud cries.
“Wah?” Athena said drowsily. Quickly Pheme slipped one of her own winged sandals—which had become normal size again after she’d regained her goddess form—onto Athena’s bare foot. Then she slipped the other sandal back onto her own foot. As the laces twined around their ankles and the wings at their heels began to flap, Pheme grabbed Athena’s hand and tugged her toward the exit.
“Ye gods! Is that a griffin?” Athena shrieked just before their sandals whisked them out of the cave.
Kraaaak! The griffin flew at them, its wicked talons outstretched. Fortunately, it stopped at the entrance to the cave.
“Phew! That was close,” said Pheme.
Now fully awake, Athena stared at her as they flew on in girl form, moving eastward.
Pheme braced herself, expecting Athena to condemn her for the
poor judgment she’d shown in selecting that particular cave as a refuge. It wouldn’t be fair, but that would be typical of the crummy way things were going in her life this week.
Instead Athena blurted out, “You just saved my life!” Of course, that wasn’t exactly true. They were both immortal, and immortals couldn’t die. But they still could’ve been hurt.
Athena wrapped her arm around Pheme’s waist and gave her a quick hug. “Thanks.”
The look in Athena’s eyes as she smiled was one Pheme got so seldomly that it took her a few moments to puzzle it out. Finally she realized what it was. Gratitude.
11
Running Wild
JUST AS THE SKY BEGAN TO LIGHTEN ONLY moments before dawn, the girls reached Helios’s gleaming golden palace at last. Three stories high with a gold-tiled roof and lots of gold columns, it was surrounded by an amazingly ornate golden gate. At midday the palace must gleam as brightly as the sun itself! thought Pheme.
“Look,” Athena said, nudging Pheme with an elbow. “Artemis’s deer!”
Sure enough, all four of the golden-antlered, milk-white deer were there in front of the magnificent palace. They were grazing on the wide lawn, and beyond them stood Artemis’s chariot.
“It’s lost a wheel,” Athena noted as they touched down near the chariot. “Phaeton was probably driving it too recklessly. He could’ve benefited from Dad’s chariot safety lecture.” She bent to examine the damage.
Pheme looked around. “Where is that boy, anyway?” she muttered. They needed to find him right away!
A sudden shift of light drew the girls’ eyes upward. The sky was turning pink. Dawn had come.
Helios’s sun chariot rose from behind the palace gates, right on time. But something was horribly wrong!
“Why is it wobbling like that?” Athena asked.
A glance at the driver confirmed Pheme’s worst fears. She pointed. “Because Phaeton’s driving it. Alone. We got here too late!” The sun chariot rose higher, lurching this way and that. They didn’t dare call out to him. He might lose control and crash!
“I’ll go see if I can find the missing wheel for Artemis’s chariot so we can catch him. You find Helios,” suggested Athena.
With that, they separated, and Pheme ran to the palace gates. As she peered through the bars, Helios came racing out of the palace. His shining crown of sun rays slipped to one side as he ran, and the back of his purple robe flapped in the air behind him.
Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted to Phaeton, “Pull hard to your left, Son! You’ve got to make those horses respect you!” But Phaeton was already too far away to hear him.
Pheme rattled the gates, but they were locked. Her words puffed above her head as she shouted through the golden bars at Helios. “He’ll never be able to handle those horses. You’ve got to stop him!”
Startled to see a visitor, Helios nevertheless waved an arm toward the gates, causing them to spring open. Barely glancing at Pheme, since his attention was on the chariot, he said, “There’s no way to stop him. Unless you happen to have another sun chariot. Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m Pheme. I came here with Zeus’s daughter Athena from Mount Olympus Academy,” she said hurriedly. She pointed to Artemis’s chariot. “Phaeton stole that, and . . .”
She paused, suddenly realizing that her throat felt fine. And she wasn’t making animal sounds. With the coming of dawn the twenty-four hours were over. The anti-gossip spell had ended. Now she could say whatever she wanted to again!
“No time to explain everything now,” she told Helios. “Athena’s trying to fix Artemis’s chariot. We’ve got to act fast to stop Phaeton before he crashes into the Earth and everything goes up in flames!”
Helios shook his head mournfully. “Even if Athena does fix the chariot, it won’t help. No mere deer-drawn chariot could ever catch my fiery steeds.”
“Then we need to get a warning to Zeus!” Pheme exclaimed desperately. If Principal Zeus had seen and understood her drawing, he might already be on his way. But she couldn’t count on that. She had to spread the news of the coming disaster far and wide and hope Zeus got wind of it before it was too late!
“Found it!” Athena shouted just then from the far side of the wide lawn. She was rolling the missing wheel across the grass. As soon as she reached the chariot, she began to wedge the wheel back into place. In the meantime Pheme whistled for Artemis’s deer. She hitched them to the chariot as Helios helped Athena finish replacing the wheel.
“I’ll take Artemis’s chariot and try to get a message to Zeus,” Pheme said when all was ready.
“Maybe I should go with you,” Athena said anxiously. “What if the wheel falls off again and you need help getting it back on?”
Pheme shook her head. “I’ll be fine.” Her voice sounded more confident than she felt. Though she’d done okay in chariot safety classes, she’d never driven a chariot on a long journey like the one she now planned to undertake.
“All right, then,” said Athena. “I’ll stay and try to help Helios build a new chariot.”
Pheme’s knees shook as she climbed into the chariot and took up the reins. As Artemis’s milk-white deer pulled the chariot into the sky, Pheme waved good-bye to Athena and Helios. If disaster came, she might never see them again!
Taking the most direct route toward Mount Olympus and the Academy, Pheme swooped low over every town and village she came to and shouted out her news. “Doomsday is coming! Helios’s sun chariot is in danger of crashing! We must get word to Zeus! Run to the temples—pass the word to him!”
Now that she was no longer under Athena’s spell, her words rang out loud and clear. And after puffing from her lips, they rose high in the air for all to see. The townspeople and villagers took up the call, spreading her message far and wide.
Despite never having flown a chariot outside the school grounds, Pheme had absorbed more lessons from all those chariot safety assemblies than she would’ve believed possible. Expertly she guided the deer over hills, through valleys, and across rivers, calling out her news to everyone she saw.
Meanwhile, the sun chariot continued to lurch crazily as it made its way across the sky above her. It was far larger than the one Pheme was driving, and its team of horses was much stronger than Artemis’s deer. Looked like Phaeton was barely managing to hold on. And then suddenly he no longer could.
“Ye gods!” Pheme cried as she saw the horses wrench the reins free from his hands. He hung on for dear life as they began to run wild, slinging the sun chariot this way and that behind them.
As Pheme sailed onward, over the sea toward MOA, she watched Helios’s horses gallop straight up to the very top of the sky. Then suddenly they plunged down, setting the tops of the mountains and hills surrounding Mount Olympus on fire!
Smoke billowed up around her. Pheme had never felt more terrified. Where was Zeus? Surely the warnings the mortals had sent from the temples must have reached him by now. If they hadn’t, the sight of the fiery destruction would soon alert him. But by then it might be too late.
“Help!” she heard Phaeton cry out. He was mortal. He’d die if the sun chariot crashed. Of course, he wouldn’t be the only one to perish if the Earth burned and the sun went out!
Still, what could she do to stop it from happening? She was no hero!
But then she remembered Athena’s words and her look of gratitude as Pheme had whisked her from the griffin’s cave. “You just saved my life!” she’d exclaimed. The memory gave Pheme courage.
She watched as Helios’s horses soared high into the air again. She knew it was only a matter of seconds before they went into another dive. When they did, she would be ready.
As the horses began to plunge toward another hill, Pheme spurred Artemis’s deer toward it. “Bail out as you near the ground,” she shouted to Phaeton. “Then roll downhill. I’ll be waiting!”
Even though she’d shouted as loud as she could, there was no way he would hear her words from so far
away. But maybe he would see them. Her puffed words floated higher than ever before—large and clearly visible above the smoke and fire.
Seconds later there was a burst of flame among the hills as the golden horses touched down again. Then all was obscured in a dense curtain of smoke.
Pheme landed at the bottom of the burning hill to wait, hoping against hope that Phaeton had seen her message, that he had been able to jump clear of the chariot and the fire and would soon appear before her eyes.
As the horses broke free of the smoke and began to climb again, she strained to see if the foolish boy was still in the sun god’s chariot. But before the chariot could rise from the smoke, a winged figure burst through the clouds above her.
It was Zeus! Riding on Pegasus! And he was holding an enormous, sizzling thunderbolt. Speechless with horror, she saw him draw back his arm and hurl the bolt with all his might.
Ka-BOOM! It struck Helios’s sun chariot and blew it to smithereens. As the pieces fell to Earth, the team of fiery horses bolted safely away.
And except for the flames in the hills, the entire world went dark.
12
A New Dawn
GRADUALLY PHEME WAS ABLE TO MAKE OUT Phaeton’s figure stumbling in the surrounding darkness as fires still raged behind him. She sagged against the side of Artemis’s chariot in relief. He wasn’t dead. At least something had gone right!
Cradling his right arm in his left one, he climbed up beside her in Artemis’s chariot. “Are you okay?” she asked, peering at him through the dimness.
“I think so,” he said. “Just a few scrapes and burns. Nothing major. But where’d the sun go?”
Now that she knew he wasn’t badly hurt, anger rose up inside her. “It was destroyed, obviously!” she scolded. “Not to mention that Earth and Mount Olympus almost got burned up. The fires still rage even now. How could you be so totally stupid?”