Mortal Gods

by Kendare Blake

  “Did you get the maps?” Cassandra asked. Maps of every continent known to house a rain forest or jungle that might be the one Artemis ran through. Athena wanted her to use her sight on the maps to figure out which one it was. Probably a stupid idea. She’d never tried it before, and the only thing she knew about her “gift” was that it was generally disobedient.

  “I did,” Hermes said. “Do you want to do it now? Or is my eating going to distract you?”

  “Well, it looks like you might be eating for the next few hours, so I guess we should go ahead.” Cassandra smiled and took off her coat.

  “The maps are in Athena’s room.” Hermes jerked his head toward the stairs. “On her desk.”

  “Sure, I’ll go get them.” Odysseus crinkled his eyebrows. “Bossy.”

  Andie plunked down on the sofa beside Cassandra.

  “Do you want me to light some candles or something? Set the mood for the voodoo … that you do…” Andie trailed off. She sounded like Aidan. Always wanting Cassandra to play the part. Trances and smoke and mirrors. Magic words.

  “It’ll either work or it won’t.”

  Odysseus returned with the maps and spread them out on the coffee table. A few were rolled and needed to be weighted down with coasters. Cassandra breathed deep. Odysseus, Hermes, and Andie all stared expectantly, but the green splotches of forest stretched out across the maps were just green splotches. Nothing jumped out three-dimensionally. Nothing moved.

  “I don’t know what Athena thought would happen,” said Cassandra. “That I’d see a miniaturized Artemis X-ing her way through the Congo?” She looked up at Hermes. “You’re never going to find her. She’s probably dead, and how would you even know where to start?”

  Odysseus pushed the maps closer. “Just give it a minute.”

  She opened her mouth to say there was no point, but what came out was, “Taman Negara.”

  “What?”

  Cassandra didn’t know. The words meant nothing to her, but when she looked at the map again her finger struck the paper like a dart.

  Hermes leaned in. “Malaysia.” He groaned. “Damn you, Artemis. Why not Guatemala? It would’ve been so much closer.”

  “Have you ever been there?” Andie asked.

  “I’ve been everywhere,” Hermes replied. “Though not for some time. We’ll have to fly into Kuala Lumpur. Get some guides. It’d be faster if I went by myself.”

  “Everything would be faster if you went by yourself,” Odysseus said. “But you know how Athena feels about us going out on our own.”

  Only Athena went anywhere alone. The others were guarded and watched, paired up in a buddy system like children. Cassandra, Andie, and Henry most of all. Odysseus and Hermes couldn’t leave until Athena returned to take over babysitting the mortals.

  Cassandra watched Odysseus study the map. It was a wonder he was allowed to go anywhere. The way Athena looked at him when he wasn’t watching … telling people he was her cousin from overseas had been an idiotic choice. The minute anyone saw them together, they must’ve thought the pair were incestuous perverts.

  “When you get back,” Andie said suddenly, “would you … I mean, do you think you could”—she nodded toward the sword—“teach me how to use that?”

  “Since when do you want to learn?” Cassandra asked. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with your old life.” Your old life. The words stuck to her tongue. Memories stuck in Cassandra’s head from thousands of years ago. She hadn’t had the choice to remember or not. Athena hadn’t given her one. But Andie was different. And she’d decided to stay herself.

  Resentment tightened Cassandra’s throat, but she took a breath. What was done was done, and if she was honest, she wasn’t sure what choice she would’ve made if she had been given one.

  “It’s not that I want to be another person. Or the old me,” Andie said. “It’s just that I feel different. Stronger. Almost like my arms remember”—she looked at the sword—“holding something like that.”

  “Rumor had it you were better with a bow,” Odysseus said, and to Cassandra’s disbelief, Andie blushed.

  “And,” Andie said, “I’m quitting hockey.”

  “What?”

  “It just doesn’t seem important.”

  “Before any of this happened, it was all you thought about.”

  Hermes and Odysseus traded a look, like they were about to be stuck in the middle of something uncomfortable that was none of their business. Only it was their business. It was their doing. Everything that had changed, and was changing, was their fault.

  “Don’t get dramatic,” Andie said. “You’re still you, and there’s another you in you. All I want to do is learn to use a sword. What’s the big deal?” She stood and gathered her bag and coat.

  “Do you need a lift home?” Odysseus asked.

  “Nah. You guys still have stuff to do here. I’ll go to Cassandra’s and catch a ride from Henry.” She walked around the wooden partition and left without another word.

  “I won’t teach her anything, if you don’t want me to,” said Hermes quietly.

  “Why not? It’s her choice. I’m not her master.” Cassandra crossed her arms. Hermes raised his brows and gave Odysseus the “someone-is-TESTY” expression before shoving more Chinese into his mouth and wandering into the kitchen.

  “Have you heard any more from Athena?” Cassandra asked.

  “Nope,” said Odysseus. “It took me weeks to get her to carry the phone. But when she called she did say that Demeter sends her regards.”

  “Whatever that means,” Hermes sang from the kitchen, apparently eavesdropping.

  Cassandra looked down at the maps. The feeling she’d had about Taman Negara was gone, and they were just maps again. But if she did it for one goddess, she could do it for another.

  Her palms tingled. She stared at the paper and thought hard.

  Aphrodite.

  Her fingers burned so hot she gasped, and the maps ignited. Orange fire shot up in a tower from the coffee table, inches from her face.

  “Oh-kay!” Hermes shouted, there in a flash. He slapped the flames out and fanned away the smoke. “Let’s not do whatever you just did again, yes?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Cassandra, eyes wide. “I don’t know how I did that.”

  Hermes sniffed. “I smell burnt hair. It better not be mine.”

  “Come on.” Odysseus pulled Cassandra off the couch and led her through the house until they stood on the rear porch that faced into the backyard. It was a bare rectangle of snow at the moment, but in the spring it would thaw and grow a pad of soft grass. With the privacy fence on all sides, it would make a perfect place to train Andie. And maybe Henry.

  So they could die again. So someone could drive a spear through Henry’s chest again, while she and Andie watched.

  “Well,” Odysseus said, “what was that about?”

  “What do you think?” Cassandra asked sulkily.

  “I think you were looking for Aphrodite, and you blew up the world.”

  Cassandra looked, into the trees, where an owl perched in the high branches, waiting for Athena.

  “She’d better come back with news, Ody.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s kept me waiting long enough already.” The backs of Cassandra’s eyes stung; she clenched her teeth hard.

  “Feels like you hate everyone on the planet right now, doesn’t it?” Odysseus asked.

  “Not quite everyone.” But it was close. She hated. Over the past months she’d hated everyone and everything at some point, from her mother to the guy who made her coffee at the mall.

  Odysseus sighed.

  “I wish I’d had the chance to know him better, Cassandra.”

  Cassandra wiped her eyes. Already, Odysseus knew her well. He was the only other person on the planet like she was. The only one who remembered another life.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”

  “I’m not going to say anyth
ing stupid, like how time heals all wounds.”

  “Good. Don’t.” She tucked her hands under her arms and tried to ignore the way he looked at her. But it was difficult. Odysseus had eyes that could make even unfeeling, bitchy goddesses blush.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “I was just remembering what they said you were like. Back then. In Troy.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “But what did they say?”

  “That you were full of fire. They talked about you like a prize horse to be tamed.”

  “Nice. Livestock. Very flattering.” But horses weren’t only livestock to the Trojans. They were revered partners. Her brother Hector carried them in his name. Hector, tamer of horses. Maybe that’s why Henry had insisted on another Mustang after they’d totaled the last one.

  Odysseus reached out and touched her hair. “It made me want to meet you.”

  “Stop it.” She swatted him away. “I think you wanted to meet everyone. Weren’t you married? You must’ve made a horrible husband.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I think I did. But I only ever loved one girl at a time. Or at least, that’s what it feels like now.”

  He looked so sad suddenly. Almost regretful, and Cassandra took a breath and relented.

  “People change,” she said. “They change in two years, let alone how many have passed since you and I were last alive. I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty.” She chewed her lip. “But I did mean what I said. I don’t care what they thought of me then.”

  “But?”

  She crossed her arms and tried to seem disinterested.

  “But now that you’ve met me, are you disappointed?”

  “Not sure yet,” he said. “I do wonder what you were like before we came to town.”

  “I was ordinary,” she said. “I blended in.”

  “Impossible. With Aidan? You can’t blend in with something that pretty on your arm.”

  “Don’t call him ‘pretty.’” Her knee knocked into his. “And you weren’t here. You didn’t see how well he hid.”

  “Okay. But then why aren’t you thanking us? If everything was so boring and ordinary.”

  “I like ordinary. People only wish for adventure until they’re stuck in the middle of one. Haven’t you ever seen The Fellowship of the Ring?”

  “Sure. Lots of times. But I’ve been both hero and zero, and make no mistake—”

  Cassandra exhaled. “Look. The difference between you and me is that you slid into your old life like it was a pair of old shoes. Mine has toes filled with razor blades.”

  Odysseus pushed off the wall.

  “The difference between you and me, Cassandra, isn’t our old lives,” he said. “It’s that I know who I am in this one.”

  “I know who I am in this one,” Cassandra said. “The same as I was in the last one. A small fish caught in a big stream. Full of sharp rocks, gods, and assholes.”

  Odysseus laughed. “Assholes?” He pushed her hair off her shoulder, a gesture she was getting very used to. “But I cheered you up a bit, didn’t I?”

  “Distracted, maybe,” she said. “But the fact remains. This is the only thing I can do now.” She held up her hand. “What I was made for, Athena says. So she’d better not try to stop me from doing it.”

  “Just Aphrodite though, right?” Odysseus asked. “What about the others?”

  “What?” Cassandra asked, and dropped her hand.

  “Other gods,” he said. “Major and minor. Ares and Hades. Hephaestus. Good old drunk Dionysus. Will you be able to point that thing in their direction, when they haven’t murdered the love of your life?”

  Cassandra looked down and said nothing.

  “You hadn’t thought that far ahead, had you?” he asked.

  “I killed Hera.”

  “Because she was trying to kill you. You’re not a murderer, Cassandra. You’re not a hunter. And when it comes down to it, you might find it not so simple. Even with Aphrodite. When you look into her eyes. When you understand. It might not be so easy.”

  “Then I hope I’m too angry to hesitate,” she snapped. But she wasn’t angry now. Only exhausted, and more than a little scared to really think about what Odysseus said.

  “I just want him back, Ody. There has to be a way, doesn’t there? There has to be a way to go and bring him back.”

  Odysseus hugged her and rested his chin on her head.

  “I don’t know. But if you find a way, I’ll be there. Right to the end of the earth and over it.”

  3

  WORLDS

  Henry had no taste. Andie lay upside down on his bed, scratching his German shepherd’s neck. A poster for The Black Keys hung on his west wall, which wasn’t too bad, but the rest of his room was a mishmash of crap.

  “At least there aren’t foldouts of naked women, eh, Lux?”

  “Huh?” Henry asked. He was barely listening, sitting at his desk trying to finish a calc problem.

  “I said your room is a mishmash of crap. You shouldn’t let Lux lie in here so much. How’s he ever going to learn that there are better bands than Linkin Park and better movies than Avatar?”

  “Those are old. And Lux likes Avatar. Now will you shut up so I can finish this?”

  “Is that a Vancouver Canucks commemorative puck? I swear if you don’t die in this gods’ war I’m going to kill you.”

  Henry scowled. “Don’t you live somewhere else?”

  Andie ruffled Lux’s fur, unaffected. “If he really wanted me to leave,” she said to the dog, “he’d have stopped doing that stupid math problem and taken me home a half hour ago.”

  “Why do you need a ride, anyway? Why didn’t you let Odysseus take you?”

  Andie eyed Henry slantwise. The keys of his calculator clicked, and he erased something, his head of black hair bent over the paper.

  “I can’t believe I used to be married to you,” she said. “So rude.”

  “Yeah, well, thankfully that was in another life that neither of us remembers,” Henry said, and erased something so hard he almost broke his pencil.

  “I remember some things,” Andie whispered. “Like holding a weapon.”

  “But not holding me?”

  “Gross!” Andie shouted, and threw a pillow. “Don’t say those words together. ‘Holding’ and ‘me.’ Makes my stomach want to crawl out through my ear.”

  Henry laughed and threw the pillow back.

  “I think your sister is pissed at me,” Andie said. She tossed the pillow into the air and caught it to her chest. “I asked Hermes to teach me to use a sword.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  Because it felt like the natural thing to do. Because it felt like she needed to know. “And I’m quitting hockey.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Thanks for your input. I’ll file that away under ‘none of your business.’” Andie rolled over and sat up. “Don’t you want to learn, too? Don’t you want to remember, I don’t know, some of the things?”

  Henry shut his calculus text and reached for his hooded sweatshirt.

  “I live in this century. I’ve got plenty of things to do here to keep me busy.”

  “But do you feel it?” she asked quietly.

  “Do I feel what?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t,” she said. “Don’t lie. Whatever’s happening to me has to be happening to you, too.” Old instincts bled into her muscles and got stronger every day. The past was loose, and it lingered like an itch down deep. She didn’t want to be Andromache. But she was becoming a new Andie all the same.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Henry stood, and Lux got off of the bed. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

  “Liar,” she said. The way he held his shoulders, the way he carried himself, was all subtly different. He looked stronger, more muscular. Maybe even taller. It was Hector, breaking the surface, the shadow of a thousands-of-years-dead soldier settling on Henry like dust.

  �
��I don’t know how you can stand it,” Andie said. “I feel like I have to do something, or I’ll explode. Like there’s too much of me in my own body.” She thought he tensed at that, but she wasn’t sure. He was always so damn stoic. “You’re not going to say anything?” She reached out and shoved him.

  “Knock it off, Andie.”

  “Knock you off, maybe.”

  “Not in this life.” Henry grinned in spite of himself. “And not in the last one, either.”

  She sprang up off the bed and got him in a headlock. Lux whined as they tried to hook into each others’ legs. When they toppled onto the bed, he barked and quit the room with an unhappy groan. His tail thumped against the door.

  It was nothing new, the way they wrestled. It felt normal and natural. When she finally twisted loose, she felt Henry holding his breath, and his heart hammered in his chest. Maybe she really was stronger after all.

  * * *

  Athena stood in the driveway and looked up at her house. The house she’d bought to keep up the façade of a happy family: sick brother and concerned sister, taking time off from college. The house she’d bought so she could stay close to Cassandra.

  On the walk back from the bus station, slush-water crept up the legs of her jeans almost to the knee. Her feet were soaked. Two days away from the desert and she could barely conjure a memory of its heat, though yellow dirt still clung to her jacket and rucksack.

  “Hoot.”

  She looked up and saw yellow eyes and a clicking beak.

  “Hoot yourself, little one,” she said, but the weight of the bird’s eyes got her moving and she walked toward the light thrown by the nighttime windows.

  “I wondered how long you were going to stand in the driveway,” Odysseus said from the sofa as she passed the living room.

  “You didn’t see me.”

  “No, but I knew you would stand, debating whether or not to come back. I’m right, aren’t I? How long? A half hour?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “In your mind maybe. Gods are horrible judges of time.”

  She walked into the dining room and set her rucksack on a chair. She cringed at the sprinkling of sand it left on the upholstery. Hermes would hiss like a goose. Odysseus walked in behind her and leaned against the table.