Cassandra the Lucky

by Joan Holub

  “Not a bit. I know your mom has to keep those immortals happy. Besides, if you circulate among them, it could be a good opportunity to overhear something that’ll help us get going on more payback.” Before Cassandra could voice a protest, Andromache went on. “Anyway, you know I love the bakery. And with school out, my cousins are helping at the magic store, so I’m free.”

  Cassandra nodded, knowing it was true. Andromache enjoyed cooking and kitchens way more than she did the magic store stuff. In fact, she loved baking as much as Cassandra loved to read!

  As they entered the kitchen area, Cassandra sniffed the air. “Uh-oh! I smell almost-burning cookies!” The girls dashed over just in time to save the trays she’d left in the oven.

  “Phew! That was close,” said Cassandra. “I guess Laodice and Helenus were too busy to notice the whole place was about to burn down.”

  “A slight exaggeration,” Andromache teased. She got busy dropping more dough onto cookie sheets. When Cassandra continued to stand there, her friend glanced over at her and said, “You’d better get going, huh? I’ll take care of things here. See you later?”

  Cassandra grinned. Then she whipped off her apron and tossed it to Andromache. “Deal!”

  After leaving the kitchen, Cassandra grabbed one of the fancy platters with the store logo and filled it with an assortment of spoken-fortune Oracle-O cookies from the store’s bins. Then she headed for the carousel.

  “Want a cookie?” she asked the first immortal boy she saw. Eyes the color of purple grapes flicked her way. It was the godboy Dionysus. No other godboy had eyes that unusual color, as far as she knew.

  “Can you tell what this is?” he asked her. He gestured with one hand to the animal he was creating on the carousel and took a cookie with his other hand.

  “A leopard,” she said with certainty.

  “Awesome,” he told her, seeming relieved. “I can act, but I’m not much of an artist. So I’m glad you can tell what it’s supposed to be!”

  “Don’t be so modest about your artistic skills. Your leopard looks pretty amazing,” she encouraged. The Teen Scrollazine artist must’ve thought so too. He’d been roaming around the carousel, sketching immortals. Now he paused to make a drawing of Dionysus painting more spots on the leopard.

  Cassandra gave away more cookies as she watched the carousel being constructed. Some animals, like Dionysus’s, were further along than others. She could tell from the long ears and the braying sounds Hephaestus’s animal was starting to make that Hephaestus was crafting a donkey. And she could also see that Poseidon was creating a dolphin leaping from a wave. Artemis was making a white golden-horned deer pulling a chariot, and Pan was chiseling a sheep with carved swirls on its sides to represent wool.

  She paused to watch Aphrodite. The goddessgirl waved her hand in the air, making an S shape. Then she said:

  “Long slim neck.

  Feathers white.

  Make a swan

  That will delight!”

  A white swan that was taller than the goddessgirl herself began to take shape on the carousel. Aphrodite walked all around it, giving it a critical once-over. It looked perfect to Cassandra but must not have to Aphrodite, because she began saying additional spells to make it look even more graceful and lifelike.

  Persephone was on a ladder, magically carving swags of flowers around the bottom edge of the carousel’s pointed roof. And another goddessgirl was busily flitting around, painting the carousel with all the colors of the rainbow.

  Athena was helping Heracles with what looked to be a lion. He’d taken off his lion cape and was using it as a guide for the face of his animal ride.

  Cassandra couldn’t tell what Athena was making. Since the goddessgirl had stopped to help Heracles with his lion, her animal wasn’t very far along. It was probably going to be an owl, though, because everyone knew that was her favorite animal—the one she identified with the most. But why had she given her owl four furry legs? Cassandra wondered. Where were its feathers?

  “Hey, can I have one of those?” asked a boy’s voice from behind her.

  Cassandra recognized that voice. Apollo! She turned around, unable to stop herself from smiling at him. “You lucked out, because I just have one left.” She held the tray out to him balanced on one hand, and he snatched the last cookie.

  Dropping the tray to her side, she walked in a circle around the animal he was creating. “A raven?” she guessed.

  He smiled, his brown eyes twinkling. “Got it in one. I’m glad you didn’t say ‘crow,’ though. Or ‘magpie.’ ”

  He unwrapped the spoken-fortune cookie. “You will have an enjoyable treat,” it told him. Grinning, he popped the cookie into his mouth. “Mmm. Totally accurate,” he said.

  “I didn’t write that prophecy,” she said quickly. It was one of Helenus’s of course. She didn’t want Apollo to think she’d ever come up with such a generic fortune! When he didn’t reply, she shifted from one foot to the other, suddenly feeling a little shy and not knowing what else to say. “Okay, well . . . guess I’d better go.” She took a step in the direction of the bakery.

  Apollo pulled a slip of papyrus from the pocket of his tunic and held it out to her. It was the payback fortune she’d written. It had originally said: Your curse you should reverse. Only, now it read: Your curse you won’t reverse.

  “Explain,” he said.

  Whoa! She looked at him warily. He actually seemed to get it that the fortunes were changing on their own. Others always assumed that the altered fortunes were what she’d originally written, and then would decide that her prophecies must be mistakes or lies. Did his ability to see that her fortune had actually changed itself have something to do with him being the godboy of prophecy? Or else the creator of the curse?

  “Within one day after someone reads a fortune I write, they remember it all wrong,” she told him bluntly. “Plus the words on the fortune actually change to say something different from what I originally wrote.”

  His eyes widened. “What about when you speak a fortune?”

  “Same thing. It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a day for anyone who hears it to remember it wrong. But they always do.” Suddenly the long years of frustration at prophesying truths that were never believed got the better of her. “And it’s your fault!” she exclaimed.

  Apollo’s head drew back in surprise. “What? No way!”

  “Yes, way,” she insisted. “You really don’t remember me from that first time we met? Seven years ago, before Zeus and Hera’s wedding?”

  “Huh?”

  “I was five years old. My family was on vacation, temple-touring. You were in a temple we visited, all by yourself and in a grumpy mood. I asked you why you were hanging around all alone, and you said it was your temple so you had every right to be there. I said it wasn’t yours, and—”

  “It wasn’t,” he said, seeming to believe her. “I guess I just wished it was my temple. After all, I was pretty young then too. I must’ve been six years old. I remember that some of the other immortals in my neighborhood who already had temples dedicated to them used to tease me about not having one. In fact, I didn’t get my own till this year, when Zeus awarded it to me.”

  So she’d been right that it wasn’t his temple that long ago day. Still, she didn’t rub it in now. His explanation made it a little easier to understand why he’d lashed out at her back then. He’d been frustrated because of the teasing. She knew that feeling too! From being teased about her prophecies. It could sometimes make you act in ways you weren’t proud of later.

  “What happened,” she went on, “was, we got into an argument, and you wound up putting a curse on me. And ever since then no one has believed a single word I prophesy.”

  Apollo’s eyes bugged as he stared at her. “Are you joking? I don’t remember any of that.”

  “Well, it’s true,” she said. When she looked away from him, her gaze happened to fall on Athena again. She was much further along on her anima
l ride than she had been just minutes ago. Magical spells had given her animal a firm belly and a long strong column of a neck in addition to four legs. Huh? This was no owl! As Cassandra watched, Athena started working on her animal’s head.

  Apollo was saying something, but her attention was riveted on Athena now. “I figured she would make an owl ride,” she murmured with growing horror. “But that looks like . . .”

  Before Cassandra could finish her sentence, Athena cast one last spell to create her animal’s head. Presto! It now had a long muzzle, flared nostrils, pointed ears, and a flowing mane!

  “Excuse me,” said a voice. It was the Teen Scrollazine artist. “Can I get a sketch of you with Athena and her Trojan horse?” he asked Cassandra as he approached. “For the article.”

  Cassandra froze. She’d been right to feel alarmed. This wasn’t just any horse. It was an exact replica of that dastardly Trojan horse!

  Oh, no! How could Athena do this to her? Seeing that horse was like a slap in the face. Not only would it remind everyone of the humiliating defeat of her countrymen, but it was also going to remind them of Cassandra’s biggest failure at fortune-telling ever!

  “Cassandra?” Apollo said. He spoke in an insistent tone that told her he’d been trying to get her attention for a while.

  But she wouldn’t look at him. Keeping her eyes down, she backed away from him, the artist, and the carousel. Then she raced back to the bakery. As she burst into the kitchen, she breathlessly blurted to her friend Andromache, “Athena’s making a Trojan horse on the carousel!”

  “What!” exclaimed Andromache, whirling around in dismay. The color drained from her face, but then her expression turned fierce. “She’ll be sorry,” she vowed.

  “What do you mean?” Cassandra asked. She was a bit alarmed at Andromache’s response. As much as she disliked what Athena had done, she was beginning to think that exacting revenge was not a good cure for her frustration. It usually just made her feel worse.

  Andromache went over to the office desk and picked up a copy of the Greekly Weekly News that was lying there. “There’s an article in here about Athena and her so-called hero, Odysseus. Seems that in her Hero-ology class she’s got the assignment of trying to get him back home to Ithaca. It’s really important to her—and to her grade, apparently, which is what that brainster really cares about.”

  “So?” Cassandra asked blankly. She took the news-scroll and scanned the short article Andromache had pointed out. It told how the immortal students moved little statues if their heroes around on a game board, causing things to happen to the heroes in real life. Which was kind of cool, actually. Though probably a little scary for the heroes!

  “So we’ll ruin things for her,” suggested Andromache, who was pacing now and steaming mad. “Make her look bad. And Aphrodite, too, since she’s helping Athena with Odysseus’s family.”

  “Huh? How? What do you mean?” asked Cassandra.

  Andromache came to a stop and leaned toward her. “We’ll stop Athena’s hero, Odysseus, from getting to Ithaca. She’ll get a bad grade for sure. The ultimate payback, in her case. I think it’s what that carousel fortune you wrote for Zeus must’ve meant us to do all along. Because it got Homer and the immortals here and gave me the idea, right?”

  “What idea? I still don’t get it. I mean, even if we wanted to, we can’t mess things up on the Hero-ology game board this article mentions. Because we can’t go to MOA.”

  Andromache paused, thinking. Then something—or someone—caught her eye. “But we know someone who can.”

  Cassandra followed her gaze to see Homer, who was posing for the Teen Scrollazine artist in front of Athena’s horse. Hurriedly Cassandra looked away again, not wanting to see that dumb horse.

  “You can just make up a few fortunes with troubles for Odysseus. And I’ll trick that author guy, Homer, into giving the fortunes to the statue of Odysseus on the game board at MOA,” said Andromache.

  What she said kind of bugged Cassandra. She’d thought Andromache had more faith in her prophecies. “I don’t just make them up,” she replied. “They have to come to me.”

  Andromache just shrugged and rushed on. “If we tell Homer that the new fortunes will make Odysseus’s adventures more exciting, I think he’ll do what we want!”

  Wow! Andromache was so good at revenge ideas that Ms. Nemesis—the world-famous Revenge-ology teacher at MOA—could probably take lessons from her! thought Cassandra. She knew if she said the word, Andromache could deliver on her vow for revenge. But something held her back.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure we . . . ,” Cassandra began uncertainly.

  “Cassandra?” Her mom came into the kitchen, smiling. And Homer was with her. Neither of them seemed to notice that anything was wrong. “Andromache is happy on her own in the kitchen,” her mom said with a grateful glance at the girl. “And I know how much you enjoy reading and want to work in the scrollbook shop,” she said to Cassandra. “So how about if you assist Homer for the rest of the week in getting ready for his scrollbook event?”

  “Sure,” Cassandra said quickly. She’d rather do bookstore stuff than work in the bakery any day. She was a little worried about what Andromache might do when she wasn’t around, however. But without any fortunes, Andromache would have to give up on her payback plan, right? Cassandra could just say she couldn’t get into the mental zone to think of any prophecies.

  “Cool!” said Homer, smiling at her. “Okay, assistant. Let’s get to work.”

  Snap! He unfurled a scroll he was holding that was so long, it reached all the way to the floor. “Let’s go over my to-do list. Number one: At my book signing I will require a dozen quill pens, lined up just so, all perfectly sharp. Number two: I’ll need a chair to sit in—not too hard, not too soft. And it has to be blue, my lucky color. Number three . . .”

  Cassandra gulped. Were authors always so demanding? What had she gotten herself into?

  7

  Odysseus

  Athena

  MR. CYCLOPS TAPPED THE TOE OF one of his large sandaled feet in irritation. He was sitting at his desk in Hero-ology on Tuesday morning, and the single big eye in the center of his forehead was gazing sternly at Athena. “I don’t appreciate your hero Odysseus’s making trouble on my family’s island. Stealing food and sheep from my brother? Is that proper hero behavior?”

  Athena shook her head from side to side, her long brown hair swaying. This was so embarrassing. Everyone in class could hear the scolding. Including Homer, who was right beside her, listening in and taking notes on the blank scroll he was holding. Would this conversation go into his new book, The Odyssey? She hoped not!

  Unlike the way she was feeling right now, he looked pretty thrilled. Thanks to the promotion being done by Homer’s publicist and Pheme, Odysseus’s adventures were becoming big news at MOA, and down on Earth, too.

  All this recent hero-caused trouble would be great publicity for Homer’s book signing this weekend. But it might not be good for her grade if she couldn’t get Odysseus safely home soon.

  “However,” her teacher admitted, “Polyphemus wasn’t entirely blameless. He did try to capture your hero and his men and eat them for dinner, after all. So I’ll let it go this time. We’ll consider Odysseus’s actions an eye for an eye.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Cyclops,” Athena said gratefully. “That’s really fair-minded of you. Oh, and I meant to tell you that I made sure Odysseus received a leather bag that contains all the winds that could otherwise blow against his ship and slow him down. Since only the winds that favor his voyage are left on earth right now, he should have smooth sailing from here on out.”

  The teacher nodded. “Excellent.”

  After Mr. Cyclops dismissed her, Athena headed for the game board. Now that she’d finished building her horse on the carousel in the Immortal Marketplace, she was back in classes each morning for the rest of the week. She and the other immortals on the project still had to paint their animals and help dec
orate the carousel itself, though. So they would be returning to the Marketplace every afternoon until the project was complete.

  If she had the choice, she’d really rather stay here and watch over Odysseus. She was determined to get him back to his family in Ithaca as swiftly as possible. It wouldn’t be easy. That guy had a mind of his own! And some people were out to make trouble for him. She darted a glance in Poseidon’s direction.

  Even now that drippy godboy was having a conversation with a six-headed sea monster named Scylla who was peering out of the Mediterranean Sea on the game board map. Athena wished she could listen in. However, it wouldn’t do her any good to eavesdrop on whatever disasters they might be plotting for Odysseus’s future. Because, unlike Poseidon, she didn’t speak sea monster!

  “So let me get this straight,” Homer said while trailing her around the edge of the game board. “Odysseus tricked Polyphemus, a three-eyed Cyclops.”

  “One-eyed,” Athena corrected.

  Homer scribbled a quick notation on his scroll. “Oh, yes. That’s right. Then he and his men left the cave after tying themselves to the underbellies of some goats?”

  “Sheep,” Athena corrected. Honestly, he made as many mistakes as Pheme! He needed to hire a fact-checker! Oh, wait. He had a fact-checker. One who was working for free. Her!

  Homer did another scratch-out, then continued reading aloud what he’d written. “ ‘Once Odysseus was back on board his ship, he tricked Polyphemus again, telling him that his name was Nobody. Which led Polyphemus to start yelling that “Nobody” was stealing from him, which caused the other Cyclops to laugh at him instead of help him out.’ ”

  Rereading what he’d written, he chuckled. “This is great. It’ll add a little humor to my new scrollbook. Readers will love that.”

  As Athena reached the section of the game board map where her hero statue stood, Homer noticed Poseidon. “You’re just the guy I wanted to see!” he told the turquoise-eyed godboy. “Could I ask you a few questions regarding your part in Odysseus’s recent troubles? I heard that you stirred up the seas off the island of the Cicones to slow him down the other day.”