Amphitrite the Bubbly

by Joan Holub

  “What in the Underworld are they looking for?” said Hades.

  Seeing the students approach, Porphy pointed them out to his brothers. The five giants faced the students and braced their feet wide, as if preparing to fight. However, the students wisely hovered out of reach above the giants’ heads.

  Amphitrite’s eyes locked onto the omphalos, which Porphy still wore as a crown. Getting anywhere near it—and its pearls—seemed impossible. Poseidon would never fly her to it. That would be too dangerous. Was there some way to make the giant take it off? she wondered.

  Suddenly, Gaia’s voice rumbled up from the earth. “Tell them,” she demanded.

  “Who’s she talking to?” Amphitrite heard Pandora wonder.

  The answer came a moment later when Zeus’s voice boomed from the sky above them. “Students! Circumstances force me to make a new, treacherous bargain. In order to avoid waging a terrible war across many lands, Gaia and I have agreed that today’s final challenge will decide more than just the winner of the games. It will determine who takes ultimate possession of the omphalos—her or me. That special stone is more powerful than you know. Without it to mark the center of the world, the earth will soon become unbalanced. The stakes have been upped. Winners take all.”

  “All the world, that is,” Gaia’s voice interrupted, laughing smugly. “Because whoever controls that hollow stone, rules the world. Including Mount Olympus. Once my boys win, all you Olympians will mooove out of MOA and we will mooove in!”

  “If you win, that is,” said Zeus. It sounded like he was gritting his teeth, barely keeping his temper in check. “And remember, no interference, Gaia. If either of us gets involved in this final round, the other team automatically wins the stone.”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” Gaia said casually.

  Amphitrite didn’t trust her one bit!

  “Do well, MOA teams! The fate of the world rests in your hands,” Zeus said somberly. “Now Gaia and I will leave you to it.”

  When he stopped speaking, all the students looked stunned as they bobbed in midair, still not daring to go near the giants. But soon the five giants went back to their search.

  “What’s the final challenge?” Athena and Poseidon demanded at the same time. When Zeus and Gaia remained silent, everyone looked at Pheme.

  She glanced up from her scroll-gadget, her face pale. Then she spoke words that rose above her as cloud letters that all could clearly read. “It’s a hunt for something called the herb of invulnerability. Whoever finds it first wins for their team.”

  The students stared at one another blankly. “Anyone know what it looks like?” Amphitrite asked at last.

  “Too bad Persephone’s not here,” Hades said as all the students shook their heads. “She probably would.”

  “I guess those cheating giants know, but they’re not going to tell us,” snarled Dionysus.

  “It’s got to be some kind of plant that makes you invulnerable—impossible to hurt or kill—” Athena began.

  She broke off when Harmonia pointed into the distance, yelling, “Ye gods! More giants are coming!”

  “Uh-oh. Gaia said she had a hundred sons, remember?” said Heracles.

  Amphitrite turned to look and gasped. Giants were popping up all over, shaking the ground as they came running in waves. Some were dressed in armor, wielding spears. Others carried flaming torches or bags of large rocks, which they promptly launched into the air at the student teams.

  “No fair!” said Delphinius.

  Pheme looked up from studying her scroll-gadget, her face serious. “True, but there’s nothing in the game rules that says Gaia can’t add to her team. I guess Zeus never expected anything like this to happen.”

  “We’re good fighters, but we’re outnumbered. This is impossible,” Poseidon declared.

  Especially when a few of the students, like her, couldn’t fly on their own, Amphitrite thought. Luckily, the very next second reinforcements arrived, flying in from all directions.

  “Look!” she called, gesturing all around. “The other teams are back. There’s Artemis and Apollo. And even Persephone . . . and everyone!” Her heart nearly burst with joy and relief to see them all.

  “Dodge!” someone called out as the giants below lobbed more rocks and began pitching spears too. The students all scattered, flying off in different directions.

  “It’s a free-for-all!” yelled Hephaestus. He swooped down to bean several of the giants with the silver cane he used for walking.

  “Take that, you dumb giants!” shouted Ares, hurling his spear.

  Though they were in terrible danger, to Amphitrite’s ears they almost sounded happy to be battling the giants. She sensed Poseidon’s desire to fully join in the fight alongside his immortal friends. She couldn’t blame him. The defense of the world was at stake!

  “Take me down to the ground,” she urged him. “I’ll be okay. The giants aren’t really interested in me, or anyone who’s not an Olympian. You guys are the ones they want to crush.”

  He hesitated, unsure.

  “Go,” she insisted. “I see Persephone down there hunting for the herb of invulnerability. While you’re fighting the giants off, I’ll help her.”

  He looked ready to argue, but then a cry for backup from Hades caught his attention and he flew her to the ground. “Shout if you need me,” he said. Then he was off to join the battle in the air.

  On the ground, Amphitrite joined Persephone in darting here and there to search for the herb. Soon Athena abandoned her fight with a blue-steam giant and flew over to help them.

  “The plant we’re looking for has got small heart-shaped leaves that glow in the dark,” Persephone explained.

  “It won’t be dark for a while though. And we won’t be able to hold off so many giants till nightfall,” Athena said as the fight raged all around them.

  Amphitrite leaped aside just in time to avoid being stomped underfoot by a giant racing past. “Is there a magic spell that could make it dark now, before actual nightfall?” she asked when she’d recovered her wits.

  Persephone shook her head. “If only.”

  “Hey,” said Athena. “I actually know someone who might be able to help us make darkness come early. C’mon!”

  The goddessgirls each took one of Amphitrite’s hands in theirs, and the three of them flew straight up toward the sun. When the sun’s heat became almost too much to bear, Athena called out, “Greetings, Helios!”

  “Helios? The sun god?” Amphitrite echoed in awed tones.

  “Athena has had dealings with him before,” Persephone whispered to her.

  Minutes later, the god who was responsible for driving the sun across the sky each day appeared to them in his golden carriage, pulling on the reins to stop his horses. “What? I’ve got a schedule to keep,” he demanded curtly.

  “We came to ask you to drive the sun back out of the sky. Right now! It’s important, I promise. Just give us ten minutes of darkness and you can drive it back into the sky again,” Athena assured him. Then she explained about the herb they were trying to find and pointed out the huge battle taking place below.

  As the three girls flew low over the battlefield, Helios did as Athena had asked. Within minutes, the sky darkened to black. Gasps of surprise and confusion sounded from both giant-size and student-size combatants around them.

  “There!” Amphitrite called out as the girls’ eyes scanned the Acropolis. “I see a glow on the ground near the corner of the Parthenon. It’s different than the glow of the giants’ torches. More greenish. Could that be the herb?”

  “I hope so! Let’s go see!” said Persephone. They took a sharp nosedive that left Amphitrite breathless, heading for the greenish-white glow.

  Athena reached the plant first. She plucked it from the ground and held it high. “The herb of invulnerability! We’ve found it!” But no one heard. Around them everything was loud and chaotic, as, in the darkness, the battle raged on by the light of the giants’ torches.


  Apollo and Artemis were pummeling Porphy with gold and silver arrows. Hephaestus was heaving volleys of rocks at another giant. Dionysus darted around whacking giants with his pinecone-tipped staff, called a thyrsos. However, no matter what the students tried, the giants just kept coming back for more.

  “There are too many of them,” moaned Persephone.

  “And what they lack in brains, they make up for in brute strength,” Athena added.

  It was true. And terrible. “We have to let them know our side—the MOA side—has won. But how?” said Amphitrite. Just then she caught sight of Poseidon battling a giant with brown-steam hair.

  “We’ll bury you!” yelled the giant.

  “Oh yeah? We’ll see about that!” Poseidon yelled back. From his trident, he sent a hydraulic blast of water to carve out a deep valley below the giant’s feet.

  “Huh?” Before that giant knew what was happening, he sank down, down, down.

  “So long!” shouted Poseidon. “Home to Mommy! Right back into the earth you giants came from before you popped out to cause all this trouble!”

  Quickly the mud flowed back in around the giant, burying him up to his eyebrows. All that remained visible was the very top of the giant’s head and the brown steam flowing from it.

  “He turned that giant into a volcano!” Amphitrite quipped. In spite of the danger all around them, Athena and Persephone burst out laughing.

  10

  Victory!

  Poseidon

  IT WASN’T UNTIL HELIOS HAD driven the sun back into the sky, turning everything bright again, that Poseidon realized how strangely dark it had been just minutes before. Now he turned from the brown-steam giant volcano he’d just created to see Heracles waging a ground battle against Porphyrion. The prince of the giants still wore the omphalos crown!

  Porphy was the one to defeat! he decided. Then they could recapture the all-important omphalos that Zeus had said was more powerful than the students knew. However, even Heracles’ incredible strength was no match for the big guy. Porphy had him cornered. If Poseidon attacked, he might cause the giant to fall on Heracles. That could get messy.

  “Let’s make a giant volcano!” Poseidon yelled to Heracles, flying closer. Porphy swung an arm trying to swat him. Poseidon winged out of reach just in time, but his trident was knocked from his hands.

  Having gotten Heracles’ attention, though, Poseidon pointed to the volcano he’d created with the brown-steam giant, to show the mortal boy what he had in mind. Catching on, Heracles quickly used his great strength and his club to dig a hole around Porphyrion’s feet. Without his trident, Poseidon wasn’t much help. But he did manage to distract Porphy from what Heracles was up to by darting around him like a pesky mosquito.

  “Whoa!” yelled the giant a few minutes later. Slipping and sliding, he dropped feet-first down into the enormous hole Heracles had created. In seconds, Porphy was buried all the way up to his pea-green steam!

  The two boys high-fived. “Success! Giant volcano number two!” yelled Poseidon.

  Seeing what the two boys had done, other airborne Olympians began heading off in different directions, taunting the giants into following. Soon, the distant sounds of digging and squelching mud could be heard as each giant was turned into a new volcano. Still more giants were led farther afield to become volcanoes in various places around the world.

  Poseidon hovered a few dozen feet above the ground and stared at the green steam wafting up from the volcano Heracles had made. Then he looked around till he found Thetis. She was standing next to Athena, who was holding up a plant. He could guess what it was. The herb of invulnerability.

  In his heart he knew that helping Heracles had been the right and only choice. The world had been saved and immortals would keep possession of Mount Olympus. Still, he couldn’t help feeling a little sad. If he’d somehow managed to bury the prince of the giants himself and find the herb of invulnerability, then his team would have won the Temple Games. He would have earned a temple of his own. But Heracles had nailed Porphy and he was on Athena’s team. Besides, Athena had found the herb. And that must mean that her team had won.

  So, instead, his team would come in second place. He’d probably win a statue of himself in someone else’s temple or something like that. Same as usual for him. Always second best, never first.

  He went lower, hoping to secure the omphalos from Porphy, at least. But as he touched down, Gaia sprang from the earth to block his way.

  In her true earth goddess form, she was a formidable sight. Cobwebs, small bones, and bits of moss were tangled in her mud-covered hair, and she smelled like rotting leaves, wormy tree trunks, toadstools, and dank soil. He guessed that was about right for an earth goddess, though.

  “Out of my way! I am the goddess of the earth, fool! You don’t think I can unbury my ooown sons?” She let out an evil cackle. But then she got a closer look at Volcano Porphy and gasped. “Nooo! Where is it? The omphalos is gooone!” she wailed.

  Alarmed, Poseidon went closer and saw that it was true. Suddenly, before Gaia could carry out her threat to unbury her sons, a mighty thunderbolt zapped down from the sky. There was only one god with an arm powerful enough to hurl a thunderbolt like that. Zeus! Poseidon jumped back. Ka-BLAM! The bolt caught the back of Gaia’s dress and drove her deep underground into the earth she ruled. Not another peep came out of her after that!

  “Congratulations, Theeny!” boomed Zeus’s voice. The King of the Gods and Ruler of the Heavens shot out of the clouds in a chariot pulled by his winged horse, Pegasus. “Your team has won the Temple Games! Not to mention saved Mount Olympus and the world.”

  Poseidon turned to see that Athena and Persephone were now standing nearby. He walked over to them and took a deep breath.

  “Congratulations on your win,” he told Athena. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, congratulating her like that. But it was the right thing to do.

  “Thanks, but Dad’s got it wrong,” Athena told him, shaking her head. Then she called up to the sky, “Poseidon deserves this win. He could’ve squashed Porphy himself, but instead he let Heracles handle it. And Thetis saw the herb first. She’s on Poseidon’s team.”

  “Nevertheless, you picked the herb of invulnerability, and your teammate Heracles buried the giant prince!” roared Zeus. “Your team won, fair and square. Tomorrow you may choose where your new temple is to be located.”

  Swooping lower, he landed and spoke to Poseidon. “You have won my admiration, and the admiration of Mount Olympus and the world. An illustration of your battles with Heracles against Porphyrion will be prominently carved in Athena’s new temple.”

  “Thank you,” said Poseidon, trying to sound grateful. And he was. But still.

  Then Zeus’s expression drew into a frown. “Now, where is that omphalos?”

  But Poseidon and Athena could only shrug. They had no clue.

  11

  Pearls

  Amphitrite

  THE OMPHALOS!” AMPHITRITE MURMURED IN awe. When Porphyrion had dropped into the earth, it had fallen from his head and rolled right to her as she hid behind the Parthenon to avoid the worst of the fighting. She stood alone now, staring at the three-foot-tall stone egg where it sat on the ground at her feet. Was it just a coincidence that the egg had come to her? she wondered. Or did it mean for her to have it—or its pearls, at any rate?

  Up close she could see that she’d guessed right about this special stone. What had originally appeared to be a carved fishnet design on its surface was actually a carving of a necklace wound around and around the stone. A necklace embedded with real pearls!

  She reached out, running her fingers over the lustrous, pale golden pearls and wanting to pluck them out. Did she dare? Zeus had said the omphalos was super powerful. If she took more pearls from it, what would happen?

  “What do you mean, you don’t know where the omphalos is?” she heard Zeus thunder from a distance away.

  Amphitrite snatched back her hand and p
eeked around the Parthenon wall to see a group of students and Zeus all standing beside the newly created green-steam volcano.

  “It had better not be damaged. The omphalos’s power comes from an enchanted strand of pearls carved upon it. If even one is missing, I fear it will become useless for keeping the world in balance,” Zeus boomed in a troubled tone.

  A chill swept through Amphitrite. What Zeus just said changed everything. It meant she would have to give the omphalos back right away. She wouldn’t get to keep the pearls. Not even the one in her pocket, which she suspected had allowed her to safely shape-shift for long stretches of time. Without the pearls her sisters wouldn’t get their wishes either. And she wouldn’t get to hang out with these new friends she’d made. No, it was back to the sea for her. Back to being a full-time Nereid.

  “It’s here,” she called dully. Within seconds, Zeus, Athena, Persephone, Heracles, Poseidon, and Delphinius joined her.

  “Good work,” Zeus commended her, brightening at the sight of the omphalos. “Let’s get it back to Delphi. Heracles? Can you do the honors?” Heracles hefted the stone egg easily in his arms. He, Zeus, and Athena turned to go.

  “Wait!” Amphitrite held out her fist and slowly opened it. In her palm lay the pearl from her pocket.

  “Where did you get that?” asked Poseidon.

  “It got caught in my sandal back in the Delphi sanctuary,” she explained. “I think it’s from the omphalos.”

  Zeus took the pearl and began to search all over the stone egg, a quizzical look on his face. “But none of its pearls are missing.”

  “Look again. One m-must b-be,” began Amphitrite. Then she felt herself pale and she began gasping, suddenly dizzy. “Oh no! I have to go back to the sea. I think I’m getting . . . landsick.”

  “Where’s my trident?” yelled Poseidon, coming to her aid. When he couldn’t find it right away, he picked her up and winged off, rushing her into the nearest sea.