“Goose? No! It’s Zeus,” he mumbled, embarrassed. He’d always thought his name was a little odd. Most kids in Crete were named Alexander or Nicholas or something equally cool and strong-sounding. But even the name Zeus was better than Goose!
“Ah, you must forgive me,” the woman said. As he straightened, she gave him a small bow. “I am Pythia, the oracle here at the Delphi temple. I can see the future, but sometimes my vision is blurred. Due to the mist, you understand?”
There was a loud hissing, and another cloud of steam shot up from the ground. The mist grew thicker around her.
Excitement rose in Zeus at her words. “If you can see the future, tell me this: How will I get this thunderbolt off me?”
She shook her head, her robe swaying back and forth. “That, I cannot see. For what is revealed is not mine to choose.”
Zeus’s stomach sank. What kind of crummy power was that?
As if she’d read his thoughts, or at least sensed his disappointment, Pythia added, “But one thing I do know: Your thunderbolt has amazing magic.”
“Magic? Really?” Zeus stared at the bolt. It glowed, looking extra sparky, as if it were excited to have his attention. Interesting. He’d heard of magical things before, but he’d never seen one in action. He’d certainly never expected to have one. Had he been too quick to try to get rid of it?
“Only the trueborn king of the Olympians could have removed that bolt from the cone-stone,” Pythia informed him.
King of the Olympians? Him? This lady doesn’t know what she’s talking about, thought Zeus.
He shook his head slowly. “No way,” he told her. “I’m no king. I’m just a mortal kid. Maybe you should keep looking for that Goose guy. He’s probably the one you want.”
Although he couldn’t see her eyes through those foggy specs, Zeus sensed her keen interest in him. A small silence passed, and then she said, “I have been too hasty. You are not yet ready to know all that has been prophesied. So for now let us simply call you a . . . a hero in training.”
“A hero?” said Zeus. His face lit up. “Epic!” This was more like it, he thought. Heroes had cool adventures. They went on quests and did other manly stuff. “What is my quest? What important thing will you have me do?”
“Go where the cone-stone leads you,” she answered.
What does that mean? Zeus wondered. Then he had a thought. Maybe this cone-stone would lead him to his parents!
But before he could ask about that, Pythia stepped backward into the mist again. “Never fear,” her disembodied voice called out. “We will speak again . . . and soon.”
“Wait!” Zeus leaped forward, dragging the thunderbolt after him. “I have more questions. Don’t go yet!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mysterious Symbols
ZEUS RAN INTO THE MIST, SEARCHING for the oracle. But she was gone.
“What am I going to do now?” he wailed, staring at the thunderbolt. It was still dangling from his hand. “I can’t walk around with this thing stuck to me for the rest of my life.”
Go where the cone-stone leads you, Pythia had said. If the stone could lead him, it must be magic too. Like the thunderbolt. Could the magic stone help free him of this zappy, clingy bolt as well as find his parents? he wondered.
Going over to the table, Zeus walked all the way around it. He examined the cone-shaped stone atop it from all sides. There were strange black symbols on it that he hadn’t noticed earlier. But he couldn’t read them.
He was able to read the words that someone had scratched in the blank spaces between the symbols, though. He read them aloud: “Help us! We are in Cronus.”
As the last word left his lips, there was a scraping sound. Then . . . pop! A chip of rock cracked away from the main cone-stone and fell to the ground.
It bounced across the temple floor toward the urns near the wall. Zeus went looking for the chip, dragging the bolt along with him. He was just about to give up on finding it when he heard a muffled squeak under his sandal heel. It sounded like a tiny voice!
He lifted his foot and saw the cone-stone chip lying there on the temple floor. It was oval-shaped. Zeus picked it up and studied it. It was gray and smooth, like the main stone. But it was only the size of his fist, with a small, round hole through one end. It also had some of those weird black symbols on it.
“Did you say something?” he asked it. A little embarrassed, he looked around, hoping no one had seen him talking to a rock. Luckily, he was alone inside the temple now. But he could still hear the half-giants hanging around outside on the steps, waiting for him.
When he looked back at the chip, his blue eyes widened. The symbols on it had moved around! Now they formed two words: Find Poseidon.
As the letters faded back into symbols again, goose bumps prickled Zeus’s arms. He wasn’t sure if Poseidon was a person, place, or thing, but he was excited all the same. Because he was pretty sure this cone-stone chip was sending him on a quest. Wow! Maybe he really was a hero in training!
“What and where is Poseidon?” he asked the chip. Maybe it was the name of the place where his parents were. Or maybe Poseidon was his father’s name!
But no new words appeared on the chip’s surface. It didn’t speak, either. He asked it again. And again. But the chip wouldn’t reply.
Annoyed, Zeus tossed it over his shoulder. It was just an ordinary piece of rock after all, he decided. Not magical.
“Ow-yip!” a tiny voice cried as the rock hit the floor.
Zeus rushed over to the rock and snatched it up again. “So you did speak.”
“Uh-dip.” It was almost like the chip of stone was rolling its eyes at him for being dense. But stones didn’t have eyes. It was speaking some kind of foreign language he couldn’t understand.
Pzzzt!
“Ow!” said Zeus. The jagged thunderbolt had shot sparks into his palm. They stung like tiny insect bites, but the pain swiftly faded.
Hmm, he thought. The chip of stone had said “ow-yip” a minute ago when he’d dropped it. Had it been saying “ow” too?
As if the bolt’s sparks had sparked an idea, a light went on in his brain. He lifted the small gray rock closer. “Are you speaking Chip Latin?”
The rock stayed silent.
Maybe it hadn’t understood him, thought Zeus. “Like Pig Latin,” he explained. “Where you move the first letter of a word to the end of it and then add an ‘ay’ sound.” He paused. “Only you’re moving the first letter of a word to the end and adding an ‘ip’ sound instead. As in ‘chip.’ Right?”
“Ight-rip,” said the chip.
Which must mean “right,” Zeus decided.
Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! His eyes whipped toward the temple door. Someone was coming up the temple’s front steps. Someone with big feet. Still clutching the chip, he dove under the table the cone-stone sat upon.
Luckily, the table turned out to be just tall enough for him to huddle under. He looked at the bolt. It was too big, poking out from under the tablecloth. Whoever was coming would surely see it and figure out his hiding place.
“Oh! Why can’t you be small?” he moaned softly.
Suddenly the bolt made a crunching sound, like ice cracking on a winter pond. In an instant it shrank until it was no longer than a dagger!
The stomping crossed the temple floor toward him. The new arrivals surrounded the cone-stone. They stood so close that the toes of their sandals stuck under the tablecloth on all sides of Zeus. There were six feet in all, which meant three soldiers.
Zeus tucked himself tighter, scarcely daring to breathe. Clutching the bolt in one hand and the chip of stone in the other, he waited, trembling. Right now he didn’t feel at all like a hero. Not even a hero in training!
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Big Bad Bully King
SO IT’S TRUE. THE MAGIC THUNDERBOLT is gone,” Zeus heard a deep voice boom. It sounded familiar.
“Do you think that Snackboy really could have pulled it out like everyone’s
saying?”
Under the table, Zeus’s eyes went wide. That sounded like Double Chin! And the first voice had been Lion Tattoo’s. That storm must have blown their ship here extra, extra fast!
“Well, he’s not here to ask. And we don’t dare go back to King Cronus empty-handed,” added a third voice. It was Blackbeard’s.
Zeus felt the chip twitch in his palm. He looked down at it. The black symbols on it had rearranged themselves again. Now they spelled: Danger.
Well, that was helpful. Not! The chip hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know. There was nowhere to run. He was surrounded.
“If there’s magic in the thunderbolt, there may be magic in the cone-stone, too,” Lion Tattoo mused. “King Cronus likes magic. Might toss us a coin or two for it. Let’s take the stone to him.”
Zeus heard a scraping noise overhead. And soon heavy footsteps thumped across the floor and left the temple.
“Young Zeus has escaped!” he heard Lion Tattoo call to the crowd of half-giants outside. “Spread out and find him. A handsome reward will be given to he who delivers the boy to the king!”
A roar went up from the soldiers. There were more stomping sounds as they all began to leave.
Once it was quiet, Zeus crawled out from under the table. He wasn’t surprised to see that the big cone-stone was gone.
He tiptoed across the temple floor. In the distance he could see Lion Tattoo and his two companions moving through the forest. They were knocking down olive trees and crushing grapevines along the way. All the other half-giants were gone too. They were searching for him when he was right here under their big noses. Ha!
Hmm. Lion Tattoo was carrying the cone-stone under one arm. Oracle Pythia had instructed him to go where the stone led. Well then, he supposed he’d better follow!
Zeus had only taken a single step toward the door when suddenly Lion Tattoo turned and looked back toward the temple. Zeus dove behind a column, his heart hammering in his chest. Had he been seen? But when he dared to check again, none of his enemies were looking his way.
He needed to get going, before the trio of half-giants got too far ahead of him. But what if he got caught following them and was taken before the king?
Zeus hesitated, still safe behind the column. King Cronus was not a nice guy. First of all, he was a Titan. Rumor had it that Titan giants were twice as mean as half-giants. And Cronus was the biggest, baddest Titan of them all!
And Poseidon might actually have nothing whatsoever to do with his parents. If so, why should he rescue this Poseidon—whoever or whatever he was? “For all I know, Poseidon could be the name of another dumb thunderbolt,” he grumbled.
“Ow!” he yelled as the bolt zapped him again. “Stop that!” This annoying thunderbolt was the cause of all his problems. It had doomed him to accept responsibilities he’d neither wanted nor asked for. Now the stone chip twitched in his palm again. It was like the chip and the bolt were both ganging up on him! He glanced down at the chip. The symbols on it had reshaped to form a new word: Follow.
Still Zeus hesitated. Maybe it would be smarter to hightail it back to Crete. There he could be safe and cozy again in his cave. But was that really what he wanted?
His feet began to move. Almost like they had decided to obey the bolt and the chip on their own. Before he knew it, he was dashing down the steps. He paused at the bottom.
“Okay, feet. You win.” Pulling the leather string tie from the neck of his tunic, he threaded it through the hole in the pesky chip. Then he tied the two ends of the string together so it formed a loop.
He slipped it over his head so the chip hung around his neck like an amulet. Which wasn’t exactly easy to do with a thunderbolt stuck to his hand!
Immediately the chip amulet began to twitch against his chest. “Something on your mind, Chip?” Zeus asked it.
“Ing-kip an-cip ree-fip olt-bip,” the stone chip informed him.
“King can free bolt,” Zeus translated. Excitement filled him as he realized what that must mean. That the king knew how to make the bolt let go of him.
On the one hand, Cronus was a terrible bully. There was no telling what the king might do to him. But on the other hand, he didn’t have much choice about what to do now. Because on his other hand there was a thunderbolt!
Zeus couldn’t imagine going through the rest of his life—however long that might be—with a thunderbolt stuck to him. He wanted it gone!
“Well, that settles it, then.” Picking up his pace, Zeus was soon hot on the trail of Lion Tattoo and his two half-giant pals.
CHAPTER NINE
Gulp!
IT WAS ALMOST NIGHTFALL BY THE TIME Zeus reached the king’s camp. Staying hidden behind a tree, he counted six Titan giants seated around a blazing fire. They were gobbling dinner and making plans. War plans, from the sound of it.
“Under my iron fist, Earth is now right where I want it. In terrible turmoil,” one of them was saying. He wore a golden crown and had an evil gleam in his eye. This had to be King Cronus himself! Especially since the cone-stone sat right beside him on the ground.
It was hard to hear the giants over the sound of their munching, slurping, and crunching. Zeus sneaked closer. As he watched, the king pulled something from his mouth. Then he tossed whatever it was onto a huge pile behind him. A pile of mortal bones!
The king rubbed his hands together in glee. “Soon we will unleash the Creatures of Chaos in each of our realms. Mortals will be quaking in their sandals like never before! Heh-heh-heh!”
No kidding, thought Zeus. In fact, his knees were already knocking, just hearing about the creatures. Weren’t any of the other Titans going to stop this rotten king from putting his dastardly plans into action?
“What about the Olympians?” one of them dared to ask. His entire head glowed sort of like a pale sun. “You’ve failed to capture them all.” The others nodded, grumbling.
King Cronus slammed a meaty fist on his knee, looking fierce. “I’ve captured five.” For some reason, he rubbed his belly as he said this. He had the most enormous belly Zeus had ever seen. It stuck out so far over his belt that it almost covered his thighs.
“But more are still on the loose—a threat to us,” another Titan argued. This one had a large pair of wings sticking out behind him. “We’ve heard rumors there could be as many as a dozen all together.”
“If there are more, I will find them all and jail them,” Cronus began.
“In your belly? No, I think it would be safer to jail them separately,” the Sunhead Titan insisted. “At the far corners of the Earth. And under guard!”
Zeus gasped. So that’s why Cronus’s belly was so big! It was full of Olympians, whoever they were. Yuck!
Wait a minute! The message scratched on the cone-stone had said: We are in Cronus! The Olympians must’ve written it somehow. And Pythia had said that the king of the Olympians was supposed to pull the thunderbolt from the cone-stone. Only Zeus had done it instead.
What if Poseidon was the true Olympian king instead of that Goose guy? That made sense, didn’t it? Why else would Chip be so anxious for Zeus to find him? Hey! If Poseidon was inside Cronus and Zeus got him out, maybe Poseidon would take this thunderbolt off his hands—um, hand.
As if it could read his mind, the thunderbolt gave a hard jolt. Zeus heard that ice-crunching sound again. “No! Not now, Bolt!” he hissed.
But in an instant the bolt flashed to its full length. It sparked and sizzled with electricity. Unfortunately, as it expanded, it accidentally sliced through the trunk of the tree Zeus was hiding behind. It crashed to the ground, barely missing him.
The twelve giants’ heads whipped around to stare in his direction.
“Who’s there?” demanded Cronus, leaping to his feet. Standing tall, he looked even more terrifying than he had while seated.
“Small! Small!” Zeus hissed urgently. At his command the bolt shrank again. He wasn’t quite ready to meet the king after all, he decided. He whirled arou
nd to run.
But before he could take a step, something poked through the back of his tunic. “Gotcha, Snackboy!” He was yanked upward on the tip of a spear. Lion Tattoo’s spear. Double Chin and Blackbeard stood beside him, grinning.
Zeus had been so busy spying, he hadn’t noticed the half-giants sneaking up on him. As he dangled in midair, the half-giants carried him over to the Titans sitting around the fire.
He felt the chip amulet shudder against his chest. Quickly he tucked it inside the neck of his tunic, where it couldn’t be seen.
“We have found Zeus, Your Majesty!” Lion Tattoo announced, bowing on one knee. Lowering the angle of the spear, he dropped Zeus before the king. The half-giants looked at the king expectantly, obviously hoping for a reward. They frowned mightily when Cronus merely waved them away.
Meanwhile, Zeus had landed on all fours at Cronus’s feet. The Titans closed in around him. Suddenly it began to snow. Huh? It’s not winter, thought Zeus. And why was it snowing around him but nowhere else?
He tasted one of the snowflakes. Salt! Looking up, he saw the king’s giant hand hovering above him. He was pouring salt out of a glass shaker. Onto him.
As far as Zeus knew, the only things that got salted were slugs and dinner. He wasn’t a slug. Which meant Cronus must be planning to make him—Yikes!
“Why does everyone want to eat me today?” Zeus complained.
Peering down at him over his great big belly, Cronus laughed. “Heh-heh-heh! This one’s funny.”
Zeus leaped to his feet, brushing salt from his hair. “Release Poseidon!” he demanded.
The king laughed even harder, slapping his knee. “Yeah, right! You are one hilarious kid. It’s gonna be fun having you around for an eternity.” Plucking Zeus up by the back of his tunic, he lifted him high overhead.
Cronus tilted his head back. “Over the teeth and past the gums, look out, belly, here Zeus comes!” His giant mouth opened wide.
Zeus and the Thunderbolt of Doom (Heroes in Training) Page 3