by May Burnett
As Jorge clearly does not want to talk about business with me, we uneasily discuss family news. Aunt Rinalda has begun a feud with her daughter-in-law, and Cousin Domingo has come out of the closet, to the horror of his conservative parents. My other brothers, Pedro and Esteban, are still working in different parts of the family’s business empire. I already know most of these things from grandmother’s letters.
“Pedro is using the jet for some tightly scheduled deal,” Jorge explains with a slight scowl, “that’s why we have to sit around here, waiting on regular flights. I don’t do that very often these days.”
“I don’t mind,” I tell him, and he shrugs. Clearly his complaint was mostly on his own behalf. My brother considers himself too important to fly commercial, even in first class. I remember that he has always been my least favourite sibling, since that day when he threw my beloved doll Anita into the goldfish pond. I must have been about four at the time. Amazing how clear the memory of the incident is after all these years. And there was that time he told me that the family was making too much fuss over a whiny little girl’s whims. I fall silent, and to mask my sudden discomfort, draw out my phone and pretend to look up my messages. Jorge immediately does the same, clearly relieved that he no longer needs to talk with his little sister.
If this is a foretaste of what the family celebration will be like, I cannot wait to be back with Hell. I miss him already. I am pathetic.
As we are busy with our respective phones – why, why is there no way to call New Olympus? – a great-looking man in his late twenties approaches us with a friendly smile. “Jorge! What are you doing here in Colorado?”
“Hello, Diego,” Jorge greets the man. “I’m just escorting my sister Melinda back from school to the bosom of the family. Melinda, this is a friend, Diego Diaz Moreno. He’s with the Colombian diplomatic service.”
I say hello to Diego. He could easily work as a model, I think, but probably good looks are an asset to a diplomat too. His suit and shoes look hand-made and expensive. At his age he cannot earn a very high salary, but maybe he is independently rich. Despite his stunning looks he does not attract me at all; Hell must have made me immune to anyone else.
“I have heard you are a student at the Rockview Academy,” Diego says. “Do you know Jason Mackenzie? Do you think he was behind the murder of his girlfriend?”
“He is in my class,” I tell him, “so of course I know him. I was friends with Myra, his girlfriend, and I am absolutely convinced that Jason had nothing to do with her disappearance.”
“What an exciting fall term you must have had,” Diego says with a grin. I frown at him. If Myra were dead, as everyone believes, this flippancy would be in poor taste. Seeing my expression of disapproval, his grin broadens. He winks at Jorge, who shrugs.
Ignoring the byplay, I ask, “How come you know each other?”
They exchange a glance. “Society in Bogotá is really quite small,” Jorge says. “We have some interests in common.”
We are being called to board. It turns out Diego is waiting for another flight, and I’m happy enough to leave him behind.
I glance uncomfortably at the long line of ordinary passengers who are kept waiting as we are allowed to board first. Sometimes I wonder why I should enjoy all that wealth, when I have done nothing personally to deserve it, at least as yet.
Strapping myself in, I reflect that all our money is as nothing compared to divine power like Hell’s, and would not save us if the plane happened to crash. I am not overly fond of flying, but there is no way to avoid it.
Just a few hours, and I’ll see the rest of my family again.
Why didn’t I bring Hell along as a guest, as he suggested? What would he think of Jorge and Diego? I doubt he would like them, any more than I do. I want to love and like all my family, but in some cases, it’s hard.
5 Hell
Hell found his mother comfortably ensconced on a silk divan, reading. She must have read tens of thousands of books since she’d decided that it was a more interesting pastime than spinning and weaving.
“Good day, Mother,” he said, bowing to her. “How is your book?”
Hera put it down and looked up at him with a smile. “Not bad. There are so many published these days on Earth that I have a far larger pool to pick from. Myra has been telling me they now also read books on little electronic screens down there. I wonder if I should try that.”
“I can bring you one on my next visit,” Hell offered. “Though we’d have to spell it to never run out of charge, since we don’t have electrical outlets up here.”
“No, they are so ugly, aren’t they? Not to mention all those cables. It is surprising humans aren’t more bothered by the way they spoil the landscape.”
“Not many can afford to care about such things,” Hell said. “Most scramble just to get by. And once a place is ugly, humans adapt very quickly, and no longer see anything wrong with it.”
“I have always found that ugly surroundings make for ugly thoughts and actions.”
“Maybe ugliness makes us appreciate beauty more, when we do find it? New Olympus is beautiful, but some of its inhabitants are getting bored with its tranquillity.”
Hera shrugged. “There’s always Earth for a dose of the opposite.”
“Since when has father restricted the other Gods from going down any time, at will?”
“Around eight hundred years ago, give or take a century. Those were extremely frustrating times for us. People embraced Christianity with such fervour that even direct interactions with them were interpreted as meetings with saints – or the devil, in many cases. There are legends about it. Some of us took advantage of humans’ gullibility, I fear.”
“And you, personally, have not minded being up here in New Olympus all that time?”
“It’s been less than two millennia; not all that long. And we do regularly visit Earth, although with the current state of pollution and all those crowds, I wonder if it’s even worth it.”
“Oh, very much so.”
Hera smiled indulgently. “At your age, I understand your fascination with the place. But surely you must be getting tired of going to a human school. Pallas has described the conditions to me, you have to sit still and listen to some dull-witted human lecture for hours on end. How can you stand it?”
“One gets used to it, and there are compensations.” Hell decided not to mention Melinda just now. He strongly suspected his mother would disapprove of their closeness. “Where is Myra?”
“Around,” Hera said vaguely, taking up her book again. “Don’t forget to bring me that reading device.”
“But will you be able to get the books from the Internet into it, up here? Remember we are in a different reality.”
“If we ourselves can travel easily between dimensions, why should I not be able to summon electrons? Pallas and Myra tell me it can be done. They have already established internet connections for themselves.”
“I see.” He’d have to check on their technique and set up his own connection right away. Why stop there, though? If they could summon digital content, why not summon physical objects without fetching them in person, for instance, an E-Reader for Hera? It was supposed to be impossible, but if Pallas and Myra had found a hack around one problem, the other might not be beyond Hell.
And if it was possible to yank physical objects to New Olympus from afar, then it should also be doable with human beings … say, Melinda, when he missed her company. Of course, then he might be tempted to keep her and not let her go back to dangerous, dirty Earth again.
In the back of his mind he heard Pallas laughing, and her voice warning him, “You’re only fourteen, Hell!”
Hell did not care.
6 Melinda
From Bogotá we have to take yet another flight, to Grandmother’s ranch in the southwest of the country. It lies in a broad valley of the Andes. We are now using one of the family’s fleet of small planes, which can land on the estate’s private airstrip.
Looking down at the green and brown hills and forests, and the majestic peaks of the Andes, I feel like a tourist in my own country. Colombia is beautiful in a very different way from Colorado. My thoughts are slow to shift into Spanish, though I hear it all around me now. Jorge is talking to one of his employees on the phone. I would not like to be that employee, or to work for him in any capacity. Do I also sound so arrogant when talking to staff?
Apart from us, there are two bodyguards on the plane, as well as the pilot. The main contingent of our bodyguards is already at the Rancho, with the rest of the family. We’ll be almost the last to arrive, Jorge tells me. Only our eldest brother Pedro will turn up later, despite having the family’s jet at his disposal.
I hope abuela is not too stressed with having all of us descend on her like that. Then again, she’s been mistress of the place for over sixty years. She got married very young. Since my Grandfather died in the late nineteen eighties, long before my birth, she’s been boss of most of the family holdings. So a family party should not be too much worry. Besides, she has a large, experienced staff. The Rancho is a bit like those old European castles, a whole village in itself. With the staff and bodyguards, we’ll be over a hundred sleeping in the sprawling white building.
Mom is there when I almost tumble out of the plane in my haste, and hugs me wordlessly. She’s my favourite person in the world, after Hell, - though Hell is not exactly in the world right now, as far as I know.
“What a relief you got here safely! You look all grown up, Mel. And very pretty,” Mom says. I smile. Of course she’s biased, but it’s still good to hear it from the one person here who knows me well.
Grandmother also hugs me when I see her a little later. To my relief, even two days before she turns eighty on December 20th, she’s much the same I remember her. She has been ill in the last year, but she seems to have fully recovered, going by her erect posture and bright dark eyes gleaming with intelligence and alertness. You have to get up very early to get the better of Maria del Pilar Ramones de Garcia.
The cousins, uncles and aunts are all here, and Jacinta, a year older than I, is still as unpleasant as ever. She now has magnificent curves and looks older than seventeen, more like twenty. With a pitying look at my size and flat bosom, she affects a false friendliness that I dislike even more than her former attitude.
“Don’t despair, Melinda, you may yet get a growth spurt. And with your dowry, it’s not even essential, you will be sure to find a boyfriend somehow.”
Grandmother has overheard that last remark and frowns at Jacinta. “Can’t you think of anything else but boyfriends? That hunk you brought along as your date is hardly what I would want for Melinda. She deserves the best.”
I already have the best. I merely smile. “Oh, you brought your boyfriend, Jacinta? How long have you known him?”
“Diego is my fiancé,” Jacinta says proudly, tossing her dark locks over her shoulder.
“I met a Diego Diaz Moreno in the airport in Denver,” I mention. “A friend of Jorge’s who’s a very good-looking young diplomat. I don’t suppose that’s him?”
“Yes,” Jacinta says, giving me a suspicious stare. “It must have been a very short trip; he didn’t mention it to me.”
“Maybe it was for professional reasons? Anyway, isn’t seventeen a bit young to tie yourself down like that?” As I speak I feel like a hypocrite. I’d tie myself to Hell in a heartbeat, and I’m only sixteen.
Grandmother, surprisingly, supports Jacinta. “No point in waiting too long to marry, you only get more picky and difficult as you age, and so do the males,” she tells us. “I came here as a bride when I was younger than you, Melinda. I married on my sixteenth birthday.”
“That seems too early even to me,” Jacinta comments. “But I suppose customs were different back then.”
“From their Fifteen-Year Coming-Out Party, society girls were considered available for marriage. Rich and pretty girls hardly ever remained in a single state for more than a year or two after that. Of course, these marriages were more like dynastic unions, falling in love was not required.”
“Did you fall in love with Grandfather?” I ask, daringly. She shrugs. “I did not know him well before the wedding, but he was handsome, healthy and respectful, which is all one could ask for really. We were lucky that love came eventually, through working together, but we’d have been reasonably happy in any case.”
“My fiancé is desperately in love with me,” Jacinta boasts.
Grandmother pours cold water on her enthusiasm. “For a happy marriage, that’s not necessarily the best beginning. Love matches lead to disillusion in nine out of ten cases. A marriage based on liking and respect, without unrealistic expectations, has the best chance of lasting.” She smiles ruefully. “Divorce was impossible for my generation and family, so we simply had to make it work. You have it harder in some ways, when a spouse can so easily walk away after an argument.”
“So, is it true that you are in the same class as Jason Mackenzie?” Jacinta asks me. “When I heard that new song he put on YouTube, Not the End, I went all shivery. He’s incredible. And so amazingly hot. Are you in love with him?”
“Don’t let your fiancé hear you talk like that,” I advise my cousin. “No, I’m not in love with Jason. That would be singularly pointless. Even if he were interested in me, would you want to have a boyfriend who is swarmed by fans everywhere you go with him, whose smallest careless word is parsed in the world’s gossip columns? And whom every other woman in the world is eager to take away from you?”
“Very wise,” Grandmother says approvingly. “Besides, you wrote me you already have a boyfriend, with a rather unfortunate nickname. Is that still the case? At your age these things can come and go.”
“You just told us I was old enough to marry,” I remind her. “And yes, we are still an item. So far.”
Jacinta regards me with scepticism. “Does he know how rich you are?”
Her barb misses its mark. “The Rockview Academy only takes the children of the very rich. My money, or lack of it, means nothing to Hell.”
“Hm,” she sniffs, but after an admonishing look from Grandmother, says nothing more on that subject. “A name like that sounds like a pretty obvious warning to me. I hope he does not make your life hell.”
He will, when I lose him, but I’m not going to think about that now. Instead I ask Grandmother after a plan she mentioned in one of her letters a while back, just before her illness, to donate a large piece of land for a wildlife refuge. Ever since I’ve had a vision of myself managing the place once I’ve got my degree.
She sighs. “It did not pan out after all. Let’s not talk about it now.”
Hiding my disappointment, I ask after Esteban and Pedro, my other brothers. Where are they?
Mom explains that Esteban has gone hunting. Pedro will only arrive tonight. He had to wrap up some multimillion deal in Tokyo. So that’s why Jorge was so disgruntled, and we had to use a commercial flight. With the great age difference, all three are more like uncles than siblings to me. I can easily contain my impatience to see them again.
Mom then whisks me away for some last-minute fittings. She always buys my clothes, as my school is so far from any reasonable shops, and I have nothing good enough for the big birthday party coming up, a ball with over three hundred guests. Do we have enough bodyguards to ensure security for such a big event?
The dark red silk gown she suggests for the party must have cost a small fortune. It comes straight from a famous French fashion house, one of a kind. The cunning cut and draping make me look slim and sexy and suggest a larger bosom than I actually possess. It also sets off the contrast between my fair skin and dark hair and eyes. I wish Hell could see me displayed in it. None of the outfits I wore since I met him even comes close.
“I knew this would be perfect,” Mom says happily as I turn around in front of the huge mirror and thank her. “The family sees you so rarely. I want to make a stateme
nt. You are also important, and should be taken into account by everyone.”
“What do you mean?” Have the male family members all forgotten I exist? They are so wrapped up in the family business, I suppose it’s possible. My father has never been particularly close to me, treating me like mother’s special doll or pet, now I think back over the years. There is a condescending if affectionate tone to his voice when we talk on the phone every other month or so. But now that I’m practically grown up surely that will change.
“Your brothers are inclined to forget that you also have expectations,” Mother says. “Fortunately your Grandmother sees things very differently.”
As I carefully strip off the dress, I try to figure out what she means. Are my brothers afraid Grandmother will leave me more than a fair share of her fortune? But there is so much, more than enough for us all. This makes no sense. Mom must be mistaken.
7 Melinda
That night, as I try to fall asleep, Hell drops in for a quick visit, as casually as he did in school. I haven’t told him in so many words that I wanted to keep us apart for the entire vacation, but that was the idea. Yet as I see his infectious grin I am very glad he is here. We hug as though we never want to let go. And I don’t, but you cannot just stand there hugging forever.
I get back into bed, and Hell, dressed in a loose white linen garment, sits cross-legged at the other end, where he can see my face in the dim moonlight.
I tell him about my trip with Jorge, Jacinta’s engagement to a handsome diplomat, and the red dress that makes me look so good.
“I want to see it on you,” he immediately says. “I could come to your party in disguise, dance with you.”