“No, Athena. That would not be fun whatsoever. I think that might be one of the least fun ideas you’ve come up with in a while,” he said, shaking his head and then wishing he hadn’t. The world spun three times over before it finally stopped. “What would be fun, however, is if you got us another bottle of wine, shared a glass, and then joined in a few Irish drinking tunes. What do you say?”
“Ares lost,” Athena said, glaring at her sister. “Whatever you’re doing here changes nothing.”
“I haven’t done anything, dear,” she said, leaning back and sipping her wine. “These two have done all the talking. I merely gave the two lovebirds a place to enjoy their company.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Athena said, fist tightening.
“But you can’t. Remember? Part of the rules.”
Alex, who’d gone on to staring into Jessica’s eyes and holding her hand, perked. “Rules? What rules?”
“Nothing,” Athena replied. Her lips pressed together in a fine line as she studied the two mortals in front of her. There were flecks of lipstick on Alex’s upper lip, and Jessica’s fair skin was slightly flush. It was clear where things had gone, and worse, where they were headed. Still, Athena refused to give up without exploring every facet of this situation. “Tell me, Alex, what do you think Euryale will say when she finds out about this?”
“I don’t know,” he lamented. “I can only hope she understands and wishes us well.”
“Are you telling me you’ve decided not to love her?” Athena said. When Alex balked, her voice turned venomous. “Go on. Say it. Say you will not love your wife, and that you want to be like Father who runs around on the woman who chooses to love him, despite all his faults and ability to be an ass.”
“I…”
When Alex’s face twisted in confusion, Athena tilted her head. She drummed her fingers on her side as she wracked her brain to find what was off about the encounter. Then a faint scent teased her senses, and she slowly made her way around the table, concentrating on every aroma and fragrance that came to her.
“What?” Jessica said, looking up at the goddess with equal parts fear and surprise.
“Stand up.” Once Jessica had, Athena leaned in so her face was only an inch from where the woman’s neck met her shoulder, and she inhaled long and deep. Then she snapped her fingers in Jessica’s face. “Snap out of it.”
Jessica blinked and rubbed her eyes as if she’d been asleep for half the day and was trying to reconcile the fact she was no longer dreaming. “What’s going on?”
Aphrodite shot out of her chair. “No helping!”
“And no working against his liberty,” Athena countered. “That includes charms, and you know it.”
“I didn’t charm him, I merely suggested a perfume she might like to wear.”
Athena growled. “This ends now.”
“Only if you want to break your oath.”
Athena ignored her sister’s threats. Not that there wasn’t a validity to them, but you don’t get to be the Goddess of Wisdom and not know how to skillfully navigate situations that could end in disaster. She marched over to Alex and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Listen up, Alex. I’m going to ask you a few questions, and you’re going to answer me, quickly and truthfully. Understand?”
Alex nodded.
“Did you kiss her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The last few hours have been a blur.”
Athena cursed under her breath. “Did you have sex with her?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
Alex nodded again. “I’m sure.”
“Have you decided to leave your wife?”
“You know what?” Alex said, a sudden fire springing to life in his body and voice. “I’m really getting sick and tired of everyone being so interested in what I’m doing with Euryale. That should be between me and her, don’t you think? Why the hell are you two hammering this so much?”
The muscles in Athena’s arms tightened. Though she had the urge to chain him to the slab once more and let Aldora feast on his innards for the next week to bring him back in line, she was both relieved and pleased he still had strong feelings for Euryale. The relationship could be salvaged. Perhaps.
“Well?” Alex asked. “No one’s going to tell me?”
Athena and Aphrodite exchanged looks, and Athena was the one to reply. “No. No one is going to tell you. But you know what? That doesn’t matter. What I want for you to do is stop whining about it and get your shit together.”
“My shit together?”
“Yes, your shit together,” she repeated. “Granted things for you are fubar—”
“Wait, what?” Alex interrupted. “Fubar? Where the hell are you coming up with this stuff?”
“Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition,” Athena explained. “I picked up some of it from my reading. Even if it is crass, it has certain color to it, don’t you think?”
“I suppose that’s one way to put it.”
“Now then, as I was saying, I want you to stop flirting with another woman and act like the husband you ought to be.”
“This sounds an awful lot like helping,” Aphrodite said.
“I’m not,” Athena replied. Try as she might, however, she couldn’t hide the nervous edge to her voice. Maybe she had crossed the line. “I’m definitely not helping—certainly no more than you did not affect Alex’s liberty. All I’m doing is telling him what I’d like to see.”
“You know what I want,” Alex said, the fire inside of him raging once more. “I want my love at my side. I want her in my arms. I want to see us together till the stars die off, and I want the world to leave us alone. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“The golden question still lingers, Alex,” Aphrodite said, sickeningly sweet. “Will you love a gorgon, a monster, who you’ve barely come to know? Or will you love the girl you grew up with and the one who first stole your heart? Who will you choose?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, self-loathing clearly in his voice. “All the warm fuzzies, the happy dreams, and blissful wishes—everything that love is, has, and will always be—vanished since the start of this stupid war. Would I like to love my wife? Damn skippy, but right now, I’m just so damn tired and can’t see an end in sight. I’m starting to wonder if Euryale was a happy fling at best, because I’m not feeling the love I thought I had for her.”
“It’s not a feeling, Alex,” Athena replied. “And you can’t look to us for the answer since no one can tell you who you love. Not Aphrodite. Not Jessica. Not me. If you don’t know what your heart is willing to do, I’m afraid only the Moirae could, and they answer to no one. Not even the gods.”
“The who?”
“The Fates,” Jessica said. “They’re the ones who control everything.”
Alex straightened. “The Fates? They’re real?”
“Of course they’re real,” Athena replied. Genuine shock splashed across her face. “You didn’t really think you were doing any of this on your own, did you?”
“Well, yes, I did, actually,” Alex answered as his face went downcast. “It sort of takes the fun out of, well, everything, doesn’t it?”
“We can get into a philosophical discussion later,” Athena said. “You need to decide whether you’re going to love your wife or not.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “If the Fates are who I need, then it is the Fates who I will see. I have to know where my heart is before I make any decisions. I can only pray they will tell me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nestled in a gully in the Pindus Mountains, flanked on either side by large pine trees, was the house of the Moirae. To those who were in desperate need of shelter, it would suffice. To those looking to sell a home, it was small, quaint, and had ample opportunity to allow buyers to test their fixer-upper skills. But to Alex, it was just a piece of c
rap. It stood, barely, at a modest height of ten feet and appeared to be about that in both length and width. The walls were made of sun-dried bricks and the roof of clay tiles, both of which looked like they could scarcely weather a perfect day, let alone any of the elements. But in the end, Alex decided if the three most powerful beings who had ever existed wanted to live in a dump, who was he to say otherwise?
“I need to tell you something,” Jessica said as the two disembarked the chariot.
“Something about the Fates?” Alex asked. They’d barely spoken since leaving Euryale’s island, and it had been an awkward trip. Alex feared this conversation might prove more so.
“I’m not a homewrecker,” she blurted out.
“I know.”
“I mean it,” she said, this time looking him in the eyes. “After your duel with Ares, Aphrodite came with some perfume, said it was a bonus for taking all those wonderful pictures—which remind me later, I still have to actually print and send—and next thing I know, I’m in dreamland confessing a steady stream of Hallmark cards to you.”
“It’s fine,” Alex said. A twinge of pain ran through him, one that he hid well, one that reminded him that he had loved hearing those sweet words she’d spoken to him. As quickly as that thought came, feelings of guilt smashed into him as well. “Neither of us were ourselves,” he added, trying to move on. “Thanks for still wanting to help, though. It would be easy to call it quits after something like that.”
“I feel like I need to redeem myself,” she said. “And you’re still my friend, I hope, and friends don’t abandon each other.”
They reached the front door without further conversation, and tacked on its warped wood was a small note. Alex plucked it from the iron nail that held it fast and gave it a read:
Dear Alex,
We had to satisfy a chocolate craving, and we’ll be back in five. Feel free to come in but kindly have Jessica wait for you outside. It’ll be easier for everyone that way. Try not to touch anything.
Yours,
Clotho, Lachesis & Atropos
Alex, perplexed, looked the note over once more, front, back and front again, and then decided to jam a stick of beef jerky from a fresh bag of Hot-N-Tuff into his mouth as he pondered what to do. “Well? What do you think?”
Jessica shrugged. “They’re the Fates, and I think I should wait here. I honestly can’t imagine anyone else worse to cross.”
“Point taken,” Alex said. He knocked on the door, and when no one answered, he gave it a push and it swung open with little effort. “Hello?” he called out. “You guys home?”
No one replied, and Alex looked down at the note one last time.
P.S. Why are you knocking? We said we were out.
“Now that’s creepy,” Jessica said, reading over his shoulder.
“Let’s hope the creepiness stops there.”
Alex stepped through the doorway and once inside, made his way down a long, wide hall, whose sides were crammed with spindles of yarn of every size, make and color. At the other end was a door, much like the first, as it too was misshapen and easily opened, but instead of leading to the outside, this tattered door opened to a large, circular room.
Inside was a tapestry that looked like it could have been the napkin of the Titans’ big brother. It was easily thirty feet across and twice as tall. It hung from a domed, mosaic ceiling, open at the top, and the tapestry’s frayed, unfinished end was about four feet from the floor. The pattern itself, full of color and repetition on countless levels and scales, looked like a fractal from the Mandelbrot set. The more Alex looked at it, the more he was drawn in, and the more he was drawn in, the greater the urge to reach out and touch it grew. It grew, that is, until a hand grabbed his own.
Alex jumped. At his side was a young girl, fifteen or sixteen, with red hair pulled back into a long pony tail and a half-eaten chocolate bar in hand. She wore a thin, open front dress and carried a distaff in her other hand. “Clotho,” she said. “I’m sorry I scared you, but anything else wouldn’t have looked as good in the tapestry.”
Alex laughed and tried his best to be calm and collected. “I was more startled than scared.”
“Lies are not you, Alex. You are scared now,” said the woman behind Clotho. She was in her thirties and looked like a mature version of her little sister, though her clothes were far less revealing. She took Alex’s hand in hers and gave it a shake. “I am Lachesis, by the way. My sister is rude and fails to give proper introductions. The eldest here is Atropos.”
“But you already figured that out,” Clotho tacked.
“The note you left helped,” Alex admitted. “Having the names on it and all.”
Atropos, who was shrouded in a cloak, hunched and supported by a cane, hobbled over to Alex. “Will I like what you’re going to say?”
“I’m not sure,” Alex said, unnerved. Her face was leathery and wrinkled, and her eyes looked as if they’d lost her soul. “I hope so, but you three already know why I’m here, don’t you?”
“We’ve always known,” Clotho said. “We knew before the world was made all that you would do, say, and want. I spun the thread of your life and gave it to Lachesis who measured it out. When the proper length was found, Atropos cut it, signifying the end of your life, and together we wove it into the tapestry.”
Before Alex could respond, Lachesis added, “But you don’t believe such things. You want proof of our power.”
“Will we ever give in to such demands?” Atropos finished.
“Not a demand,” Alex said. He wondered what they could do to him if he brought out their anger, and if the gods were wary of the three, he decided he never wanted to find out.
“That was the right decision, Alex,” Clotho said with a wink. “But we’ve had demonstrations in the past, even if they were only for fun. Haven’t we?”
“That’s all you want, we know,” said Lachesis. “You want to see that fate is our creation and the gods bend to our will. You hope that if this is true, we can help you to reunite with your lost love, or rather, find who you can love so you can go to her.”
“Yeah, more or less.” Alex replied. He felt like he belonged in preschool, having his own thoughts and feelings laid out for him and not being able to articulate them for himself.
Lachesis pulled Alex by the hand to the far side of the tapestry and pointed to a small section. “Look at this thread,” she said. “This is your existence. All the other threads it touches are events and moments in your life that have shaped both you and the world. I can make it so you never even were by pulling it loose. Or by shifting it a hair to the side, I can make you have the head of a chicken.”
“Will you ever stop your exaggerations?” Atropos said. She shuffled to the two of them and using her cane, gave her sister a whack on the knuckles. “You’ll give the poor boy a heart attack and then where will we be?”
“Hush. I’m having some fun at his expense,” Lachesis said with a roll of her eyes. She patted Alex on the back and gave him a squeeze. “He’s handling it fine.”
Alex, however, did not feel fine, and if the rising bile in his throat was handling the situation, he didn’t want to see what losing it would be like. “Since we’re all on the same page, sort of, are you willing to help me? My request is simple enough.”
“You know, Alex,” Clotho said as she spun some thread from her distaff to the spindle. “All who came before you sought answers, and all before you left with none. What made you think you’d be any different, especially when it’s something so minor?”
“My wife isn’t minor to me,” he said. “I have to ensure our future together, or at least, a good one for both of us.”
“You know nothing of fate,” Lachesis rightly pointed out. She took out a small rod and began making measurements against the thread Clotho spun. “Yet you are here, presenting yourself as if you know how it works.”
“Please tell me whether I love her or only married
out of pressure. That’s all I ask.”
“Fate has always worked out in the funniest of ways,” Clotho said with a smile. “I’ve told perfectly healthy men that they would die soon, and guess what? They did. It was only the power of persuasion, many a time. They heard something and assumed it to be the end.”
Atropos grabbed Alex by the ear and pulled him close. “What will you do when you learn that you will never reunite with Euryale, and that Ares will be the least of your troubles?”
“I don’t know,” Alex stammered. He let loose a sorrow-filled sigh as the last remnants of hope were extinguished. “I guess that means Aphrodite was right. My heart isn’t in it.”
“See?” Clotho laughed. “Nothing’s happened, yet you think you know our will and have resigned yourself accordingly.”
“Are you telling me I’ll save her?”
“We answer to no one,” Lachesis said. “You know Athena has spoken those very words to you.”
“You three aren’t being very helpful.”
“We aren’t here to help,” said Lachesis. “We’re here to work.”
“Which is something you will be doing,” Atropos finished. “Once you think things through.”
Clotho offered Alex a chair. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it, as sitting seemed off, given the environment. But after he stood a while and none of the Fates said anything more, he sat.
The three Moirae went to work, singing as they did. Clotho sang of things long passed, of empires and nations that had come and gone, and the men and women who led each to their respective fates. Lachesis sang of what was happening now, which made for a rather dull song at times because there were only so many ways one could sing lyrics about a tapestry before it became repetitive. Atropos’s song was the most interesting. However, it was also the most cryptic. She sang of things to come, but never of events that involved Alex, as best he could make out. They were always about the manipulations, conflicts and deaths of others.
Eventually, Alex, tired of listening to their songs, decided he needed a Plan B. Or maybe it was Plan C or D. Whatever plan it was, the point remained that in light of the Moirae’s unhelpfulness, he needed to adapt. He still felt that he needed to know where his heart was before continuing one way or another.
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