The Forest Gods' Fight

by Alexandria Hook

  I shrugged as the three of us began to head west at a slow pace. “It’s no big deal.” After all, a Minotaur trespassing in town required much more immediate attention than me. “So how is everything in town? Hectic?”

  “You guessed it,” Hestia said with a sigh, her voice cracking with fatigue and sadness. “The adults think most of the other gods are taking shelter at the mall or something like that, but your mom is really worried, of course. Apparently, your dad told her that the Monster Watch went camping in this weather. He didn’t seem to care, though.”

  I nodded, as that was exactly what I had expected to hear. But as we trudged through the undergrowth, I silently wondered whether or not my human father would have been freaking out as well if he didn’t know Alec was with us. Meeting Alec seemed to have a strange calming effect on my father and I hoped it would last for a while. Both my human mother and I could benefit from his supposedly cheerful new attitude.

  “You look awful, by the way,” Hestia spoke up a minute later, waggling her eyebrows at me in a disapproving fashion. “You do realize that you have blood all over, right? And leaves in your hair.”

  Raising my eyebrows, I looked down at my torso and realized that Hestia was, indeed, correct. Some golden blood was seeping out from under my bronze breastplate, smearing over my sides, although there wasn’t enough to be too worried about. Bits of green pine needles were entangled in my wavy ponytail so I quickly brushed them out with my freshly cut, numb fingers. I had been so busy that I hadn’t even noticed my bedraggled appearance, not to mention the fact that my body was probably in a state of shock.

  “Well, I did just fall through the trees from the freaking sky—I’d like to see you try that—and I probably have some pieces of shrapnel still stuck in my sides. You know, from your explosion,” I hissed at Hestia dryly, feeling stressed. “I think I’m allowed to look like a mess.”

  “Yes, and I’m sure that Alec wouldn’t mind,” she mused softly, a slight smirk on her face.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I retorted, glaring at the winding path ahead. I didn’t like the tone of her voice one bit. “There’s nothing going on between Alec and me.”

  Hephaestus let out a hearty laugh, and I narrowed my eyes at him until he finally decided to shut up. Hestia just smiled wider and said quickly, “Oh, I know. It’s quite a shame, really. You two would look so good together, and he obviously loves you. At least that’s what Aphrodite thinks—”

  “I don’t give a damn about what Aphrodite thinks,” I interrupted, shaking my head and suddenly feeling annoyed. “Even if I do feel the same way Alec does, it’s not going to happen, Hestia. It can’t. How many times do I have to say it? He’s a hero and I’m a virgin goddess. End of story. A relationship would just be a distraction anyway.”

  “So you would rather go out with Cole? A regular, un-Knowing human?” Hestia raised her voice accusingly, looking at me in disbelief. I stared back at her in a similar way, but angrier.

  “I would rather date no one. Where the hell did you get that idea?”

  Realizing she’d made a huge mistake, she continued, “In the Fire Pit, your father was talking about how Cole gave you a necklace so I guess I just assumed . . .”

  Hestia’s voice trailed off as she waited for me to explain, but I just flashed back in my mind to when Alec and I had first walked into my house. My human father must have seen the necklace in my hand then, although he hadn’t mentioned it to me. Since I left the necklace on my desk in my bedroom, my father probably figured Alec wasn’t the one who had given it to me; otherwise, I would have been wearing it. And Cole was one of the only boys in town ignorant enough to offer me, of all people, a necklace, so I supposed my father would have no reason not to mention it in front of everyone at the restaurant. I just wished he hadn’t said anything at all.

  “I never wanted to go out with Cole,” I muttered bitterly. “And I don’t even wear necklaces.”

  Hestia gasped and whipped out her walkie-talkie in mock horror, interrupting my explanation. Either she didn’t sense the frustrated edge to my voice, or she was blatantly ignoring it. “Aphrodite,” she called into the device for someone she knew would take her side in our debate. “Athena just said she won’t wear necklaces—not even the one that Cole gave her!”

  I only rolled my eyes at her and irritably muttered some profanities as Aphrodite’s shocked voice asked, “Why not? Athena, are you trying to avoid all things feminine?”

  Am I missing something? Why is a necklace so important?

  I smacked my forehead in frustration, about to start explaining, but then Alec jumped into the conversation. “She’s just being practical,” he defended me, a sharp, impatient edge to his voice. “Come on, think about it. Someone could sneak up from behind you, and bang! If the chain on the necklace were strong enough, you’d be choked to death.”

  At first, I grinned at his answer, but when Hestia and Hephaestus glanced at me suggestively, I quickly changed my expression to a frown again. I don’t care. I don’t care, I repeated to myself, staring down at my combat boots.

  Meanwhile, Apollo broke in, “Alec, choking someone doesn’t make a ‘bang’ sound.” As if that actually mattered.

  “Why are you even a part of this conversation right now?” Alec’s befuddled voice echoed my exact thoughts.

  “Fine then. You guys talk, and I’ll just drink my lemonade over here by myself,” Apollo’s voice trailed off.

  “Hey! How do you have lemonade in the middle of a battle?” Ares suddenly exclaimed over the walkie-talkie. “I want some!”

  Next, Dionysus piped up, “And I could use a glass of Greek wine if you have any of that. We clearly have plenty of water to dilute the stuff, Zeus.”

  I only shook my head at Hestia, blaming her for distracting everyone from their battles. More and more gods kept butting into the conversation, and the very last thing we needed was a drunken one fighting; Dionysus must have had a death wish. Plus, he should have known that no one in the forest even had Greek wine (unless the Knowing had brought some along on their journey) since the ingredients weren’t indigenous to our forest and climate.

  “I don’t actually have lemonade. It was just an expression, guys,” Apollo sighed, as if it should have been obvious, and I snorted. Leave it to the gods to be so insensitive as to start making jokes in the middle of war.

  “Since when is drinking lemonade an expression?” Ares wondered aloud, sounding dubious. “Are you messing with me? Because if you are, then I’m going to mess you up.”

  “Stop it! Just do everyone a favor and shut up, all of you,” I ordered harshly through the walkie-talkie.

  Ignoring Dionysus, Apollo, and Ares’s further irrelevant comments, Aphrodite answered Alec and me in defeat, “Ugh, why do you two always have to spoil the fun? An argument over a necklace? Seriously . . .” I imagined her throwing up her hands into the air with an exasperated sigh, deciding that trying to deal with Alec and me was hopeless. Which it was. I just smiled to myself victoriously, refraining from pointing out that she and Hestia were the ones who had started the argument to begin with.

  When the conversation finally died out over the walkie-talkies, I turned back to face Hestia and Hephaestus. “Anyway,” I started over a bit frostily with what I had been trying to say earlier. “Aphrodite was the one who told me to go on the date with Cole in the first place and all it caused was trouble. That’s just what love is—trouble.”

  “You’ve been watching Zeus too closely. Love isn’t always trouble,” Hestia whispered, the tone of her voice getting softer and more empathetic again. “It makes people happy, like how Alec is always happier when he’s with you.”

  “I was just as happy before Alec came here,” I argued hoarsely, trying to convince and remind myself as well as the two of them. “And I will be happy again someday, when this war is over.” Before either Hestia or Hephaestus could respond, I lengthened my stride and moved ahead of them, not in the mood to talk anymore. If on
ly they had known what the cost of the whole prophecy really was, had known about that godforsaken arrow, then they might have understood the way I was acting.

  A few minutes later, the walkie-talkie burst to life with Alec’s voice again, and Hestia, Hephaestus, and I stopped to listen. “This is Alec. I just wanted to let you all know that Hermes and I are about to go down into the Underworld, so this is the last time you’ll hear from us until we come back out—well, if we come back out.” He didn’t exactly wait for someone to respond, but there was a slight, hesitant pause before he said one simple word, “Athena?” The underlying question in his hopeful but shaky voice was unmistakable.

  I shut my eyes with a sigh, but was vaguely aware of Hestia and Hephaestus holding their breaths behind me, waiting to see what I would do next. Actually, all of the gods and Alec were probably stark still, anticipating my proud proclamation of love for the young hero, which was what they had been secretly wishing for all along. But the stiff moment of deafening silence ended abruptly when I ordered into the walkie-talkie, my voice tight, determined not to show any emotion, “Just go, Alec. You’ll be fine.”

  I know; I was a little bit heartless.

  But please, hear me out: I would have been even crueler if I had let Alec go down to Hades distracted, thinking about our bright future together when I knew there wasn’t even a real future to speak of. There was only one way for this war to end, for this prophecy to be fulfilled, and it had to happen soon; school started in less than three weeks.

  As I silently cursed myself over and over again, Hestia, Hephaestus, and I trudged on through the thick trees. Thankfully, Hestia and Hephaestus knew better than to talk to me when I was so lost in thought, though I probably would have ignored them either way. Then again, perhaps they were too shocked at my sudden heartlessness to say anything at all. In the meantime, my head was painfully pounding with thoughts about the prophecy and my ears seemed extra sensitive, every rustling bush sounding like a roaring waterfall. Taking deep breaths, I tried unsuccessfully to calm my thoughts, but my head only seemed to spin even faster.

  Therefore, it should have been no surprise to either god that when only a half hour later a small troop of undead warriors popped out of the foliage in front of me, I was eager to jump into the fight and clear my head. At the first sight of the hooded skeletons, I dropped the bag of new weapons that I had been carrying and raced forward aggressively. The sheer impact with my shield, aegis, killed the first undead warrior in line, and the next was impaled by my spear before it even had the chance to raise its own deadly weapon. I ducked to the right just as the third undead brought down its iron blade and whirled around to stab it from behind, its dust falling slowly onto my combat boots as the fourth stepped up to face me. This undead warrior managed to knock me off balance, but only for a moment. Within the next minute or so, the last two undead had crumpled to the earth, and their ugly gray remains sank into the soft soil.

  “Whoa,” Hephaestus breathed as I turned around, his voice excited and his brown eyes wide. “You sure know how to make a god feel useless. Amazing work.”

  I simply shrugged, wiping the tip of my spear on the wet grass. I was still feeling quite conflicted over what I had said—or rather, what I hadn’t said to Alec. I wordlessly picked up the bag of weapons again and started to walk forward, but stopped when I realized that the other two gods were still frozen in place behind me.

  “You can go back to the meadow if you want,” Hestia said calmly, her steady gaze meeting mine. She stood with her head held high and her chin up, as if she were confronting someone she didn’t trust, someone she didn’t know very well. I wasn’t sure if I should have been offended or not, but perhaps my grumpy attitude in the past hour had scared her and Hephaestus more than I thought.

  It was dead quiet for a moment, like the entire forest was a giant jury, judging my innocence and looking down on me, the defendant, with a strange mixture of disappointment and amazement, and I felt almost as if I had done something wrong. Maybe it was just the guilt of keeping such large secrets starting to affect me. Maybe I was crazy. Nevertheless, it suddenly occurred to me just how similar the golden blood on my hands (on all of the gods’ hands, I supposed) was to the greenish-gold blood of monsters. In a certain light, the two sticky substances appeared to be exactly the same.

  But then again, maybe I was crazy.

  When I didn’t answer her right away, Hestia continued, “The soldiers probably need you more than we do at the moment, and we’re only a few minutes away from the camp. You look like you would rather fight right now anyway.”

  She was completely correct; I didn’t even have to weigh my options. So, glancing back and forth between the two of them, I asked seriously, “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  Hestia nodded, flashing me a wary smile. “I’ll blast some good old Greek fire at any monsters we see. Just promise me that you’ll come back soon and get your wounds treated.” With a shrug, I looked back down at the smeared, dried blood on my torso and reluctantly agreed to her terms. A minute later, we went our separate ways.

  I walked much faster alone since I wasn’t being slowed down by the injured Hephaestus or having to carry that heavy trash bag, so I made good time as I headed back northeast to meet the troops. The forest was strangely quiet and I had not seen a monster since I fought the undead warriors by Hestia and Hephaestus. I knew that things were much worse somewhere else in the woods, however, so I just put on my game face and hurried along the beaten path, not particularly worried if my footsteps were unusually noisy; the pattering sound of rain assaulting the canopy of treetops was much louder.

  I estimated that I was about ten minutes away from the small meadow when I heard a noise in the ferns ahead of me. I stopped dead in my tracks, standing as still as the tall trees surrounding me with my spear poised above my head and ready to be thrown. Searching for the source of the mysterious sound, I narrowed my eyes as I carefully examined each bush and tree in my peripheral vision, waiting for something or someone to suddenly pop out at me.

  I was met with only silence. Shrugging to myself, I was just about to give up and start walking again when the unexpected happened. About ten yards in front of me, none other than Hades stepped out from behind a tree. Obviously not paying much attention to what was going on around him, he whistled softly to himself as he walked along and studied the ground under his feet. I couldn’t help but notice that one cheek was swollen and had three ugly scars running down it, and I felt satisfaction knowing I had done that to him only the night before. His jet-black hair and clothes were plastered to his pearly white skin by the cold rain, but he did not appear to be bothered by it. In one hand, Hades was lazily twirling around his black staff, but under his other arm was the bronze helm of invisibility, glistening with pellucid raindrops.

  There it is! one part of my brain screamed to the other. With a gulp, I tightened my grip on my spear, realizing this would be my one chance to redeem myself by getting back the helm of invisibility I once had in my clutches. I was sure that Hades’s ignorance and arrogance would be his downfall this time. I would make it so.

  But Hades chose that exact moment to look up, and his black eyes widened when they met my gray ones. He was apparently just as dumbfounded and speechless as I was. Taking the time to size each other up, we just stood still for a moment then I slowly raised one questioning eyebrow at him. After all, if Hades knew that Hermes and Alec were on their way down to his dark palace to retrieve Cole and Persephone, would he really have been strutting around the forest like a carefree king? I didn’t think so.

  Smirking, I took one confident step toward him. When he took one cautious step backward, I shrugged him off nonchalantly, raising my spear again in response. Hesitantly, Hades stated, “There’s something going on, isn’t there? You’re planning something, I think.” He narrowed his black eyes out of suspicion and waited for me to break eye contact, to give him a sign. But I didn’t.

  “Care to stay around and
find out? It always seems like you have something to say to me anyway,” I said lightly, hoping to delay his return to the Underworld for as long as I possibly could.

  “I think I’ll have to pass on that offer,” Hades grunted, shaking his head. Suddenly, he slammed the blunt end of his staff into the ground with the force of a swinging wrecking ball. Hoping I wouldn’t accidentally kill him, I took a risk and hurled my spear at him just as a crack opened up in the grass, and Hades stumbled as he tried to dive to avoid the spear, which landed somewhere in the bushes behind him. Hurriedly, he jumped into the large, gaping crack without looking back, and the earth swallowed him whole, resealing itself with a terrible grinding sound. It all happened so fast.

  But contrary to what you might think, I hadn’t really lost much at all. Because, during the great commotion, Hades had accidentally dropped the helm of invisibility. Just like I had hoped. Oh, yes, it was about time that my side of the war received a bit of dumb luck, and I couldn’t help but smile in pure ecstasy as I sprinted forward without hesitation, knowing I had finally beaten the lord of the Underworld.

  Still feeling overconfident, I raced at top speed away from the scene once the helm, along with my spear, was back in my hands. I was long gone by the time Hades could even begin to think about reappearing to claim what was rightfully his. But I was no longer heading northeast to the small meadow; instead, I was running west toward a very familiar boulder.

  “Has anyone seen Demeter lately?” Poseidon’s worried voice burst out of the walkie-talkie less than five minutes later, momentarily interrupting the formulation of my plan. “Hera and I don’t know where she went.”

  “Demeter’s with me,” I quickly lied in response since I didn’t want anyone to worry about the goddess of harvest and fertility. Now I knew exactly where she was and what she was trying to do.