by Joan Holub
She set her little Argus in Iolcus, a city on the eastern coast of Greece. It was located almost halfway between Enchantment Academy (which was on an island west of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea) and Medea’s dad’s kingdom over on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.
“Oh!” said Athena, sounding startled. Right after she’d set Argus on the map, a second statue had dropped into her hand! Medea was close enough to see that it was a wooden boy wearing a lion-skin cape.
“Well, this is weird.” Athena glanced around until she spotted a boy standing a few feet away. “I got you as my hero too, Heracles,” she told him.
Like the small, carved statue that Athena now held, Heracles also wore a lion-skin cape with great-toothed jaws that fit around his head like a hood. “That’s right. I’ll be one of the heroes sailing on the real ship with the real Argus,” he replied. Grinning, he bowed to her. “And I wouldn’t choose anyone else to guide me.”
“Aww,” said Aphrodite, sighing happily. “That’s so sweet.” As the goddessgirl of love and beauty, she was always pleased by shows of affection between crushing couples. And it was common knowledge that Athena and Heracles were in like with each other!
But that didn’t stop Glauce from leaning over to Medea and informing her in a loud voice, “Heracles and Athena are crushes.”
Before Medea could tell her she already knew that, one of the winged scrolls zipped past Glauce’s nose, so close that she jerked back. The scroll was headed for Heracles. Instead of being attached to a hero, however, it was bound to a bright golden shield as long as a thumb. He read the scroll aloud: “ ‘Hylas (your shield) will take you to the ship when the time is right.’ ”
“Why do you get to go on the quest, and not us?” demanded Ares.
“Sometimes it pays to be a mortal like me, god dude. We’re the only ones who can be heroes on the game board,” Heracles reminded him good-naturedly.
“Does your scroll say anything else, like when the quest is going to begin?” Apollo asked eagerly. Other students leaned in, hoping to find out too.
“Nope,” said Heracles. There were mutters of disappointment, but those changed to excitement as more and more statues delivered themselves to students.
While Medea listened to the chatter around her she also watched Athena, who had found a blank scroll and quill pen and begun to sketch a diagram of a long, narrow ship.
“Hey! I hit the jackpot with my guys,” Ares declared, waving a hero in each hand. “I got Polydeuces, the fighter! And Tiphys, the helmsman. He’s the ship’s pilot!”
“I got royalty—a guy named King Pelias,” boasted Poseidon.
“That thing Poseidon’s holding is called a trident,” Glauce said loudly to Medea.
Medea nodded. She wished Glauce would stop telling her stuff she already knew. Athena and the rest of these MOA students were going to think Medea was uneducated about immortals!
“My scroll says King Pelias is the ‘uncle of Jason and usurper of Jason’s dad’s kingdom in Iolcus.’ And I’m supposed to set him in Iolcus immediately too,” Poseidon went on. “Who’s Jason? And what’s a usurper?” he wondered aloud as he took his little statue over to the game board.
Overhearing, Circe replied mysteriously, “Some things you must learn for yourself and others are yet to be revealed.”
“A usurper is someone who takes something by force,” Athena told Poseidon once he reached her side. Then she gave Circe an apologetic look in case the sorceress might have preferred Poseidon to figure that out on his own.
But Circe only smiled. “Exactly right, Athena. And just so you all know, it’s fine to help or hinder your fellow classmates in this assignment by offering or withholding information.”
“Awesome! Only a powerful king could steal a whole kingdom!” said the godboy of the sea. Looking pleased, Poseidon thrust his trident high in the air. Then he set his king statue on the board near Athena’s Argus.
Medea watched a scroll fly to a boy with violet-grape-colored eyes. The godboy Dionysus, of course. “Cool! I got some guy named Euphemus. Says here on his scroll that he’s got good eyesight. That’s bound to be helpful on a quest,” said Dionysus.
A scroll flew to Apollo. “Orpheus, the lyre player!” he announced, reading the name of his new hero aloud. “Perfect-o! I can help him work out some cool tunes on the trip!”
“Wow! Orpheus, the dreamy-cute rock star?” Aphrodite said to Athena. Then she pretended to swoon over how cute Orpheus was. Both girls laughed.
Medea and Glauce glanced at each other with excited expressions. Orpheus was a mega-famous rock star down on Earth! Naturally, Glauce then had to go and needlessly inform her, “Apollo plays the lyre with Ares and some other godboys in a band called Heavens Above.”
“Yeah, I know,” Medea informed her back. Argh! She wished there were some friendly way to stifle her frenemy’s ongoing unnecessary explanations.
“I got two brothers named Zetes and Calais. They’ve got wings too!” said Pheme, drawing everyone’s attention. “Who’d you get?” she asked, peering over Medusa’s shoulder. The green girl had just gotten not two but a whole group of matching characters.
Even from a distance it was easy to know what Pheme said. Her words puffed from her lips in little cloud letters that lingered above her in the air for a few seconds so anyone could read them.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Medusa teased Pheme gleefully. “I will tell you that they’re a bunch of troublemakers. So everybody better watch out!” Without elaborating further, she tucked her small army of statues into the pockets of her chiton.
“Yeah, troublemakers with six arms each!” Pheme crowed, having managed to get a peek at the little statues before Medusa hid them away. The snaky girl just grinned mischievously. Looking intrigued, Pheme tucked Zetes and Calais into her schoolbag. Then she pulled another, larger scroll from the bag and began scribbling something on it with a quill pen.
“Ooh!” said Glauce. “I wonder if Pheme’s taking notes on who got which hero and what all’s happening. Maybe for her gossip column? I think I’ll go over and say hi. Back in a few.” With a fluff of her blond hair, Glauce left Medea’s side.
Not unhappy to see her go, Medea nodded absently and tuned in to a conversation that had sprung up between Apollo and Medusa. “Sure, Orpheus is a good musician, but what help will that be on a dangerous quest?” the snaky girl was saying to him. “He’s not really a strong physical hero like Odysseus or Heracles.”
“Hate to say it, but she’s right, bud,” said Ares, causing Apollo to look abashed. “It’s not like Orpheus rocking a great tune will save the day if there’s a crisis.”
“Hey, you never know. I bet all kinds of skills will be needed on this quest,” Athena put in, smoothing over the moment.
Apollo brightened. “Yeah, if there’s a battle or something, maybe Orpheus could whack enemies over the head with his lyre!” His buds cracked up, laughing heartily.
As more students received heroes—and troublemaking characters, too—one of the flying scrolls suddenly headed for Medea. Ye gods! She dodged it, expecting it to continue on and deliver itself to someone else. However, after passing her, it stopped abruptly in midair. Reversing direction, it returned to begin buzzing around her head like a crazed bumble bee. Buzz-buzz.
“Go away,” she hissed at it. “I’m just a helper here. I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to get a hero.” But did it listen? No! (Maybe because scrolls didn’t have ears?)
Glancing around, she realized that no one else had noticed this embarrassing scroll pest. So far, anyway. Trying to escape it before anybody did notice, Medea ducked under the game board table and began to scramble below it on hands and knees from one end to the other. While checking over her shoulder to be sure she wasn’t being tailed by that wacko scroll, she saw that the Underworld was on the game board’s underside. Interesting! There was Tartarus, the worst place in the Underworld. And the Elysian Fields, the best place. She’d learned about
them in both Immortal Studies and Teen Scrollazine.
Once she reached the far end of the game board, Medea got to her feet and peered around in relief. Coast clear. Buzzz. Or not!
That flying scroll had found her after all! She backed away from it, farther and farther, until she bumped against the back wall of the classroom some distance from the other students. “I’m not the one you want,” she told it in a loud whisper, batting at it with her wand. Still it kept circling her. Help! I’m under attack by a crazed scroll! she wanted to yell. But she didn’t want to draw attention to herself and have others become aware of this totally mortifying situation!
“Hey! I got a bunch of sea nymphs with mermaid tails,” the golden-winged Eros announced from across the room. “My scroll says they should somehow cause trouble for the quest. Maybe I should make them fall in love with someone, or something, on board the ship.” He shifted the bow and quiver he carried over one shoulder and glanced around at the other students and their statues, as if considering the idea. For some reason his eyes turned thoughtful as they lit on Heracles, Medea noticed.
As the godboy of love, Eros’s arrows had a special power. Whoever they pricked fell immediately in love with the very next person they saw. These special arrows were kind of a dangerous gift, in Medea’s opinion. If Eros made a mistake, people who didn’t like each other one bit could suddenly start crushing!
“Ooh! I got Atalanta!” cooed Aphrodite. “Looks like she’ll be in the crew. I wonder if she’ll remember me from that race with Hippomenes and the three golden apples. Ever since those two fell in love and got married, they’ve been living happily ever after!” She sighed with pleasure at the thought.
Meanwhile, Medea had begun trying to flick the statue that was pursuing her out of the air, but she wasn’t having any luck at all!
“Speaking of love,” she overheard Eros say to Aphrodite. “Let’s work on finishing those new mini arrows we came up with. I just got an idea about how to use them.”
“Me too,” said Aphrodite. “I was thinking we could shoot some of them to give the ship a fancy send-off!” She and Eros put their heads together then and spoke so quietly that Medea couldn’t catch what else they said.
When Medea’s attention strayed for a split second, the pesky, crazed flying statue and scroll darted up to hover six inches from her nose. Finally caving, she snatched the carved hero statue in her fist and stared hard at it. She saw at once that it was a teenage boy with chestnut-brown hair and eyes. He wore armor and carried a sword and shield, but for some reason he was only wearing one sandal.
“You’re making a mistake,” Medea quietly scolded the statue. “I’m just a helper, like I said. So buzz off, okay? Please?” She opened her palm to release the wooden boy, but it didn’t budge.
Whoosh! The scroll attached to it unrolled itself. Curious to know the identity of the hero, she lifted him closer and read the info that accompanied him: Fourteen-year-old Jason, leader of the quest and the son of King Aeson. Set him immediately in the city of Iolcus.
“Leader? No way, mister,” she murmured, shaking her finger at the statue. “I cannot, will not, be in charge of the leader of the Hero-ology class quest!” She stepped over to the game board, planning to set the statue on the nearest bit of land.
But before she could accomplish that, Circe clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Who’s got Jason?” she called out, her gaze scanning the students. “Speak up, please!”
Medea stopped in her tracks. With the Jason statue clasped in one fist, she whipped her hand behind her back, instinctively wanting to pretend she hadn’t gotten the little statue. However, this move accidentally caused its little sword to poke her. She let out a loud, involuntary squeak. “Ow!” All eyes turned her way.
Gulp!
4
Partners
MEDEA WENT OVER TO CIRCE and held out the statue. “Here. This is Jason. Sorry, I think I got him by mistake.”
“Oh, gnatwings!” Circe exclaimed, gazing worriedly at her but not taking the statue she’d offered. “Since you aren’t enrolled at MOA, it didn’t occur to me that a scroll might get confused and think you’re participating in the class assignment. You’ll have to keep him now. Once the scrolls choose a student, it’s final. Oh, what could it mean, what could it mean?” That faraway, zoned-out expression Circe sometimes got when she was looking inward and searching for answers in her visions came into her eyes.
“Well, I think it means I should’ve gotten a hero too,” Glauce grumped. “How come the scrolls were only confused about Medea?” But Circe was too lost in thought to hear or respond to her.
A zing of gladness zipped through Medea, and she curled her fingers tight around the statue, suddenly wanting to keep it. For once she had gotten something Glauce hadn’t!
Turning on her heel, she carried her carved Jason statue over to the game board. Pheme followed her, still excitedly jotting notes for her gossip column. Notes about her? Medea wondered. How thrilling!
Everyone else gathered around the board too, but most held on to their heroes for now, since their scrolls hadn’t instructed them to do otherwise. Glauce pushed past Pheme till she was right beside Medea. Though Medea held her little hero securely now, she could tell that Glauce was poised to pounce. That girl’s hands were opening and closing as if just waiting for the chance to snatch Jason away and set him on the board herself. In other words, Glauce was dying to take charge!
After setting Jason next to King Pelias in the city of Iolcus as the scroll had directed, Medea started thinking. Maybe if she played her cards . . . um . . . hero right, this could be her chance to shine in the spotlight.
She imagined herself doing a big display of magic that caused Jason to succeed in whatever his quest was going to be. Yes! Despite her rocky beginning here, all was not lost. She would watch and wait for the exact right moment to make a big splash and wow everyone this week—including Circe and Glauce! And especially her dad!
“Looks like it’s going to be my King Pelias against your Jason,” said a boy’s voice. While she’d been daydreaming, Poseidon had come over. “So no offense, but I’ll be working to sink your hero.” (There was the offense-ive phrase again!) “And since I’m godboy of the sea and he’ll be in a ship, well, he’d better watch out for storms. Bwah-ha-ha!”
Medea laughed. “Thanks for the heads-up. Thwarting my hero won’t be easy, though. Because I’ll be working to keep him afloat,” she boasted, having no clue if she really could.
“You do know that Pelias and Jason will make lots of decisions for themselves, though, right? And some will go against your advice,” Medusa remarked. Medea could hear the rapid sound of pen-writing from a little way off. Pheme, taking notes on her conversation with Poseidon and Medusa.
“Guiding the leader of the heroes sounds like it’ll be a humongous job. Sure you’re up to it?” Glauce asked Medea. “I mean, I’m kind of wondering why Jason is only wearing one sandal. Did you already let him lose his other one?”
“He only had one sandal when I got him,” Medea shot back, feeling a bit annoyed at Glauce’s question. She hoped it didn’t leave some students wondering if she had accidentally lost it but was lying. She hadn’t! And wasn’t! She didn’t want these guys to doubt her ability to guide their heroes’ leader.
Appearing to have gotten an idea just that moment, Glauce snapped her fingers, then linked arms with Medea. “I know! Why don’t we share the Jason job? It’ll be fun. I mean, we are besties, after all!”
Huh? Were they? Glauce had never called her a bestie before. The idea that Glauce thought so highly of her might have filled Medea with happiness before today. But not now, when she was trying to stand out on her own.
Anxious knots formed in Medea’s stomach as she tried to think how to reply. Because she knew what “share the Jason job” would really mean. Glauce would take over and take all the credit for whatever work Medea did too! Oh, she’d be all sweet about it, so Medea couldn’t point to
anything that was unfair about the situation. This kind of thing had happened with Glauce a lot in the past. It was so frustrating, especially because Medea could never explain what this sneaky girl was doing in a way that made sense to anyone else.
Since some other students got more than one hero, maybe you should share with one of them instead, Medea countered silently, trying out the words in her mind. She took a deep breath, planning to repeat those words aloud to her “bestie.” However, before she could, Circe swam back out of prophecy-land and into the present.
“Alas!” her aunt announced to the class. “The visions fail me for the moment. We will have to wait to see how all unfolds.”
“Medea and I just decided we’re going to share Jason!” Glauce informed Circe.
Medea gaped at her, knowing she had certainly not given her okay to this plan. Before she could figure a graceful way out of the unwanted partnership, her aunt nodded her agreement.
Then to the whole class Circe said, “Remember, we want Mr. Cyclops to be proud of what we accomplish this week. Those of you with heroes will be graded on your ability to help them get out of whatever trouble they encounter on the way to achieving the goals you set for them. And those of you with troublemakers will be graded on how well they make trouble for the heroes.
“It’s your job to decide on your statue’s goal or goals, write them on the scrolls that came with your statues, and then drop the scrolls in here.” She held up the now-empty trophy cup that had originally contained the statues. “Consider those goals carefully,” she went on, setting the trophy down again. “Once written, goals cannot be changed.”
“If Jason is the leader of all the heroes, maybe his should be decided first,” Athena suggested. “Because it will influence the goals of all the other heroes.” Heads turned toward Medea and Glauce.
“Well, um . . .” Medea looked down at the game board and tried to come up with an idea for Jason’s goal. However, she was so panicked Glauce would think of something faster than her that her mind went blank. For several horrible seconds she couldn’t think of anything at all!