I hugged him, and he squeezed me back. “We’re cool, then?” I asked, my words muffled against his shoulder.
“Always, Callie,” he said. When he let me go, he reached out his hand, palm up. “Your teléfono, por favor.”
“What?!”
“Your phone. I’m taking your phone for the foreseeable future. It’s your castigo.”
“Castigo? You’re punishing me? I thought we were cool?” I asked, getting to my feet. “I wasn’t that late!”
“You were late enough. Teléfono, por favor.” Papi’s hand hovered in the air.
I let out a sound like “Ugh,” pulled my phone from my pocket, and handed it to Papi.
“Next time, get home when I ask you to. Laura has your dinner waiting.” Then Papi rose and went off to take a shower.
I stomped into the kitchen. Laura was pulling my plate out of the microwave. She set it on a placemat that had the New York skyline drawn on it, then she filled a glass with orange juice and set it down for me. “Eat up,” she said.
“Thanks, Laura.” My stepmom was an excellent cook, and I ate quickly. I was definitely upset about losing my phone, but I still had my bracelet and could get in touch with the Muse Squad that way if I had to. As for Ari, I knew where to find her.
“So what are you and Ari working on?” Laura asked, pulling up a chair to sit with me as I ate.
I hadn’t come up with that part of my excuse, so I told her a half-truth. “We’re putting together a puzzle. It’s for the Student Showcase.” A quest was sort of like a puzzle, wasn’t it?
“Oh,” Laura said, her eyes narrowing a little. Then her look softened again, and she patted my hand. “I hope you’re having fun here, Callie. Your father has really missed you and your brothers. Me, too.”
I didn’t say what was in my heart: I wondered if what she said was true. Papi and Laura had gotten married and moved far away, and we didn’t hear from them as often as Mario, Fernando, and I would have liked. I didn’t doubt that Papi loved us. Of course he did. But did he miss us? Really miss us? When he had a new wife and a new baby, a new job and a new city? Was he maybe too busy to miss us?
I cleaned off my plate, rinsed and dried it, and helped Laura wipe down the table. She sang softly while she cleaned, a real Snow White, and I said so. Laura laughed. “I like things orderly. Always have,” she said. “Am I a pain about it? I don’t mean to be,” she added.
“Not really,” I said, laughing. “I hope I’m not too much of a slob for you.”
“We’re cool,” Laura said, and held her fist up for a bump.
I gave her a fist bump back, but added, “That’s what Papi said, and he still took my phone.” I didn’t want to make Laura feel bad, though, so I asked, “Want to watch TV?”
“Definitely.” Laura made popcorn, and I picked a show. We settled on the latest episode of Zombie Beach. I watched under a blanket, cuddling one of Rafaelito’s stuffed animals—a zebra—and tried not to close my eyes during the scary parts.
But somehow, halfway through the episode, my head grew heavy, and before I knew it, I wasn’t in the apartment with Laura, Papi, and Rafaelito.
I was somewhere else, on a familiar shore, watching as a boat with a small woman in the prow floated toward me in the distance.
“Tia Annie,” I shouted, waving my hands over my head. I was back there again, in my dream but also with Tia Annie, in the same place where I’d spoken with her last year. Behind me, a green field rolled on and on. Before me, a large body of water rippled and glimmered, as distant searchlights swept the sky.
The lights were the source of muse magic, and Tia Annie was the guardian of this place, of the lights.
“Callie-Mallie,” Tia Annie said, bringing the boat to the shore.
I chewed on my bottom lip, reaching out my hand to help my aunt out of the boat. I must have grown a bit since I saw her last, because Tia Annie and I were almost the same height. Her dark blond hair was up in a ponytail, and she was wearing a white dress with a red shawl around her shoulders.
Athena had told me there would be answers in my dreams. Was this it? Would I wake up and know more than I did before I fell asleep?
“I’m dreaming, right?”
“Yes, of course,” Tia Annie said, laughing.
“Well, you’re interrupting a good episode of Zombie Beach.”
“I’m not the one who fell asleep.”
Now I laughed. “Good point. Busy day, that’s all.”
“I know,” Tia Annie said, growing serious. She reached into the boat and pulled out a blanket and a basket. “Picnic?”
The weather was warm, and the grass was soft and dry. Tia Annie’s blanket was rolled up tight, and she unfurled it with a snap. But it wasn’t just a blanket. It was a tapestry!
“Is that Ari’s tapestry?” I asked. I’d seen only a bit of the piece we’d gotten from the cyclops.
“It’s only a copy, of course,” Tia Annie said. She smoothed it out on the grass, settled the basket in the center, and pulled out small sandwiches, two thermoses, and some chocolate-chip cookies, setting the food on pretty blue plates. She dusted her hands of crumbs, then gazed at her work for a moment. “I wanted you to see it, Callie. The whole tapestry. Just so you know what you’re getting into,” Tia Annie said, then took a bite out of her sandwich.
I reached over and pulled one corner of the tapestry tight. This was the piece we’d found in the cyclops’s den under the bookstore. The portrait of a man smelling a flower without a care in the world. Behind him, a dark sky was caught mid-lightning strike. Farther in the background were houses on fire, and tiny people running about with buckets full of water, trying to put the fire out.
I crawled over the blanket to another corner. This section was woven all in blue, as if the figures were underwater, and upon that was embroidered another man. His fingers were webbed, and his teeth were sharp, like a shark’s. There was an octopus wrapped around one of his legs, and an eel biting one of his toes. In the background, a ship was half submerged in the water, its mast cracked in half. The man with webbed hands and sharp teeth smiled goofily, as if he couldn’t be bothered with what was happening behind him.
“Go on,” Tia Annie said, munching on her sandwich. She scooted over so I could examine the section she’d been sitting on.
The third picture showed yet another man. This one was sitting in a field. The grass had been woven so carefully that I could see every single blade, and on many of the blades, there were drops of dew. This man had a jug in his hand, and he drank from it sloppily. Red wine spilled everywhere. He had one eye closed and one opened, and his hair was a mess, like he hadn’t combed it in forever. Off to his right, a woman struggled as she pulled on the reins of a horse, startled by a snake on the path. The horse’s nostrils were flared, and its front hooves kicked in the air as it bucked. The woman’s mouth was open in a scream, but the drinking man was oblivious to it.
I was sitting on the fourth and final panel, so I stood up to take a good look. It was a portrait of a woman. She was beautiful. Her hair was golden and done up in an intricate braid. She looked really familiar. Just like the first two pictures, something else was going on behind her. Ari had embroidered thousands, and I mean thousands, of tiny people, all of them dying. I saw spears, and swords, and horses turned over. It was a war. Meanwhile, the woman, whose face took up most of the frame, smiled on, as if nothing was happening behind her.
“Athena,” I whispered. “That’s Athena.”
“Hmm. Yes,” Tia Annie said, her mouth full.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to name the others. “Poseidon, in the water? And who’s the guy drinking like he’s never heard of good manners?”
“Dionysus. God of wine.” Tia Annie lifted her juice box in a toast.
“Got it. That leaves this guy.” I looked over the final panel again. The dark, ominous sky was lit up by jagged strikes of lightning. The fire licking the tops of the houses looked almost real. I let my hand hover over the
flames. I could imagine the heat of it. The lightning was the clue.
“Zeus,” I said. “God of—”
“Sky. Thunder. Lightning.”
“The big chief,” I added.
“Now you see why Athena was angry about this tapestry.”
I walked around the tapestry, taking it all in again. The pictures were so vivid, it felt like I was looking through a window. “I do,” I said. Ari had made the gods look so foolish. Worse—she’d made them look heartless.
I sat back down on the tapestry. So this was what we were looking for. Ari hoped to piece it all together again and challenge Athena with it once more.
“Arachne has been trying to make her point for thousands of years,” Tia Annie said, unwrapping a sandwich for me.
“Her point?”
“That the gods, like humans, are imperfect.”
“But nobody worships the gods anymore. Not really,” I said, remembering what Clio told me last year about the gods, how they’d given up on humans, mainly. Except for the muses, of course. We’d stuck around. Inspiration is always needed.
Tia Annie handed me a juice box. “The gods are mostly retired, as you know. Not Athena, though. She’s always been the overachiever on Mount Olympus. In charge of too much. Wisdom. Courage. Justice. Strategy, et cetera. She hasn’t retired so much as . . . gone on a lengthy semi-vacation. She checks in on humans quite a bit. Which makes her invested, so to speak. Athena won’t back down easily.”
“You don’t think we should help Ari?”
“I didn’t say that, Callie. I think what happened to Arachne was unjust. Injustice should be corrected.” Tia Annie took hold of my hands. “But be careful, mi niña. You can’t bring a war to Athena. You won’t win.”
“Athena called it a quest,” I said.
Tia Annie was thoughtful for a moment. “Did she? Well, that changes things. That’s better, in fact. A quest you can complete. A quest you can finish.” Her eyes lit up with possibility.
We ate some more, and I dimly remembered that I’d just had dinner with Laura back in Queens. Where I was still sleeping on the couch.
It was all very confusing.
But Tia Annie nudged me with her foot, and that felt very real, too.
“The sandwiches were good,” I said, finishing the last bite.
“It’s the ambrosia spread,” Tia Annie said.
“The what?”
“Food of the gods. Ambrosia.”
“Tastes like honey mustard,” I said.
She smacked her lips and said, “I suppose it does.”
I helped Tia Annie put things away in her basket, then rolled up the copy of Ari’s tapestry. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Did I make the right choice with the Gray Sisters? Asking about Ari’s tapestry and not the tenth muse? Do you know anything about the tenth muse, by the way, ’cause that would be awesome if you did.”
Tia Annie laughed. “Bueno, that’s two questions.” She looked down at her hands. “There have always been nine, never ten.”
“That’s what Clio said.”
“Clio is wise.”
I thought for a moment. “Tia Annie, if there are ten of us now, why would the gods care?”
Tia Annie leaned back on the grass as she spoke. “The gods may be retired, Callie, but they aren’t dead. And it doesn’t mean the affairs of humans don’t matter to them. They just aren’t working, so to speak. The Gray Sisters hang out in Queens all day, talk to people, play chess. Sometimes, Athena attends college lectures by classics professors. Poseidon has annual passes to all the best water parks. They blend in. They have fun. But sometimes, like in Ari’s case, they get involved again.”
I thought that over for a bit. I mean, it made sense. The muses were still around. Why would the gods want to be stuck on Mount Olympus all the time?
“Ari, I understand,” I said. “She wants to challenge Athena for the second time. Seems like a big deal. But would the gods actually care if there were nine muses, or ten, or twenty?”
Tia Annie rolled over onto her side, cradling her head in the crook of her arm. She looked like she used to back when she was alive, when she would sit on the rug with me to play board games or Barbies. My heart felt like someone was squeezing it just looking at her. “The muses were created by the gods to help humanity be the best they can be. They decided upon nine. That’s it. Their decisions don’t usually change. Which is why Ari’s mission is so important. When the time comes, you’ll know who the tenth muse is, and you’ll welcome her, the same way the muses have always welcomed new members. But there will be only nine in the end. I’m sure of it.”
I shut my eyes tight and asked another question.
“Tia Annie, are we in danger? Is someone going to d-die?”
My aunt sat up and hugged me. “I don’t think that’s it. But be safe, okay?”
I’d been secretly hoping that we would find the tenth muse and that it would just be . . . fine. We would be ten from then on. Tia Annie crushed that hope. But at least she didn’t say any one of us was about to kick the muse bucket. There was that.
“All right,” I said, and gave Tia Annie a big squeeze before letting go. “What about the Gray Sisters? Did I ask them the right question?”
“Absolutely. Think of Arachne’s problem as a sort of keystone. It holds all the other questions up.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Everything up until now led to that moment, that question, and your decision to help Arachne. And only you can help her, Callie. In the end, everything will be up to you.” Tia Annie put her things back into the little boat, and I knew that our time together was over. In the distance I could hear it, the closing notes of the Zombie Beach theme song as the credits scrolled by on the screen.
“If I ask you to explain that, you aren’t gonna, are you?”
Tia Annie shook her head.
“Okay. Can I ask one more thing, real quick?”
“You’re going to wake up any minute, Callie-Mallie,” Tia Annie said.
“Real quick! Why did you go to Mount Olympus? What did you ask the gods?”
“Too many questions. Again,” Tia Annie said.
Before she could answer me, I opened my eyes.
Laura was there, nudging me awake.
“You missed the end, muñeca,” she was saying.
My eyes were stinging with tears. It wasn’t fair! I had been so close!
“Hey, you okay?” Laura asked.
I rubbed my eyes, pretended the tears were just from sleep or something. “I’m fine. Tired. Going to bed now.” Laura nodded as if she understood, which she couldn’t, of course.
She kissed my cheek and said, “Buenas noches,” then turned off the TV and went to check on Rafaelito in his crib.
“Good night,” I said quietly. Rubbing my face with my hands, I thought about how the last two days had turned out.
Ari had revealed herself to be Arachne. The Arachne.
We’d met the Gray Sisters, rescued their eyeball from an owl—an owl that turned out to be Athena, the Athena, who set us on a quest.
Then I got punished for coming home late.
Then Tia Annie came to me in a dream and told me that only I could help Arachne defeat Athena. That it was all up to me.
You know when you have to pick up your room, and it’s been too messy for too long, so you don’t even know where to start? This is what that felt like, but a million times more overwhelming.
I felt super sleepy then. I can deal with this later, I reminded myself. Right now, I just need to go to sleep.
Which is what I did, without dreaming a thing.
Chapter 17
Poetry-Palooza
Every day, Ari asked me if I’d figured out the next part of the quest. “Sorry, no,” I’d say, and Ari would stomp the ground in frustration. She hadn’t come up with anything, either. I’d see her at work with the textile arts group, and she’d wave at me, her brow wr
inkled, and get back to work. I’d tried to figure it out, even searching “small boot” on the internet, but nothing came up besides podiatrist sites and shoe stores.
A week after we’d gotten the first piece of the tapestry from the cyclops, Ari met me by the front doors at camp. “Any luck today?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I’m coming up empty.” Kids streamed past us carrying costumes. One girl balanced three tiaras on her head. Another held a bunch of parasols.
“Look around, Callie. The Student Showcase is at the end of the summer! I need all the pieces of the tapestry back in time to mend it.” She placed a finger on her chin as she thought. “We have to figure this out.”
“I know,” I said.
“That clue we found . . . ,” Ari began to say when suddenly, Maris was at my side, hair in a bun, pen sticking out of it, as usual.
“We should get started on our Student Showcase Poetry-palooza today,” Maris said in a serious tone, like she’d just reminded me to get a flu shot.
“The poetry-pa-whatta?” I asked.
“Our entry for the showcase,” Maris said.
I gave her a blank look.
“We discussed it yesterday, Callie. Weren’t you paying attention?” Maris said, looking as if I’d run over her pet dog or something.
“Right, right. I forgot,” I said, trying to recover.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Listen, I wanted to talk to you both about something I’m planning for tomorrow.”
Ari shook her head. “We were having a conversation, Maris.”
“Oh,” she said, her face suddenly very sad.
“Meet you upstairs?” I suggested.
“Okay,” Maris said. “Parting is such sweet sorrow, et cetera, et cetera.” She pulled a book of poetry out of her bag and read it as she walked.
“She’s like a cartoon character,” Ari said, laughing.
“Don’t make fun.”
“Come on. She totally is. With the poetry-this, and poetry-that,” Ari said, waving her hands around like she was conducting music.
I could feel my temper rising. I hadn’t thought of it until now, but Maris reminded me a lot of my sister, Maya. They were both a little off-center, extremely into the things they were passionate about, and always getting teased by people who just didn’t get it.
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