Demeter's Tablet: a Nia Rivers Adventure (Nia Rivers Adventures Book 2)

by Jasmine Walt

  “It was so long ago.” Demeter shrugged, not meeting my eye. “I can’t quite remember.”

  I didn’t believe her, but I was used to other Immortals not telling me the whole truth. So I asked her another question I thought she would answer. “Do you remember why Tres and I broke up?”

  She did meet my gaze then. “Because you went back to Zayin.”

  Thunder crackled overhead in the clear blue sky. People dashed under awnings to escape the downpour that only seemed to hover around them. Where Demeter and I stood was dry, not a drop fell.

  “Really, Zuzu?” Demeter huffed. “Maybe if you stopped acting like a randy little boy, she would actually take the time to talk to you. Instead, you resort to trying to get her wet.”

  “That’s the plan,” came a deep masculine voice.

  I turned and saw Zeus sitting at a café beneath an umbrella.

  “Nia, if you just sleep with him once, he’ll probably leave you alone.” Demi snorted. “He has a shorter attention span than a gnat once he’s gotten what he wants.”

  “You can control the weather?” I asked, looking out at the rainstorm.

  “Ha,” he said. “Is that all it takes to impress you?”

  I turned my attention from the shower and focused on him. The man was breathtaking to behold, but his antics were entirely off-putting. “Why do you act like such a child?”

  “I’ve never been a child,” he said. “I came into this world a fully-formed adult. I suppose that’s why.”

  “You remember your birth?”

  Zeus’s face changed. It turned grave. The childishness fell from his features, and he looked like a very old man. “Yes,” he said simply.

  Beside him, I felt Demeter affect the same carefully blank look. A breeze tousled her hair and made her look like she was floating. It jogged a memory.

  “You were in my dream,” I said.

  “You dreamed of me, darling?” She smiled.

  “I was dreaming about a memory, and then you stepped into it. You seemed distressed. You told me to wake up and remember.”

  “That doesn’t seem like something I’d say,” she said. “I’d be more likely to urge you to sleep it off and forget.”

  “Is that your power? Can you dream walk?”

  “Of course not.”

  Once again, her face changed. Instead of carefully blank, it was false amusement. Her laughter was forced.

  “Wouldn’t that be an awesome power?” she asked. “I’d wreak havoc on the world. You must have been remembering me, darling. I was a very big part of your life once.”

  I chanced a look at Zeus. For once, he kept his eyes off me and on the ground. This type of Immortal behavior I knew. They were hiding something. They wouldn’t come out with it, not directly. Luckily, I knew how to do this dance. I had to twirl and spin around the issue until I tripped them up.

  “When we knew each other before,” I said, “was that in Egypt?”

  “We spent some time together in Egypt, yes.” Demeter’s tone was careful.

  “When my temple was being built?”

  “Your temple?” She rose an eyebrow.

  “Yes, the Temple of Isis at Philae.”

  “Oh no, no, darling.” Demeter shook her head. The amusement this time was genuine. “That’s my temple. I was known as Isis in Egypt before we came here to Greece. Oh, darling Tisa, your brain is well and truly addled, isn’t it?”

  I jerked back. She wasn’t dancing around the issue at all. She’d gone and put her foot in her mouth. But she didn’t seem to notice. These gods had once been worshipped in Egypt. So why had they left and come to Greece?

  “We had many followers when we lived in Egypt,” Zeus said. “But they soon began worshiping the Christian god, and our following decreased so substantially that we were near to fading, like our parents.”

  “We don’t talk about them.” Demeter’s voice was a harsh admonishment to her brother.

  “Because they tried to eat you?” I asked.

  The two didn’t favor in looks. But once again, they shared the same expression. Their jaws clenched, both looked wholly uncomfortable at the direction of the conversation.

  “They did eat us,” Demeter confirmed. “But Zuzu saved us.”

  I wanted to ask how, but Zeus had his arms crossed over his chest. It was a universal sign for I don’t want to discuss it. I could imagine. Being eaten had to be horrible. I’d nearly been consumed myself. I decided to back off. For now.

  “Don’t hold that against them,” Demeter said. “They were desperate. We were the only ones who still worshipped them.”

  “Until they tried to steal our essence.” Zeus’s handsome face had darkened like the sky above him.

  “Calm down, Zuzu. You’re ruining a perfectly good day.” Demeter turned back to me. “A god never truly dies. We are made of existence, that spark of life. Humans gift us with their spark with their worship and their souls. Their continued devotion fuels us, and we reward them with riches, fame, beauty, children, long life. It’s a perfect symbiotic relationship. Don’t you see?”

  I didn’t see, but I was curious to find out, so I nodded my head.

  Demeter smiled at me and looped her arm through mine again. “Oh, it’s so good to have you back, Tisa. There’s so much to catch up on.”

  14

  “Where are we headed now?” I watched the scenery of Athens zip by out the window of the car. I was half surprised we weren’t flying on a cloud to wherever we were going, or traveling by Pegasus. Then I wondered if there were such creatures in the world. But when I turned to inquire with Demeter, her gaze was sorrowful.

  “There’s some family business I need to take care of,” she said. “Do you mind, darling?”

  We’d left Zeus behind. Or rather, he’d left us after he’d seen a pair of buxom twins walking down the street. I’d felt a moment’s irritation that his eye had been so easily turned, but it was just my pride smarting. I had no intention of letting that man’s overused ego anywhere near my pride. Besides, I was having an enjoyable time with his sister.

  “Sure,” I said. “As long as we don’t have to knock off someone.”

  Demeter didn’t laugh. Loren would’ve laughed. When I turned to Demeter again, she looked grave.

  “We’re not knocking someone off, are we?” I asked.

  “It’s a farewell party. One of the Chosen has asked for the return of his soul.”

  “They can do that?”

  “Well, of course they can, darling. We’re not slaveholders. An undevoted soul does us no good. If we hold them against their will, they could turn into demons.”

  Demeter grimaced as though the word demon left a foul taste in her mouth.

  “This individual has served us well for over two millennia. I, for one, will be sad to see him go. I believe you may have met him. Yes, in fact, I know you did. You brought him to us.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “I’ll let it be a surprise. You’ll be my present to him. There at his rebirth, and there again for his final death. Poetic, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t know what to think. “You’re throwing him a farewell party?”

  “A farewell party sounds better than a wake, darling. But I prefer to think of it as a retirement. Nothing ever truly dies. Once his soul is returned to his body, he will be parted from us and returned to the source of all life. One day, his essence will be recycled. A new spark will bring him back to life again.”

  That was what happened to humans. I’d witnessed reincarnated souls many a time during my long life. I’d looked into the eyes of unfamiliar faces and seen old souls. Déjà vu was more than a feeling—it was a memory from the past.

  The car pulled to a stop. Out the window, I saw Hestia march down the steps in heels and a business suit, a phone pressed to her ear. She got in the car and off the phone.

  “How are tricks, Tia?” I asked.

  When I got a befuddled frown in response, I tried again.

>   “Demi said you run think tanks all over the world?”

  Hestia nodded. “I loan out my thinkers to Fortune 500 corporations, governments, and nonprofits. I give my Chosen the money, and I get their praise. Wonderful exchange. By the way, Demi, Psi said he’s biking over.”

  “For gods’ sake, we’re carpooling like he asked.” Demi shook her head. “My brother, the environmentalist. He won’t save the world huffing uphill.”

  “I’m a little shocked that you all have jobs,” I said. “I wonder, what does Hera do?”

  They looked at me in silence for a moment.

  “Hera has done a lot of work in the area of human fertility.” Demeter seemed to choose her words carefully.

  That made sense. Hera was the goddess of fertility and mothers. “Has done? She doesn’t do it anymore?”

  “She’s been a bit restless and aimless the past few hundred years,” Demeter said.

  “She’s trying to find herself.” Hestia’s voice had the same monotone, but I sensed there was a bit of mockery in her words.

  “She doesn’t really need to do much,” Demi continued. “Her favor is sought by millions of women daily. She’ll be sustained for all time so long as babies need to be born and people wish to be married.”

  To me, Hera hadn’t looked like she was pleased with her lot in life. The way Demeter spoke of her sister was as though she were trying to overcompensate for the middle child whose career never took off. Hestia and her brothers didn’t seem to care about Hera’s sullenness the other day up on the terrace. Zeus definitely paid his sister-wife little attention.

  I decided to leave that matter alone and inquire about something else that had been on my mind. “Are there only the six of you? Where are the other gods of Olympus? Athena, Apollo, Persephone. Your children.”

  Hestia looked up from her phone, her thumb paused over the screen. Demeter’s smile wobbled.

  “Those are myths, darling,” Demeter finally said. “Stories made up by humans as they tried to explain away the things they could not understand.”

  “And it was a way for them to keep the many pagan gods they used to worship,” Hestia muttered, her head bent back over her phone.

  “We’re gods, darling,” Demeter said. “We’re not like them. We can’t have children with humans.”

  “What about with each other?” I asked. “You had parents.”

  And there was that tension again. Hestia’s fingers froze over her phone. Demeter’s jaw tensed as it had done on the curb with Zeus when I’d asked about her parents.

  “A discussion of my parents’ sex life.” Hestia shuddered. “There goes my appetite.”

  “You’ve forgotten, Nia,” Demeter said. “It doesn’t work that way with us.”

  I couldn’t push the issue any further. The car came to a stop. When the door opened, we were at one of the most exclusive restaurants in Athens.

  Inside, we were ushered to a private room where many had already assembled. Hera sat talking with an old man and a few dark-eyed Chosen. Poseidon leaned against a wall in board shorts and a tank top. Next to him, Hades stood looking every bit the movie producer in a tailored suit and sunshades.

  Unlike the others gathered, who were all impeccably dressed, the white-haired man in the seat of honor was barefoot. His feet were ashen and his toenails ragged. His clothes were disheveled as though he’d thrown them in the wash only just before coming to the party. His hair was a wild array of white wisps. His nose was bulbous and crooked. His nostrils flared as though he was taking the room in by both sight and smell. His large eyes were as wide as his face, which made his opaque, pupil-less gaze even more arresting.

  His pale gaze, unlike the darkness of the Chosen I’d seen before, reminded me of the Greek busts seen throughout the world in museums. I wondered what made his gaze white instead of black? Perhaps it was his age? Demeter had said he was over two thousand years old.

  The mood in the room was as somber as it would be in a funeral hall. Only the man whose life was soon ending seemed happy. He stood when the other two Olympians entered the room.

  Demeter reached her hands out to him, and he grasped them with his own. “Are you sure there’s nothing we can say or do to change your mind, Socrates?”

  I stopped in my tracks. I stared at the twenty-five-thousand-year-old man as he bowed over Demeter’s hands.

  “The world has borne my radical ideas long enough,” Socrates said.

  He turned to me and smiled. “Tisa?” he asked. “Is that you?”

  It didn’t feel like he was confirming my name. He was Socrates, after all. The great questioner. I felt like I was being tested, and I didn’t know the answer. These past few months without Zane, I had been searching for my identity. Was I Tisa? Was I Theta? Maybe I was Nova?

  “I go by Nia now.”

  Socrates embraced my hands, his large, gnarled fingers encasing my own. I was surprised at his strength. “It has been too long. I would’ve asked to die sooner if I’d known it would bring you back into my presence.”

  I forced a smile. I had to since the memories of this great man wouldn’t come to my mind. “What have you been doing all these years?”

  “The same thing I did every day as a mortal man—asking questions.”

  “Will you tell me what you’ve learned?”

  “The same lessons as when I was a boy.” He grinned secretively. “I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.”

  “That sounds . . . disappointing.”

  Socrates laughed. “No, my dear, it’s freeing. I’ve been holding on for all this time, hoping that some great mystery would be revealed to me, all to find out that I knew it all along. I knew it the moment I was born.”

  “You knew what?”

  He smiled. It was a wizened smile, filled with joy, sorrow, and certainty. “That I am ignorant.”

  “I know you’re about to die and all, and this may sound callous, but that’s stupid.”

  “Precisely.” He grinned. “And you are unchanged. I can tell that you’re still seeking to know everything. But it still comes to pass that the more you learn, the less you know. Quite literally with you. I can see that you don’t remember me.”

  I knew of him. But he was right. I couldn’t remember any personal interactions with either him or these gods. Once again, I had written down everything but the good stuff about history.

  “I once told you that education is the kindling of a flame and not the filling of a vessel,” Socrates said. “That burning desire you have will never sate you, Nia. It will never fill you. It can only burn away the flesh of yesterday and make way for a new you that comes with every tomorrow.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “That’s how I died the first time.” He winked at me. “I asked too many questions. But worse, I made the youth think.”

  I remembered the trial of Socrates. He’d been accused of corrupting youth, but that wasn’t the whole story. “History says you committed suicide?”

  He chuckled. “Being impervious to death yourself, have you ever had to fake your demise to get out of a tricky situation?”

  I had. “Why now? Why are you choosing to end your life in this time?”

  “I was fortunate to choose my rebirth, and now I am fortunate to choose my death. I have examined all of life. There is nothing left to say or think on. Information is so readily at hand and opinions are so widely available that no one needs to or cares to think for themselves any longer. It feels less and less like a democracy and more like a hive mind. That’s what happens when a power vacuum comes into existence. It’s the reason I died the first time.”

  In Ancient Greece, during Socrates’s time, the great ruler Pericles died of plague after a military campaign gone wrong. So many jockeyed for power in his wake. One of the tools they used to snatch power from one another was pointing to scapegoats such as Socrates.

  “My life’s work was to foster the knowledge of the next generation. But I no
longer feel needed in a place that thrives on recycling the old and not generating new ideas.”

  “So you’re giving up?”

  He gazed at me. Though his eyes were opaque, they weren’t expressionless. He looked tired but determined.

  “No,” he said. “I am looking for a new challenge. The flesh is not built for eternity. I have been seventy for hundreds of years. My bones have creaked, my heart has been sluggish. Only my mind has been bright. But with the pace of today’s world, I’ve grown tired. I can’t keep up with the speed of change and the lack of attention. These handheld devices make me shudder.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ve left my mark. Now my soul is weary and I’d like to rest.”

  “There’s a difference between growing up and growing old.”

  He smiled. “Yes. Exactly.”

  15

  Loren’s eyes widened at the designer shopping bags I brought into the hotel room later that evening.

  “So, not only did I get relegated to the kiddie table last night, but I got left out of mall shopping—no. Strike that. High-end boutique shopping.”

  Her fingers traced the embossed letters on the face of the box that displayed the name of the exclusive shop I’d spent my morning at. I pulled out another with the same fancy lettering and presented it to her. She snatched it and pulled out a dress in her size. Her mouth fell open in a soundless gasp and then she let out a high-pitched squeal of delight when she held up her present.

  “This softens the blow,” she said. “But you are not forgiven. I should send you back to that store to think about what you’ve done while you get me a pair of shoes to match.”

  “I didn’t buy it. Demeter did.”

  Loren scrunched her nose, but she didn’t put down the dress.

  “And she didn’t buy it,” I continued. “It was gifted to her by one of her devoted.”

  “Now I don’t know if I should cheer her for getting free stuff or hate her for being worshipped. You do know that the Olympian gods killed their parents, if mythology is to be trusted?”

  “The mythology said it was in self-defense. Because their dad ate them up.”