by Jasmine Walt
“Yeah,” the guy said. “It’s gonna be down in Eleusis. I’d never heard of the place, but it’s not that far from Athens.”
“Where’d you get this invitation?” I asked.
“It’s all over social media,” he answered. His eyes were on Loren, not me. “So, you’ll show?”
“Maybe.” She tossed the comment, and her sign, over her shoulder as we set into motion toward the exit. Once there was distance between us, she said, “Do you think it’s still our friendly neighborhood scammer who’s doing those invitations?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t look like he had a big operation. Those kids are international.”
“You do know that the internet is worldwide?” she said. “Baros and I were headed toward Eleusis when we got the call that they’d found Hera.”
“What were you planning to do in Eleusis?”
“Besides him?” Loren crossed her arms over her chest, fingers clenched in a fist.
“I take it your little getaway didn’t go as planned?”
Her face screwed in frustration. I heard the tendons in her neck as she rolled her head around. “He took me on a tour of the great battles of the Spartans. We started in Thermopylae. Where he died. How sexy is that?”
It didn’t sound to me like the question needed a response, so I kept my mouth shut.
“There I was, in a barely-there bikini, and he’s going on about battles he’d fought thousands of years ago, like we were watching a highlights reel of the last fifty years of the World Cup.”
“I guess once a military and political mastermind, always a military and political mastermind.”
Loren cut me with her eyes. “Not when you have a naked and willing woman spread out in front of you.”
We stepped out of the sliding glass doors and into the cool Athens air. The sun was moving lower toward the horizon. Tourists were pouring into the city, looking for excitement and adventure, as the residents were getting off work and preparing for relaxation and family time.
It should have been a typical weekday evening in the city. But I felt something in the air. It felt like the ground was humming with energy. There was a buzzing, much like what I’d experienced at the Chosens’ rites a couple of nights ago. But the Olympians weren’t doing another rite tonight. They were interrogating their wayward sister.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “But something doesn’t feel right.”
“Let’s get to the hotel,” Loren said. “Maybe the answers are there.”
We hailed a taxi at the curb and hopped in.
“What else did you find out?” I asked. “Did Baros say whether Hera put up a fight when they found her?”
Loren shook her head. “When I spoke to him, he said she walked in the door and sat down to breakfast with her siblings. He said they were talking like civilized people. That’s when I knew he was lying. What family is civilized at the dinner table?”
We arrived at the hotel. With my memory of Tres’s wiring trick, the elevator took us up to the penthouse. The door to the Olympians’ stronghold was unguarded, but I felt a tickle at my throat.
I steeled myself to face Tres, but standing in the corner was Bet. At the opposite end of the wall was Baros. The large warrior’s black gaze was trained on Bet. I could hear his molars grinding from where I stood. He cracked his knuckles one by one, pressing against the digits. The crunching sound filled the silent hall.
For his part, Bet leaned casually against the wall. He either didn’t notice Baros throwing optical daggers at him or he did and put on airs to get a rise out of the Spartan warrior.
It was possible Bet had forgotten about his hand in the demise of Leonidas and the Spartans. Or, more likely, he was relishing rubbing the man’s ancient defeat in his face. In hand-to-hand combat, I’d put my money on Bet. In a battle of wills, he’d be my pick for odds as well. Bet’s age, experience, and strength were no match for a warrior even as great as King Leonidas.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Bet. “And why are you hanging around outside the door?”
His smirk turned downward at the question. “Demeter kicked me out. Family business, she said.”
I stared. Was that a pout on the second oldest Immortal’s face? Was he spinning his wheels over the rejection of a woman? This day just kept getting weirder and weirder.
Bet turned to Loren. “Aw, you went and got yourself another pet, Tisa?”
Loren bristled. Baros used that as an excuse to step away from his corner. I went to step between all three of them, not sure whom I would be guarding from whom, when shouting rose from behind the closed door of Demeter’s apartment.
“How could you do that, Hera?”
Four heads turned to the door. I tried it and found it unlocked. After I turned the knob and opened it, we all filed in. Hestia was speaking as we entered. It was the most animated I’d seen the serious woman this week.
“Socrates never did anything to you,” Hestia said. “Or is this about me? Are you still mad about Hippocrates?”
Hera sat in the center of a sofa. Demeter faced her in a high-backed chair. Hestia stood on one side of Demeter, Hades stood on the other. Poseidon hung back, looking out a window. Zeus leaned against the wall behind Hera.
In answer to Hestia’s question, Hera rolled her head around her neck and looked up from her solitary seat. She glared her golden eyes at her sister.
“He only gave me his soul,” Hestia said, placing her hands on her hips in a defensive move. “But you clearly had his heart. Give me the word and I’ll call him back from the World Health Organization.”
“It’s not about you, Hippocrates, or Socrates.” Hera’s voice was dispassionate as she gazed out the window at the setting sun on the Acropolis.
“Oh, Hera.” Demeter rose from her throned chair and came to sit down next to her sister.
Once seated, Demeter reached out her hands to Hera’s. Hera looked over at her sister in surprise. Slowly, her fingers stretched to life and began to curl around Demeter’s. But before Hera’s fingers finished the embrace, Demeter pulled away.
“It’s about me, isn’t it?” Demeter asked.
Hera’s face shuttered like blinders in a sudden storm. She shrugged her sister’s hands off her person and went to the window.
“Of course it’s not about either of you,” Zeus heckled from his spot against the wall. “She’s obviously doing it to get my attention. Although why I would care what she does with a seventy-year-old, I have no idea.”
“Oh, shut up, you ass.” Hera’s cool countenance broke and she whirled on Zeus, eyes crackling.
Zeus met her thunderous gaze with one of his own. The very humidity in the room changed as the two faced off from opposing ends of the room. It felt cold, warm, and damp all at the same time.
Hera broke the stare off first. Her beautiful face contorted into something ugly as she turned her glare on the rest of her siblings. “You all expect me to be content with my lot in life. Just to pick up your scraps.”
“What scraps?” Demeter asked, rising from the couch. “Hera, you’re worshipped by millions.”
“No one chooses me. Not humans, not any of you. You all take from me, but no one stays.”
She turned her glare back on Zeus. “For hundreds of years, I’ve felt like I’ve been walking around on fumes. I just want something of my own. Do you have any idea how hungry I am?”
They stared at her in confusion. I felt sorry for her. She had a close-knit family to lean on, but she felt like an outcast in the crowd.
“You’re being dramatic as always,” Zeus said. “You should’ve been the patron saint of the theater instead of mothers. You’re exactly like the symbol the humans gave you—a peacock who shakes its big bright tail feathers to get attention.”
My ears perked up at the mention of the peacock. Then it hit me. Each of the Greek gods had symbols to identify them. Zeus had his thunderbolt. Poseidon his trident. Hades his scepter. Hestia’s was the hearth
. Demeter’s was wheat. And Hera’s . . . was the peacock.
“Or better yet,” Zeus was saying, or rather, shouting, “I should’ve left you in our father’s belly after he swallowed your essence.”
His siblings’ heads all snapped to him at the mention of their parents.
“I wish you had,” Hera said. “At least he wanted my love.”
Like in a tennis match, everyone’s heads snapped back across the room to her.
“Darling, no.” Demeter insinuated herself between the two raging gods. “He didn’t want your love; he wanted your life so that he could live. Our father was evil incarnate. You remember our birth?”
Remember my birth.
The words echoed through my head. Around the room, heads lowered in what looked like guilt, shame, and fear.
“And now, they’re both gone.” Hera backed away from her sister. “Mother loved him enough to lie down next to him in his sleep.”
“She sacrificed herself so we could live,” Demeter insisted.
“She could’ve stayed with us. But she loved him too much to be parted from him.” Hera’s golden eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “I only wish I had someone who would do the same for me.”
“Don’t look at me,” Zeus said.
The tears dried up and her pupils flashed. “You’re an asshole. I promised to be true to you for the rest of our lives, but you can’t see past your own prick.”
Zeus cocked his head. “Well, my prick is exceptionally long.”
Hera growled and lunged for him. But her siblings stepped between them. Demeter and Poseidon came to her. Hades grabbed hold of Zeus’s forearm. Hestia shook her head amid the commotion.
Hera looked at her siblings as though they were traitorous. She took a few steps backward, then a few more. When she felt the glass balcony door at her back, she turned, opened it, then stepped outside and leaped.
I gasped and ran across the room. By the time I got to the balcony, the sky was empty. I couldn’t see down to the ground. But no screams trailed up to my ears.
“Don’t worry about her,” Zeus said dismissively. “She’s a god. A few dozen stories won’t kill her. Unfortunately.”
“How long have you been here, darling?” Demeter asked, coming up to me.
“You just let her leave?” I said.
“She’s a fully formed goddess,” Zeus said.
“She’s a distraught female with superpowers who has the ability to steal a soul. I think we should keep an eye on her for a few days . . . or years. At the very least, I think she needs a hug.”
The siblings looked around at one another. Zeus threw his hands around his middle like he would be sick at the very thought.
“Now Zuzu,” Demeter said in an admonishing tone. “Don’t be like that. You two did come into this world together. Why don’t you dig deep into that dark heart of yours and go after her?”
“In the wise words of every younger sibling to an older one,” he said through gritted teeth, “you are not my mother.”
As the two gods continued to argue like young children, something shook loose in my mind. I stared at Demeter. For the few days that I’d been in her presence, she’d been calm, cool, and collected. She’d stood out as the mature leader of her powerful siblings. But watching her bicker with her brother made me realize something about the woman in the dreams I’d been having.
The slamming of the front door brought me back to the present. When I looked up, only five of the Olympians remained along with me, Loren, Bet, and Baros. The thunderous slam, I had to assume, came from Zeus leaving.
“Don’t worry about Hera and Zuzu,” Demeter said. “They fight all the time. You know what they say about a thin line between love and hate. Darling, why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s not you who has been visiting my dreams,” I said. “It’s been your mother.”
“My mother is—”
“Asleep,” I finished for her. “You said so yourself. Because she’s not worshipped. No one praises her name. But she’s not dead. She’s somewhere, and she’s been calling out to me.”
The room went deathly still. None of the gods tried to deny my assertion.
“Rhea,” I said, and just the mention of her name caused a swell of energy to rise around me. “She foresaw that your father would consume you. She was able to save Zeus. In turn, he saved all of you. She sees something else coming now, and she’s been trying to tell me.”
Hestia stepped forward. “Our mother came to you in a dream?”
I nodded at her hushed tone. Her blue eyes were clouded as though a surprise storm raced across the horizon. There was sorrow in the set of her high cheekbones.
“What did she say?” Hestia asked.
“She keeps telling me to wake up. In one dream, we were in the Parthenon. I saw many humans being sacrificed. That’s what made me go back the other night, and then I found Socrates. This morning, she told me to remember your birth. What happened at your birth?”
Demeter turned from me and faced her siblings. The healthy glow that always shone on her face went pale. A tremor ran through her voice as she spoke. “You don’t think she would?”
None of her siblings answered her. They stared with shock shining out of their bright gazes.
Poseidon was the first to break the silence. His voice sounded ragged, like it had been bashed against the keel of a ship. “We need to go after her.”
“Your mother?” I asked.
Four pairs of glowing eyes found mine.
“No,” Poseidon said. “Hera.”
I set my mouth to ask why, but I choked on the word. If the four individuals who knew the answer were immobilized with fear, and they were ancient gods, then I doubted I truly wanted to know the answer. Poseidon opened his mouth to answer my unasked question. I had the urge to duck lest I be pulled into a tidal wave of badness. But his sister cut him off before he could give it any voice.
“She wouldn’t do that,” Demeter insisted.
“You just heard her say it, Demi,” Hestia said. “She said she wished Zeus had left her in Father’s belly.”
Demeter shook her head, the only Olympian still in doubt over whatever Hera’s plan was. “But she can’t do anything. No one worships him any longer. And even if they did, she’d have to get them to Eleusis. We have time to find her and talk some sense into her.”
“Actually . . .”
Everyone’s head whipped to Loren.
“There’s a party going on in Eleusis right now,” she said.
“There’s a tour company that promised people access to the Eleusinian Mysteries,” I added.
“They do that every year,” Demeter said. “Just a few dozen people dancing about and singing my name, not my father’s.”
“Well, this year the party went viral,” Loren countered. She held up her phone to show first the invitation with the wheat wreath surrounding the peacock plume that symbolized Hera, and then a live feed of the college kids drinking, dancing, and reveling amidst the ruins of Eleusis. There had to be at least a hundred people in the crowd.
“That would be enough.” Hestia’s voice was faint.
“Enough to what?” I asked.
Demeter turned to me. The light in her eyes had gone out. “Enough to raise a god.”
23
We sped down the streets of Athens with Baros at the wheel. With gods who could command earth, water, and fire, it was a wonder that none of them could fly to get us to Eleusis faster.
We were packed into the limo. Demeter and Bet sat to one side with me. Hestia, Poseidon, and Hades sat facing us. Loren rode in the front with Baros. Zeus had been MIA since storming out of Demeter’s apartment after the argument with Hera.
There were many blocks along the road as it was a Friday night and parties were in full sway. Tourists filled the streets while citizens ducked off the beaten path and police put up blockades to keep the peace. None of the Grecians realized the danger presented to them by ancient deities w
ho were in their midst. Nobody realized one of those deities was nearby and about to steal the souls of hundreds of people just like them.
We passed the Parthenon. Its columns looked luminous on the dark horizon. I saw the workers descending the steps, their work done for the day, disappearing into the night. It looked as though they were descending into the underworld. My mind fled back to Egypt and the workers falling into the chasm of a tomb.
“What did you mean when you said raise a god?” I turned to Demeter. “I thought you needed to feed off the worship and praise of willing souls to live?”
“We do,” Demeter said. “Now that we’re here.”
“What about when you were born?” I asked, remembering her mother’s ominous warning. “How exactly were you born?”
“I’m glad you don’t remember.” Demeter turned away from me and into Bet’s shoulder. In an uncharacteristic show of humanity, he caressed her temple with his fingertips. “I wish I could forget, too.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d said those words to me. It wasn’t the first time I’d asked how she was born. But now, I was starting to remember the first time this conversation had happened. I’d seen the evidence of the birth of a god firsthand.
Memories started coming back so fast my head was spinning. It started with what I’d seen in the dream of the ancient temples being built, and the workers dying. That hadn’t been a dream; it was a memory.
I remembered the sweat pouring off shoulders in the hot sun. Bodies keeling over under the strain of the stone and marble. I recalled blood seeping out of barren eyes and soaking into the fields of wheat as two golden-haired gods emerged from the ether of existence. As Zeus and Hera opened their eyes for the first time of their existence, the human bodies dropped to the ground.
“We didn’t ask to be born.” Demeter’s golden eyes were dim as they regarded me.
“Wheat is a symbol of sacrifice,” I said. “The Ninnion Tablet—it doesn’t depict how you give immortality to humans. It depicts your birth.”
The Olympians either looked down at their hands or out the window. Not one would meet my gaze.