by Lizzy Ford
“We are, Alessandra. And now that they know where you are, they’ll be hunting you.”
“They … who?”
“Everyone.” Father Ellis said with a shrug. “The Supreme Magistrate will hire, coerce or order all of those beneath him to locate you, and the Supreme Priest will enlist SISA to do the same. You are worth more material wealth than anything that exists today. The gods will reward whoever finds you with … I can’t imagine. A priest knows nothing of wealth except the reward is beyond the most ambitious dream of anyone alive.”
“You’re starting to scare me,” I said. “If this is a joke, it needs to end now.” I searched the face of each. “If this is not a joke, then …” It was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. I had spent my life being treated like a burden by the priests and an ugly little stepsister by the nymphs only to find out this? That I was the reason we were all in the forest? That everyone on the planet was searching for me?
That the Supreme Magistrate, the most powerful man in the world, and the person the priests despised most, knew who I was?
“We will have to go to the alternate plan,” Father Renoir said. “We need to reach the existing Oracle.”
Father Cristopolos responded, but my thoughts were in splinters after the bombshell they dropped on me. I struggled to digest all the new information I’d learned today and do what Herakles trained me: focus on what had to be done next.
“Anyone have a cell phone?” I asked. “I need to talk to Herakles.”
They fell silent and exchanged another look. “That won’t be possible,” Father Cristopolos replied.
“Because …” I prodded.
“Because your disobedience not only cost us the school, but tipped off someone who knew to look for him,” Father Renoir replied. “He was captured.”
“No. He’s too strong.” Even as I said the words, I had the urge to run, to find him and demand he refute the story the priests were telling me.
“You’re right, honey. He’s probably distracting them to give us time to evacuate you,” Father Ellis said.
“Then we have to go get him!”
“Think about this, Alessandra. Assume everything we’re telling you is the truth, if you can’t believe it outright. People will give anything, do anything, to find you. The best thing you can do to help Herakles is to not be where he thinks you are. He loses his value to his captors at that point.”
“And they’ll free him?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
It wasn’t a ringing reassurance. If action movies were remotely based on reality, Herakles was probably in danger of being killed if he wasn’t useful to his captors. I was starting to worry this all was real. “All this just because I stepped outside the boundaries.” It seemed too crazy to be true.
“It was inevitable,” Father Ellis replied. “It was foolish of us to think we could cage you forever. What’s important is we find a safe place for you now.”
“And rescue Herakles,” I pressed.
“Herakles is the strongest man in the world. Chances are he will buy us time and won’t need our help to be rescued,” Father Cristopolos said.
For once, he made sense. I didn’t see Herakles staying anywhere involuntarily. “Can I ask where he went at least?”
“Washington DC,” Father Ellis answered.
I was born and lived just out side of DC until I turned six. If everyone in the world was looking for me, I doubted I could walk into the nation’s capitol and find Herakles unnoticed. Not that I was buying this nonsense …
Except that I kind of was. I was scared enough to believe what they said without understanding exactly what it meant to be someone of importance. To be hunted.
To be an Oracle, the most cherished and highly regarded human in existence. It made little sense after my humble upbringing here.
“Where do I go?” I asked quietly, unable to dispel the urge to find Herakles, no matter what the priests said.
“We have a backup plan. We’re waiting for someone who will take you elsewhere.”
“Who?”
Fathers Cristopolos and Ellis looked at one another briefly in silent communication I didn’t particularly care for. “You needn’t worry,” Father Ellis said. “I’ll be going with you. In the meantime, I need you to keep this on no matter what.” He stepped forward and took my arm, wrapping a piece of red cord around my wrist.
I felt no different but assumed it was like the boundaries of my home, capable of blocking me and the world from one another.
“Do you have any belongings you need to collect?” Father Cristopolos asked.
I shook my head. I owned nothing of value.
“Very well. Remain here with Father Ellis.”
The four of them turned and left. I watched them. This didn’t feel any more real than watching the strange grotesque-creature at the lake. It had to be a dream. A prank. An epic misunderstanding.
“Things are about to change,” Father Ellis said. “It’s only right I give you this.” He held out a small pouch. “Herakles left it with me for safekeeping in case something happened. I think this qualifies. It belongs to you.”
I accepted the small velvet pouch and opened it. Something glimmered inside. I dumped it into my hand and stared at it. A teal gem on a plain chain with a bronze finish nestled into my palm. It was huge, clear and so bright, it almost seemed to glow. Its multifaceted surface reflected sunlight and caused faint rainbows to appear in the air around it.
“Wow,” I breathed. “It’s mine?” Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. It felt like it belonged to me. The strange sense wasn’t something I’d ever experienced before.
“It was all you brought with you when you arrived. You don’t remember how you came to have such an incredible piece of jewelry?”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember anything from before the day we got here,” I murmured. I closed my hand around the gem and considered replacing it in the pouch. It didn’t seem natural or right for me not to wear what was mine. I tugged it over my head and tucked it into my t-shirt. The gem settled against my chest.
“It’s special, whatever it is,” he said.
I know. Uncertain how it was possible for me to understand a gem I’d only now laid eyes on, I stepped away, too wired to be still.
Father Ellis sat down and closed his eyes to meditate.
“How can you pray at a time like this?” I asked in agitation.
“What better time is there to pray than when you’re in trouble?”
To each his own. I rolled my eyes.
Chapter Three
There is nothing permanent except change.
– Heraclitus
How fast could reality, a world, life in general, transform into something I never knew existed?
I was waiting for Father Ellis to laugh and tell me he was joking about everything. But as the next two hours passed in silence, he didn’t change his story. He was quiet and calm, choosing to meditate in the peaceful meadow. I initially paced then sat and stared at the sky, lost.
Everything they’d said began to sink in. When I realized this was real or at least, the priests believed it to be real, I also knew I had to do something. I stood. The monk was seated cross legged in meditation, his eyes closed.
“I’m going to get my emergency pack,” I told him. I waited for him to tell me not to bother, because they were messing with me.
He opened his eyes. “Is it far?”
“Half hour.”
“I’ll wait here.”
My insides were shaking when I turned away and started into the forest. Yesterday, I was desperate to leave the forest. Today, I was scared of the same thing. It was stupid of me to be so worked up! I didn’t buy the idea of me having power, but I did know we couldn’t stay here when the place we all lived was destroyed.
And there’s Herakles. He was the strongest man alive and had been for fifteen years. But I worried about him. If something else was going on here, like maybe the
priests were lying to me for some reason or hiding something worse, then I wanted him with me. I trusted him. I loved him.
I couldn’t leave him trapped in someone’s basement or prison or wherever he was. Even refusing to believe that I was the Oracle, I found myself looking closely at the red cord around my wrist and wondering if it really did what the priests said it did – hid me from the world.
I moved through the forest to the place where we kept emergency packs and stopped at the base of the large, old tree in whose trunk we’d stuffed supplies. Pulling on the pack, I tightened the straps and rifled through the other supplies to make sure I wouldn’t need them.
The crack of a branch made me tense, and I straightened, listening.
Someone was there. Not the priests, who didn’t know how to walk with discipline, but someone who was trying to navigate the forest without being discovered. The occasional brush of cloth on wood, the careful placement of slow footsteps …
Pulling free my knife, I faced the direction of whoever was following me. “I can hear you,” I called.
There was a pause, as if the forest was waiting, too. Finally someone spoke.
“I seem to have gotten lost,” the man said. He eased out from behind a thick tree trunk.
The stranger was dressed in the type of clothing indicating he wasn’t a lost camper but someone who wanted to blend in with his environment. He carried several hunting knives and was built like he knew how to use them. His exposed forearms were scarred and tattooed. A tattoo wound around his neck and disappeared into the clothing covering his chest. He was too handsome to be a priest by far, but it was the gleam in his eyes – the spark of a predatory awareness Herakles had taught me to be wary of – that disturbed me. He had the look of a soldier, aside from his medium length hair.
“Where are you trying to go?” I asked and eased away from the stash of supplies.
“You with the orphanage?”
“Where are you trying to go?” I repeated.
He snorted. “My employers are located somewhere in this forest. A priest named Cristopolos.” His gaze went to our surroundings, and one of the tattoos on his neck stood out. The mark of Hermes – a winged foot – was surrounded by other ornate ink work. Herakles had taught me about the different guilds of the underground society of criminals. I filtered through what he’d forced me to learn to identify the marking.
“You’re a mercenary,” I said, surprised.
“Not a mercenary. A gladiator,” the stranger corrected. “But I do merc work on the side during the off season.”
I didn’t think someone could bear the tattoo of a mercenary and not be one. Mixed martial artists belonging to the Gladiator Guild were street fighters paid handsomely for beating the daylights out of another of their kind. The line between the legal and illegal markets of being paid to fight was blurry, and I didn’t fully understand it except that this man wore a tattoo that designated him to be something other than what he claimed he was.
“So you fight and kill people for money,” I said, recalling what the priests told us about one of the occupations they favored least. They looked upon gladiators with disdain and mercenaries with outright horror.
“Not exactly the godly values they teach you, I know.”
“I think it’s cool. I can fight, too.”
“Sure, kid.” He flashed an insincere smile. “Which way is it?”
I bit back my response, irritated he didn’t believe me. And to call me kid when I was eighteen, an adult by most standards … though today, I felt like I was being treated like a ten year old again. The mercenary was younger than Herakles’ age of thirty five, younger than the priests and the age of all my favorite Hollywood actors.
“Whatever,” I muttered. “What kind of gladiator gets lost in a tiny forest like this?”
“One hired to fight not to track,” he returned.
I was tempted to mislead him to teach him a lesson. A look at him, though, and I recalled what Herakles once said about not deliberately pissing off someone who could pound me into the ground. Priests were one thing. They adhered to strict rules about non-violence. But a gladiator or mercenary was another.
Turning away, I put my knife away and started towards the meadow. “I’ll race you there.”
“You want to race me?” He fell into step behind me, amused. He was over six feet tall and muscular in a way the teen boys at the campground neighboring the property weren’t.
“Why not?” I snapped. “You think I can’t run?”
“I think I don’t want to explain to the priests what happened to the little girl in the forest who fell and impaled herself on a tree trunk because she tried to race me,” he replied with arrogance that made me want to ditch him in the swampy part of the forest where I’d accidentally discovered quicksand one summer.
Really? This man couldn’t know I had been raised by the strongest Olympian in the world. Satisfaction sank into me. I loved the opportunity to prove someone wrong, probably because I rarely had the chance.
“See if you can keep up,” I challenged and then bolted.
For the first fifty meters, he almost did. I pushed myself harder. I had the advantage of knowing the forest and led him through a route that included a few downed trees.
Larger and heavier than me, the gladiator soon fell behind as he struggled to navigate spaces more suitable to someone my size than his. I reached the meadow triumphant and slowed to a trot as I broke free of the forest and headed back to the priest.
Reaching him, I turned to wait for the gladiator. He appeared a full two minutes later.
“I found the mercenary you hired,” I told Father Ellis. “What made you all want to hire someone like that anyway? Don’t you hate them?”
Father Ellis climbed to his feet, facing the gladiator striding across the field towards us. “We needed discretion and loyalty. Money buys both,” Father Ellis said. “Though we paid for a gladiator of some honor, not a mercenary.”
“Yeah, well, he has the tattoo of a merc.” I observed the approaching gladiator. He was grinning, as if pleased by the exercise, his sharp gaze on the priest beside me. “Herakles said you should never pay someone like that. Besides, I can take care of myself.”
“Not against what comes.” Ignoring my look, Father Ellis stepped away to greet the gladiator. “I am Father Ellis. You must be Niko.”
“I am.” The gladiator shook his hand.
“You’re late. We expected you hours ago.”
“The airport is locked down. I had to find a creative route here,” came the easy response.
I kind of liked that Niko wasn’t fazed by the priest’s chiding. Niko wasn’t really what I expected of a mercenary. I had the vision of a gold-obsessed pirate in my head for some reason, and the clean-shaven, practically attired Niko was nothing like that. The edge of wary arrogance definitely fit the image I’d created.
“You’ve met your charge, I see,” Father Ellis said.
“What? This little girl?” Niko motioned to me. He looked me over critically.
I crossed my arms, irked that even the guy they were paying to take Herakles’ place was judging me. Before I could say anything, Father Ellis rested his hand on my forearm.
“Lyssa is humanity’s most precious member.” Father Ellis had stiffened.
“Coming from a priest who doesn’t believe in violence, that doesn’t mean much.” Niko flashed a quick smile, though his cold eyes were never still. “At least she’s tough and can run. I had expected someone more … delicate.”
What was worse? Being called a kid who couldn’t run or fight or being considered unladylike? Niko wasn’t winning any points with me. I wasn’t a nymph, but I had outraced him.
“Can you really fight?” Niko asked me.
“I can,” I proclaimed. “I can climb, camp, hunt, run, fight … I can do everything.”
“She had a very motivated guardian,” Father Ellis said with some disapproval. “Neglected her studies. But, she can run.
”
What was wrong with these people? Judging me for being prepared for the situation they knew was coming? “Whatever. Let’s go.” I shifted my pack.
“Go where?” Niko asked, gaze once more on Father Ellis.
“To wherever you’re taking us,” I replied.
“My contract was for stationary service in a place with three squares and a real bed.”
I pointed towards the school. “That place was blown up.”
“We have a situation,” Father Ellis said simultaneously.
Niko planted his hands on his hips.
Seeing the priest squirm under his glare made me very happy after my day. “Are you going to tell him about the ground forces coming?” I prompted innocently.
“Quiet, Lyssa.” Father Ellis turned towards the school and began walking. “Come with me. Both of you.”
I went, mainly because I had nowhere else to go and a little because I wanted to see Niko and Father Cristopolos in an argument.
“I’m not going anywhere until the contract is defined,” Niko stated.
“If you wish to be paid, you will come with me,” Father Ellis replied.
I looked over my shoulder as I walked, waiting to see what the mercenary would end up doing. He was watching us unhappily. Finally, he started forward, tense and bristling, eyeing the forest with wariness I didn’t share. His long strides closed the distance to Father Ellis and me, and he stepped onto the deer path we walked on.
“Can you really hunt?” he asked me.
“I can.”
“Good. At least you’ll be useful if your priests try to pull one over on me.”
I glanced at him, not liking the sound of that.
“I will take you whether they pay me or not. There’s an underground market for someone like you.”
“Niko, do not scare her,” Father Ellis said. “You will be paid above and beyond what we promised.”
“What do you mean, someone like me?” I asked in confusion. “If I am what they think I am, there’s only one of someone like me … of me … of whatever you think I am.”