by Laura Wylde
“I would really prefer if we all sat down and had a civilized conversation,” he said. Asher took a step toward him in anger, but Ryder rested a hand on the big man's shoulder and said,
“Maybe we should just sit down and hear him out.” Asher looked around at the other three survivors, as if asking for a vote. They all nodded and one by one they each took a seat on one of the rocks. There were six of them...just enough. Rose tried to suppress the creepy feelings this was giving her, but she was having a hard time. She had gotten a strange feeling about Henry from the start and it was only getting worse. The flight attendant waited until they were all seated and then he sat down, Slowly...achingly so, he looked from one to the next of them, taking in their faces one by one. At last he said,
“My friends call me Henry, but my given name is Hermes.” He let that hang in the air and Dexter finally said,
“Hermes? As in the God of Trade? The messenger of the Gods?”
Hermes smiled. “You know your Gods.”
“So your parents were mythology buffs,” Ryder said in an annoyed voice. “Get to the point.”
Hermes laughed and said, “I don't know about mythology. I'd say they were more like health and fitness buffs. My father was Zeus and my mother Pleiad Maia.”
“Oh my God!” Asher got to his feet. “This man is either insane or he hit his head when he fell out of the sky. Either way, this is a waste of time.”
“You have another appointment?” Hermes said. Asher dove toward him then and landed face down on an empty rock with a cry as his face slammed into it. The rest of them sat, shocked, and staring at the well-dressed man who was now standing two feet away.
“How the hell did you do that?” Beau whispered. Ryder was helping Asher up. Blood poured from his nose and his lip was split in the corner. Asher pulled away from Ryder and was now looking at Hermes with horror in his eyes.
“What are you?”
“I'm trying to explain,” Hermes said. “But, I'm really not interested in a tussle. It's not my thing. My father is the strong one, and my mother's father was quite strong as well. I'm more about being quick on my feet.”
“This is insane,” Dexter said. “You honestly expect us to believe that you're...what? A God?” Hermes only smiled again and Dexter went on. “If you're who you say you are, then why are we here trapped on this island. The God, Hermes was a protector of travelers. I don't feel so protected at the moment.”
“I'm sorry about your leg, Dexter.”
“And that! How do you know our names?”
“I just told you, I'm the son of Zeus...”
“You're insane.”
“Maybe we should hear what he has to say,” Beau said.
“Says the hippie,” Ryder said.
“Name-calling and sniping at each other isn't going to help,” Rose told him. “Why don't we just let Henry...or Hermes, or whoever he is, finish telling us what this is all about?”
Asher had his t-shirt up over his still bleeding nose, but he sat back down. Ryder did too. Hermes waited until the other men were settled on their rocks and he sat back down as well. “I'm sorry about all the mystery, and the trauma of the crash,” he said. “But sometimes the only way to get someone who believes they are mortal, to realize their own power is by showing them. You're all here for a reason and that reason is to learn the truth about yourselves.”
“Jesus,” Ryder said. “You're talking in circles.”
“If I'm not mistaken,” Dexter said, “He's trying to tell us that we're not mortal.”
“You're not exactly mistaken,” Hermes said to Dexter. “But...it's up to you to figure out who you are, and what you are. I've been sent to give you that message alone and I'm not authorized to give you any more information.” He stood up and put his hands in his pockets. He looked like a visitor that was about to be on his way.
“What about me?” Rose said. “If we were chosen...or whatever, why am I the only woman here? Am I in the mix by mistake?”
“My dear Rose, you are here not only to discover yourself, but to help these gentlemen become who they were meant to be. You were all lost in the mortal world...and we want you back. But the key to all of this is you, Rose. You have more work to do than the rest. You will have to choose.”
“Choose? Choose what?”
Hermes smiled and said, “Not what. Who. You have three days. I'll see you all then.” All five of them opened their mouths and Dexter and Asher were actually in the midst of their next question when there was another bright flash,. This one was right in front of them and the island lit up around them like it was electrified. Rose could feel the heat from the light on her face and she had to close her eyes because they felt like they were burning. Before she did though, she could have sworn that those strange wings on the sides of Hermes shoes lit up and then turned into balls of fire. When the heat was just suddenly gone, along with the light, she opened her eyes. All four men looked like they had just opened theirs as well. The five of them stared at the spot where the flight attendant had just been...into the darkness. Hermes, or Henry, or whoever and whatever he was, had disappeared.
Chapter 6
Back at their own camp nearly an hour later, the mood was subdued. No one knew what the encounter with Hermes had meant, and each of them were trying in their own way to absorb and process what he had told them.
“So...he was saying that we aren't who we think we are...and things aren't what they seem?” Beau said. He sounded like he was thinking out loud, but Asher, who was in a black mood snapped at him,
“He's full of shit! We can sit here all night trying to figure out what he meant. Truth is he's either crazy, or he hit his head too hard on the way out of the sky.”
“That might be easier to believe if he hadn't been immaculately groomed...and, we hadn't just watched him disappear,” Rose said, softly. Asher looked like he was about to retort, but something about Rose's face must have stopped him. She wanted to cry...but not in front of all of these men. She wanted to go home. But here she sat on a deserted island, trying to figure out what the hell a possibly crazy, disappearing man had meant about her having three days to “choose.” Maybe she was the crazy one. Or maybe, she had hit her head too hard, and this was all a dream.
“If he's Hermes...” Dexter started.
“Jesus!” Asher said, disgustedly, throwing up his hands. “You've all lost it.”
“I don't believe in that bullshit either,” Ryder said, “But...the guy did look like he just showered, did his hair and put on a fresh suit of clothes. He did disappear, in a cloud of...something. We are on an island when we shouldn't have even been over the ocean. We haven't seen one dead body...something is definitely weird, so maybe we should at least try and analyze what this weirdo told us.”
“To what end?” Asher asked. “So we sit here and convince ourselves that we're...what? Gods?” he laughed. “I'm going to bed.”
“Zeus,” Dexter said, as Asher turned his back to him. Asher stopped, as if he'd frozen. When he didn't move for several seconds Dexter said, “Did you feel something when I said that?”
Asher turned toward them and narrowed his eyes on Dexter's face. “Yeah, I felt your insanity bleeding through. Good night.” Asher lifted the curtain of leaves they had put over the lean-to, and went inside. The other four of the sat silently for a while and Beau finally broke the silence by asking,
“So who would I be?”
Ryder rolled his eyes and shook his head and Dexter smiled. If nothing else, it gave them something to think about other than their current troubles Rose supposed. “Poseidon,” Dexter said, without hesitation.
“The Sea God, right?” Beau asked.
“Yeah, he was Zeus's brother. Protector of seafarers.”
“Wasn't he the one that protected the Greeks during the Trojan war?” Rose asked.
“Yeah,” Dexter said. “While they were voyaging back home, after the assault on Troy, Odysseus blinded Cyclops, Poseidon's son. He was pissed. St
irred up a big storm...caused Odysseus to lose his ship and a lot of men were lost at sea.”
Ryder shook his head again but said, “Okay, I'll play...just out of boredom. What about me?”
Dexter pulled his brows together and said, “You know, I'm not getting any feeling about you. You haven't really told us anything about yourself. I have to guess from your care of my wounds that you're a doctor. You have a commanding nature about you...not as pushy as Asher, but you like to be in charge, kind of a paternal element...”
Ryder laughed. “Wrong already. There's nothing paternal about me. I've never even contemplated having children.”
Dexter shrugged. “Paternal instincts don't necessarily mean being a biological father. Sometimes it's about being a leader.” He put his fingers on his chin and tapped it, like he was thinking. “Maybe Percy Jackson...”
Ryder laughed. “Percy Jackson was a kid.”
“He was a powerful kid. He saved Olympus.”
“That would make him my son,” Beau said with a laugh.
Dexter smiled. “I don't know any more than the rest of you about what Hermes meant, but I am sure that we are not those Gods in the flesh. Descendants, maybe?”
“So what about me?” Rose asked, softly.
All eyes were on her as Dexter pondered it. “I'll have to give that some more thought,” he said, “but maybe Athena. She was the goddess of many things.”
“Yes,” Rose said. “I know who she was. I hardly think that I could be labeled as a “virgin” Goddess of wisdom and courage and inspiration...”
Dexter struggled back up to his feet and said, “Remember what I said though, it's not that we're them, it's that we're descended from them. At least that's the most logical explanation I can come up with. Then again, maybe Asher is right and we're all laying in the hospital in a coma, having a shared delusion. I'm going to turn in. Sleep well, all.” They watched Dexter limp over to the lean to and let himself in underneath the foliage curtain. The three of them looked at each other and Beau spoke first.
“So I guess the question has to be, would we rather think of ourselves as descendants of the Gods...or head injuries?” He chuckled and stood up. “Good night.” When he was gone, Ryder turned to Rose and said,
“What do you think...about all of this?”
She shook her head. “I'm as confused as everyone else. I got a weird feeling about that flight attendant from the start though, I remember him saying something about me being “The VIP” and then something else about the flight being short and me not taking off my seat belt. It's been strange from the start. But given the choice, I think I'd almost rather be in a coma. Then maybe I could wake up with my parents next to my bed...and go back to my normal life.”
Ryder nodded and when he saw she was getting ready to stand, he stood first and gave her his hand, She welcomed it. Her feet were killing her. “You should go soak your feet in the lagoon in the morning,” he said.
She was surprised. She didn't think she'd been limping that much. “How did you know my feet were sore?”
“You've been barefoot all day. Besides, I see the way you've been limping.”
“I didn't think it was that obvious.”
He smiled. “Well, everyone does think I'm a doctor.”
“Are you?”
He made a face. “Sort of, I guess.” Rose let that sit with everything else she was confused about. When they got into the shelter, she lay down on a pile of clothes one of the guys had already arranged for her and tried to shut off her brain and just rest for a while. It worked...sort of.”
When Rose woke up in the morning, all of the men still appeared to be asleep. She got up as quietly as she could and slipped out of the shelter to head for the lagoon and do what Dexter had suggested the night before. Her feet were really sore. As soon as she stepped outside, she almost gasped out loud at the beauty that surrounded her. It was absolutely the kind of sight that might make a person believe they were being looked down upon by all the Gods of Greece. The sun was just coming up and the light scattered across the sky, slowly illuminating her surroundings. She could hear the birds chirping in the trees and see the seagulls as they glided back and forth across the surface of the ocean. The tide seemed to have the waves racing each other, to see which one could make it to the land first and sparks of light danced across the water as the ocean tried but failed to absorb them.
She smiled, and it felt good to simply appreciate being alive. Going over to the bag next to the snuffed out fire pit, she rifled through it until she found the toothpaste they had scavenged the day before, deodorant and soap. She looked in the suitcase next to it and took out a hand towel with the airline logo on it and the shorts and t-shirt that she'd found for herself. As she walked away from the campsite, she realized it felt strange, and sad, to be getting ready to use things that might belong to people who had lost their lives. Rose wished she was more of a “survival of the fittest” kind of person...but, she just couldn't put the thoughts of those poor souls out of her mind. She wondered about the young couple she'd seen at the airport and all the little children running around. By the time she got near the lagoon, she had tears in her eyes and was so lost in her head that the sound of Dexter's voice almost didn't penetrate.
“Hey!” he said, maybe not for the first time. She turned toward him and he smiled. “Sorry if I startled you.”
“No, you didn't,” she said, doing her best to suck up the tears. “I was just lost in my thoughts.”
When Dexter got close he said, “How did you sleep?”
“As well as I could, I guess,” she said with a smile. “How about you? How's the leg?”
He looked down at the bandage Ryder had fashioned for him. “Okay, a little sore.” She was sure it had to be more than “a little” sore, but she also knew most men didn't like to admit when they were in pain. “Do you mind if I sit with you for a while? I'll turn my back if you want to wash up.”
“No. I don't mind.” She walked over to the lagoon and sat down next to the clear, green water that was constantly being fed by the gorgeous waterfall across the way. It was almost too beautiful there for her eyes and brain to comprehend. The colors were all so intense, and fused together as if painted on an artist's palette. With her bottom in the wet sand, she turned so that she could dangle her feet in the shallow water. Ryder had been right. The cool water almost instantly relieved the discomfort she'd been feeling.
“Your feet are sore,” Dexter said, not posing it as a question. “We need to find you some shoes, or make you some out of what we have. It shouldn't be too hard.”
Rose smiled and said, “I'll feel like Mary Anne from Gilligan's Island, wearing a pair of island fashioned shoes.”
He laughed. “You're young for that show.”
“So are you.”
“Syndication,” he said. “I watched a lot of television growing up.”
“Seems to me you read a lot of books. You were pretty knowledgeable last night about the Greeks.”
Still smiling he said, “That too. I have this thing where I can close my eyes and call up a page out of almost every book I've read, as long as it's something that interested me in some way.”
“I would call that more of a talent than a “thing,” she said, sincerely. She was beginning to think that their wounded Dexter was something of a genius. “You never said, which one of the Gods do you think you were descended from?”
“Oh, I don't know. Athena as well, probably. She was big on knowledge. I've got so much in my head that it's surprising you didn't find me bleeding out random thoughts.”
She laughed. “I'm going to wash up and change, if you don't mind.” Dexter turned his back like a gentleman and Rose quickly stripped off the clothes she'd been wearing for two days and took a quick sponge bath before putting the others that she found on. They fit almost like she had bought them for herself. It was another thing she told herself to add to the list of “pros.” Being positive would keep her sane, so that was w
hat she was determined to do. When she finished washing, she used the toothpaste and her finger to brush her teeth. Finally running her fingers through her hair to take out the tangles, she told Dexter, “All finished, thank you.”
“No problem,” he said. “If you don't mind, I think I'll do the same.”
“Not at all,” she said, for the first time noticing the clean shirt he had under his arm. She traded place with him, listening to him whistle as he washed up, and once again letting her thoughts turn to the night before. She had tried hard to come up with an explanation other than the one Hermes or Henry had given them. The human mind didn't easily accept things it couldn't see or touch or hear or taste. But so far, she'd come up with nothing. When the beautiful woman suddenly appeared in front of her, she was startled, but oddly, not really surprised. She looked over at Dexter who was still washing up, not acting like he noticed anything.
“He can't see me,” the woman said.
“Who are you?” Rose asked her.
“I'm the Goddess, Athena.”
“I must have hit my head really hard.” She glanced at Dexter again. He was going about his business, like nothing was happening only a few feet away. When she looked back at the “Goddess” the woman was smiling. Her smile was dazzling and Rose began to notice other things about her then. She had platinum blonde hair that hung down past her waist, in ringlets. Her eyes were the color of the ocean and so large they took up a good portion of her face. Her skin looked like it might melt like butter if you touched it...and she had the kind of full lips that models would kill for. She was either the most beautiful human that Rose had ever lain eyes on...or, she was truly a Goddess.
“You aren't dreaming, my dear, although I don't blame you for thinking so. I'm really here, but just for you. No one else can see or hear me.”
“Then maybe you can explain this to me. What's going on here? Where is here?”
“You're on an island known as Alithia. Do you know what that word means?” Rose shook her head. “In Greek, Alithia means, truth. This is an extreme way to do things in your mind, I'm sure. But since you were all born as humans, this was never going to be easy. The Council of the Gods decided that the only way for you five to discover yourselves...the truth, that you would have to be taken away from the distractions of human life.”