Designed by Death

by Melody Rose

  “Hephaestus had another child?” Ansel balked. “In this generation?”

  “Not exactly,” I winced. “He’s a ghost who was sent to by Hephaestus to help me. He’s how I got to the Underworld in the first place.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Ansel?” I prompted, hoping he hadn’t hung up on me.

  “Why do you really want me to come to Italy?” Ansel said suspiciously. “Because as much as I would like to believe it’s because you miss the crap out of me--”

  “I do miss the crap out of you!” I insisted.

  “I know you have another reason,” Ansel continued. “I can hear it in your voice. What’s going on, Shy?”

  I bit my lip and scrunched up my face. I had hoped I wouldn’t have to tell Ansel what I was planning to do until he got here, and then he would have a harder time resisting. But over the phone like this, he still had entirely too many opportunities to say no.

  “Cheyenne,” Ansel prompted knowingly.

  “So, you know how I told you before I left that I need to make the Helm of Invisibility?” I began.

  “You mean in the mere seconds before you left?” Ansel said with a chuckle. “It was kind of hard to forget.”

  “Yeah, well, we need sun fire to make it, and you’re the best source of sun fire that I know of,” I finished off. “So, I would like you to come to Italy, so you can help me finish the Helm of Invisibility, and so I can see your handsome face after all these weeks.”

  I heard him sigh all the way across the globe. I waited in silence, though my body was a bundle of nerves. I tapped my foot, bit my lip, and paced along the edge of the pool while Erich waited anxiously beside me. Phae sat with her legs crossed in one of the pool chairs, sunglasses on, staring uncaringly up at the sky.

  “How can I ever say no to you?” Ansel said. I could hear the smile, and I leaped into the air with an excited shout.

  “Really?” I said, my voice falling into a girly lilt.

  “Really,” Ansel agreed. “I’m coming to Italy.”

  “Oh, that is so amazing!” I squealed. “Okay, I’m going to pass you off to Phae so she can give you the coordinates or whatever you need to get here.”

  “Who?” Ansel asked. “Exactly how many people are over there?”

  “Technically one person,” I said cheekily. “But there is also a ghost, a goddess, and a cyclops. Okay, I love you. I can’t wait to see you. Here’s Phae. Bye!”

  I held out the phone to Phae, who released an exasperated groan but took the phone from me, regardless. She held it to her ear and began to relay instructions to Ansel for how to fly onto the villa’s property.

  “He agreed! He’s coming!” I said in a high-pitched voice to Erich.

  “Well, I sure hope he’s coming,” Erich said. “He would be a shitty boyfriend if he didn’t.”

  “We had a bit of a fight before I came over here,” I said with a low voice. “We kind of fixed it, but I wasn’t sure if he was still mad or how he felt, but this is a good sign.”

  “Wow,” Erich said slowly, with a shocked expression on his face.

  “What?” I asked, suddenly worried. “You don’t think it’s a good sign.”

  “No,” Erich drew out the word. “I’ve just never seen you so,” he waved his hand around at me, “feminine.”

  At that remark, I reacted reflexively. I picked up one of the grape-themed throw pillows and chucked it at my half-brother. It was a bullseye which I was thoroughly satisfied by, but then I remembered that despite the fact that he was ghost-like, he was technically made up of the Eternal Flame. This means the minute that the pillow made contact with him, it burst into flames.

  I squealed in panic and rushed to pick up the pillow. With a lopsided throw, I tossed the flaming pillow into the pool. It landed flat against the water, like a fat man doing a belly flop. It splashed up sprays of water, right onto Phae.

  She leaped up in surprise and yelped. In the midst of her surprise, she dropped her cell phone… into the pool.

  I watched the smartphone float to the bottom of the pool while the top of the pillow still burned with the Eternal Flame because, as I should have known, the flame didn’t ever go out.

  We all stood in stunned silence as we thought about the comedy of errors that had just happened. I slowly turned on my heel to face Phae even though I could feel the anger simmering off her, hotter than when the Eternal Flame turned green.

  “I am so sorry,” I began, but Phae held up a hand.

  “All I have to say is that I hope your boyfriend knows how to get here,” the goddess replied sassily. On that note, she yanked her wrap from off the lawn chair and threw it over her body. She stomped into the house just as Arges came out of it.

  He pointed a thumb behind himself to gesture in Phae’s direction. “What’s her problem?” Then the cyclops noticed the floating pillow still on fire. “And why is that pillow on fire in the middle of my pool?”

  “I really feel like you wouldn’t believe us even if we told you the truth,” Erich said in a flat voice.

  “I’m going to trust you to handle that, Erich,” Arges said as he gestured to the fire pillow. “Considering it’s the same color as you, I’m going to guess you had something to do with that.”

  Erich opened up his mouth to protest, but the cyclops cut him off. “I don’t want to hear excuses. Please, just remedy it. Cheyenne, would you please accompany me down to the forge? I want to teach you how to make the basic helmet shape so you can have it down before your boyfriend, Ansel?”

  “Yes,” I confirmed.

  “Ansel,” Agres repeated so he could commit the name to memory. “The son of Apollo comes.” He paused for a beat. “He has agreed to come, right?”

  “Yes,” I repeated in the same innocent tone as before. Erich shot me a glare that I ignored.

  “Great, then let’s head down to the forge,” Arges clapped his hands as he was wont to do and headed off.

  Erich flipped me the bird as I walked past him, but I replied with only a wide smile as I thought about all the things Erich was going to try to do to get rid of the pillow fire.

  Arges led me down the stone stairs to the forge. We dived right into the lesson on how to make helmets. Before we brought out any materials, he rolled out two stumps from the back and set one down in front of each of us.

  “In order to make the armor, we’re not going to use the anvils,” Agres announced.

  “Not use the anvil?” I said, stepping back in surprise. “Then what are we going to use? Logs?”

  “Exactly,” Arges confirmed. “This is a technique called dishing, and believe it or not, it is forging without fire.”

  “I don’t follow,” I said, my voice foreign to my own ears.

  “Have you ever forged something without using fire, Cheyenne?” Arges asked, even though his tone implied that he already knew the answer.

  “I didn’t think that was possible,” I replied honestly.

  “Well, it is, and let me show you how,” Arges said with a twinkle in his eye.

  Over the next several days, leading up to Thanksgiving break when Ansel would arrive, Arges taught me how to bend and manipulate metal without first heating it up. The trick was using a rounded hammer and selecting a thinner steel. I’d never worked with such a flimsy material before, and it scared me.

  “How is this supposed to protect you?” I asked Arges one day while we were dishing two plates for a Roman-style helmet. Dishing was the technique of rounding out the steel on the stump with a rounded hammerhead. It took a lot of work, and I couldn’t say that I was a big fan. I missed the glow of the metal as it popped out of the forge, but I was determined to learn from Arges and followed every step, even if my arms were limp noodles by the end of the lesson.

  “You mean because it’s so flimsy?” Arges clarified.

  “Yeah, I mean, it seems like anything could--”

  But the cyclops cut me off. Out of nowhere, he flung a na
il in my direction. Instinctually, I held up the metal plate I was holding, and the nail bounced right off. There was a loud tang as the nail slammed into the metal. There was a significant dent, but no puncture wound, no hole.

  As I turned over the metal, I examined it closely. “I still argue that it could have hurt you.”

  “It’s not meant to stop you from getting hurt,” Arges argued, “It’s meant to stop you from getting killed.”

  He took the plate from me and with about eight bangs from his hammer, the plate was back to its original shape before he assaulted it with a nail. “And it’s easy to fix, so warriors didn’t have to keep coming to blacksmiths to get new armor. It was just for repairs.”

  “That’s crazy,” I admired the sheer strength it took to straighten out the metal. Even though it was more malleable than the stuff I usually used, it took a lot out of me in order to bang away until the metal was smooth and round.

  The one good thing about this process was the amount of time I got to spend with the metal. It wasn’t often that I put my hands on the metal itself when it wasn’t blazing hot. Sure, I was naturally heat resistant, but that didn’t mean I always touched the metal when it was glowing white hot. But without the heating process, I got to graze, smooth, and stroke the metal.

  Every time I did it, it sent tingles down my spine, like most metals did when I sensed their essence. While it was different from my previous methods and techniques, I found myself enjoying the process. I realized that any way I could work with metal suited me.

  A couple of days into the process, Arges brought up a subject that surprised me.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you look like your father?” the cyclops asked as he paused his work.

  “My mom mentioned it once,” I said offhandedly, “but you’re actually the only person, other than Eros, who said they had met him.”

  “Your hair grows that color naturally, doesn’t it?” Arges asked, pointing out my bright red hair that looked like I’d stolen the color from Ronald McDonald.

  “Unfortunately, yeah,” I admitted. “I used to dye it that color, though, until I worked with the Eternal Flame for the first time and then bam! It just grew out that way.”

  “It’s not just the hair and the eyes,” Arges said, his voice growing soft as he reminisced. “You have his spirit as well.”

  I set my tools down, though I kept my fingers closed around the handles. I took a deep breath and thought about how to phrase my question. I felt the tension rise in my muscles and tried to ease them, but it didn’t work.

  “What was my dad like?” I said, my voice soft and meek.

  I felt Arges’s eye on me even with my back turned to him. I didn’t dare turn around. Something about the topic of conversation made me think it would be easier to hear his answer if I didn’t look at the cyclops.

  “Just like you hear in all the stories,” Arges admitted before he let out a sigh. “Abrupt. Stubborn. Hot-headed. Jealous.”

  A lump formed in my throat, and I tried to swallow it down, but it wouldn’t go down as easily as I had hoped. Those weren’t excited words of praise and not things a girl expects to hear about her father.

  “But brilliant at his craft,” Arges added with admiration in his voice. “I thought that my brothers and I were great until we worked with Hephaestus.” The cyclops let out a low whistle. “He was unlike anything we had seen before, as though he had been born with the hammer in his hand. His arrogance was completely justified.”

  Arges came around to my side, not letting me hide from him anymore. My gaze trained on the tools resting on the anvil, but his massive presence wasn’t easily ignored.

  “He’s had a rough existence,” Arges said with drops of sympathy in his voice. “With his disability, his deformations, the world has not been kind to him. So for a long time, he refused to be kind back. I know these things are probably hard to hear.”

  I shrugged, my voice still lodged behind that lump in my throat.

  “But I will say this,” Arges told me. Something about the change in his tone, from something mournful to serious and pointed, finally caused me to look up at the monster. I made eye contact with him, and he tilted his head down so I could. “Hephaestus was loyal to a fault. He had very few mortal loves in his life, dedicated to his work as he was, but he loved those women and all his children. With all of his flaws, that was one of his biggest strengths.”

  Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and I looked down, refusing to cry in front of Arges. My thoughts raced through the cyclops’s words. They pricked at me, thinking of all the years I had thought my father abandoned us and refused to be a part of my life. It was a hard habit to deconstruct, reminding myself that there was a good chance that it wasn’t his fault he wasn’t in my life. Something had prevented him from being there. From the sounds of it, he would have if he had the chance.

  “It sounds like he was a good man,” I said, my voice hoarse from the welling emotion.

  “Why do you speak of him as though he were dead?” Arges asked, cocking his head to the side.

  “I…” I paused, not realizing I had used the past tense when speaking of my dad. “I don’t know why. I guess… I’ve always talked about him that way because he was never a part of my life, you know?”

  “I assure you, Cheyenne, that was not his choice,” Arges said. He turned so he could lean against the workbench.

  “What do you think happened to him?” I wondered, daring to ask the question I’d asked myself hundreds of times since learning of his disappearance.

  “I could not tell you,” the cyclops answered as he hung his head. He crossed his arms and looked at the ground as though it held the answers we both sought. “What I do know is that it would have to be something substantial to keep him from you.”

  “You’re just saying that,” I brushed off, not wanting his words to give me as much hope as they did.

  “Even in the short time you have known me, have I ever just said something without meaning it?” the cyclops challenged. “I know your father, and I have not spoken for many years, but we worked together for centuries. It is very unlike him to abandon his work and his livelihood for no reason.”

  “I’d like to think it was something important,” I confessed. “But after so many years of believing he just abandoned my mom and me, I don’t know. It’s a hard pill to swallow.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” Arges scooted closer to me as though he were about to share a secret, “how did your mother and Hephaestus meet?”

  I smiled at the thought of it. Even though my dad had left us, whether by his choice or not, I always enjoyed the story of how he and my mom met. So I lifted my head, and my spirits, and relayed the story to Arges.

  “It was at a Renaissance Faire. Do you know what those are?” I asked, not sure how much the cyclops had ventured out of his villa.

  “I lived through the Renaissance,” Arges said with a know-it-all air. “In Italy, no less, so I am familiar with the shoddy recreations of that glorious time.”

  “Right,” I said, drawing out the word in light of his pompous tone. “Well, my mom was an entertainer. She had a group that would drink on stage, sing, and dance around the pub stage. My dad, Hephaestus, had a blacksmith’s booth where he would make all sorts of weapons, armor, trinkets, and the like.”

  “It was his hobby,” Arges said with a smile. “He liked to escape into the mortal realm as a craftsman and make simple things for the mortals. Easier customers, he used to say, than the gods.”

  “I bet,” I sympathize. “Well, one year, his booth was set up right by the pub stage. He got to watch her show every day, three times a day until finally, a week before Faire ended, he had the courage to come up to her and give her a necklace.”

  “May I ask of what?” Arges inquired. I could tell I reeled the cyclops in with my story. He leaned in like a boy scout listening to ghost stories around a campfire.

  “A music note,” I said as though it were t
he most romantic thing in the world. “He told her that he liked her voice and could listen to her sing and talk for hours, and then asked if she would like to go have a drink with him.”

  Arges’s eye widened in surprise. “That’s rather gentle and thoughtful of Hephaestus. Good for him.”

  “And the rest is history,” I concluded. “They were together on and off for a year, and then I came along. He was really present for the pregnancy, Mom told me, but on the day I was born, he just vanished. Was supposed to meet her at the hospital but never showed.” My voice caught on the last word, and I put a hand to my chest in an attempt to stop the tightness that formed there.

  Arges caught on to my discomfort and quickly gave me space. He slid his massive body down on the workbench and coughed awkwardly into his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling the room shift as I got emotional. “This is the longest I’ve ever really talked about my father, and it’s weird.”

  “An understandable sentiment,” Arges agreed. “We can stop if that would be better for you.”

  I nodded, and Arges responded with a kind nod. He straightened himself up and walked back over to his anvil. Suddenly, though, the cyclops turned back to me and held up one finger.

  “If I may, Cheyenne, I cannot let the conversation end without saying this,” Arges added, his voice softening. “Your father’s disappearance is unusual and should not be taken lightly. It had been widely ignored for these last twenty years or so but should not be any longer. Especially if our theory is correct and these vital weapons are going missing. I implore you to find him whatever your personal feelings may be towards him. It is more imperative than the demigods at the Academy would lead you to believe. And I believe that someone, I do not know who, but someone has done a very good job of hiding him for all these years.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I said, my brain whirling from his words. It had been one of the last things I ever thought the cyclops would say. I thought he was going to offer me some sentiment about my dad being a good man or a funny story from the good ol’ days. But a warning? No, that was not on the list of expected statements.