The Eternal City

by Paula Morris

The sky darkened to a deeper shade of charcoal, and rain began to fall. This was it, Laura knew. Jupiter was sending the rain Mercury had asked for.

  Mercury could leave Rome, and take the star sapphires with him. Now all they had to do was get to the Pantheon.

  The rain was persistent but still a drizzle rather than a downpour, enough to make the cobbles slithery. But not enough, Laura suspected, to create the thundering funnel of water Mercury needed to return to the other side.

  The piazza in front of the Pantheon was quiet, all the shops and restaurants shuttered. It seemed months ago rather than days, Laura thought, when she’d taken the second star sapphire from her bag. She’d shown it to Maia—one of the Seven Sisters—there at the fountain, and the seagull—a harpy—had swooped down to try to steal it. Everything seemed different in retrospect, now that Laura knew the truth.

  That day, the piazza had been crowded with tourists and shoppers, buskers and hawkers. Now there was no one near the fountain with its dolphins, snapping and writhing, tails flicking, defying anyone to get too close to them. Seagulls were flying overhead, their eerie cries like warning shots echoing around the empty piazza.

  “Dolphins okay,” Laura muttered to herself, remembering Maia’s explanations. “Seagulls not.”

  Today no one huddled around the granite columns of the Pantheon’s porch to take shelter from the rain. The vast bronze doors, the same color as today’s sky, were closed. Panic made Laura’s heart beat faster: What if the Pantheon was locked? She hadn’t considered the possibility of not being able to get in. They might have been able to climb up the ruins of the Golden House, but the Pantheon was huge. There was no way in for them but the doors. She looked over at Dan, Maia, Sofie, and Kasper, and she could see by the looks on their faces that they were thinking the same thing.

  Mercury, his downy shirt ruffled by the wind, seemed unperturbed by the closed doors. He walked resolutely toward them and, as he approached, they creaked open, as though unseen hands were pulling them from the other side. Laura hurried through, Dan at her side, the others crowding in behind them.

  Inside it was empty and quiet—no tour groups, no recorded announcements, just the sound of light rain falling through the oculus and pattering onto the marble floor. The stillness felt false and almost oppressive after the noise and chaos, the unbelievable sights and sounds, they’d encountered on the way here.

  After they’d all crowded in, the heavy doors clanged shut.

  “Now we must wait,” Mercury told them. There wasn’t enough rain yet: Laura understood that. She wondered if now was the time to hand over the star sapphires, or if she should hang on to them until the last possible moment.

  Maia sank onto the floor and hugged her knees; her jawline was bruised. Sofie rummaged around in her bag for some water, then sat down beside her sister.

  “Laura,” said Kasper, his face contrite, and still handsome despite a nasty graze on his forehead and red scratches down one cheek. “I must say sorry to you again. I was wrong to do what I did last night, taking the stones and running. I thought it was the best thing, but maybe it was the worst. Finding the mosaic was impossible, and then there was the earthquake, and now—this.”

  Laura nodded, remembering the sight of Kasper’s stone horse coming at them.

  “I think the battle today was always going to happen, one way or another,” she told him.

  “It should be over soon, I hope,” Kasper said. “Then we can forget about what happened here today.”

  Laura shot him a rueful smile. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget what happened,” she said. “Even if I wanted to.”

  Kasper gathered her up in a hug and Laura hugged him back. When she spotted Dan a few feet away, frowning with irritation in Kasper’s direction, Laura couldn’t help but smile a little.

  There was nothing to do at this point but recover from the battle scene outside, and sprawl around on the cool marble floor, watching the rain create a damp circle. Dan, though, couldn’t settle: He paced around, and more than once walked over to the big doors, shaking the handles to make sure they were locked. Rain was still falling, but it wasn’t heavy enough yet. Mercury was walking around as well, taking small precise steps and glancing up at the circle of gray sky visible through the oculus.

  Laura stood up to stretch, and Dan sidled over.

  “At least he doesn’t go to our school,” he muttered to Laura, nodding in Kasper’s direction, and she shook her head and smiled. Obviously he wasn’t going to let his grudge drop, especially if Kasper insisted on hugging her. “You didn’t have to let him off so easy, you know.”

  “It’ll all be over soon,” Laura told him, though she was really telling herself. All they needed was some more rain, and this could end. Maybe it was getting heavier, or maybe it was her imagination.

  A familiar cry sounded overhead—seagulls crisscrossing the sky above them, flying closer and closer. Laura’s stomach dropped. Of course, seagulls. The closed door wouldn’t keep them out, not when there was a gaping oculus open to the sky. She should have thought of that.

  Maia was on her feet now, speaking in a slurred voice after the blow to her jaw.

  “I thought this might happen,” she said, frowning up at the sky.

  “What?” Dan asked.

  “Harpies,” said Maia and Sofie in unison, exchanging grim-faced glances.

  Mercury gave a strange little hop and launched himself into the air, transforming into a crow so instantly that Laura felt the way she always did when she saw it—as though her eyes were playing tricks on her. He flew in low circles around the big, echoing space, around the scant shower of rain splattering the floor. Kasper, who’d been sitting down, was standing up, rubbing his bruised knuckles. They all knew now what seagulls meant: nothing good.

  “You’re the one with the star sapphires,” Maia told Laura. “They’re really going to come after you.”

  “So you’re saying: Be ready to fight,” Laura said, hoping her voice sounded strong and brave, the opposite of the way she was feeling.

  “Fight dirty. They will.” Maia cast a wary eye at the oculus, where the seagulls still swooped and cried, just outside the building. “We have to get them to the ground.”

  “Those harpies think they are so clever,” said Sofie, contempt in her voice; she was staring up at the oculus as well. “They are just stupid monsters. We are the daughters of a titan.”

  That was all very well for Sofie and Maia, thought Laura, but she and Dan just had regular American parents. And all Kasper had to protect him—aside from his height and strength—was a supposedly magical amber amulet that some monster could probably just wrench off his neck.

  Sofie, Laura noticed, was brandishing Kasper’s flashlight/penknife in her hand. A good idea, Laura decided, wishing she had something on hand she could use in an attack.

  “Nothing but brute strength for me,” said Dan, as if reading her mind. He didn’t sound very confident, either. “I hope they don’t decide to punch my other eye.”

  “We should be like Roman soldiers,” Kasper suggested.

  “Like, wear armor?” Dan asked snidely.

  “No,” Kasper said, glancing at him. “I mean we should keep together, not spread out. That’s how the Romans fought, protecting each other.”

  “So the enemy couldn’t divide and conquer,” said Maia, still looking up at the sky. “We stand in a tight circle, and when people are tired, they move inside the circle, and get ready to fight again.”

  “We could use bags as shields,” Laura suggested. She wished she’d brought her backpack. Luckily, Maia, Sofie, Dan, and Kasper all had theirs. “If we get attacked from overhead.”

  Dan lent her his bag and the three girls slipped on the backpacks so that they hung in the front, like rudimentary armor. They agreed that Kasper’s bag would be held aloft by whoever was in the center of their circle, to protect them from aerial attack. Laura, Maia said, should stand in the middle, sheltered by the others, to begin with, beca
use she was the main target. When Kasper suggested that Dan be the one standing in the middle, because he had no “bag armor,” Dan got annoyed, and Maia had to shout over the boys to stop them from arguing.

  “Be quiet!” she yelled, and everyone was startled: Maia almost never raised her voice. But it was instantly clear why she was shouting. Mercury, in his crow form, was cawing, his echoing cries raising the alarm, and two seagulls dipped into sight, entering the Pantheon through the oculus, followed by two crows.

  Mercury’s troops, Laura thought. If only there were more of them.

  “Take your positions now,” said Maia, calm again, and they all obeyed.

  Another two gulls flew in, and another two, and then Laura lost count. She scuttled into the interior of their little fighting formation and hoisted Kasper’s backpack above her head for extra protection. She couldn’t see anything now, tucked away in the tight circle of bodies, but she could hear the rain slapping the marble floor, and, much louder, the throbbing shrieks of the seagulls. They were getting closer, their screeches ringing in her ears.

  When they launched their first attacks, Laura heard rather than saw it—the whir of wings, the cries (from the gulls and from her friends on the outside of the circle), the incessant cawing of Mercury and his crows, the whack of a makeshift weapon smacking at a seagull.

  Kasper’s backpack, brandished above her head, absorbed some of the impact of an attacking beak, but not all. Laura braced herself, flinching every time a bird thudded into the bag. It was taking all her strength to soak up the impact without dropping to the ground. She needed a different tactic—to be more aggressive. She remembered how she’d been able to fight the mugger yesterday. Maybe she wasn’t so meek after all.

  Every time she sensed a bird was close, she pushed the bag hard, up into the air, trying to bat it away rather than let it get so close to her head. Hopefully she was hitting seagulls rather than crows: it was impossible to tell with all the noise they made. Her new tactic seemed to be working, and maybe, she hoped, she’d take one of those “stupid harpies,” as Sofie called them, by surprise.

  “Laura out, Sofie in!” Maia called, and Sofie, panting hard and bleeding from her temple, squeezed next to Laura. There was no time to think, or to fear, anymore. Laura hesitated just long enough for Sofie to get a grip on Kasper’s bag, and then she wriggled into the outer circle, between Dan and Kasper. Before her eyes had even adjusted, a seagull flew at her head, its beak pecking at her skull.

  “Ow!” she screamed. The pain was terrible, searing its way into her brain. How everyone else was managing to stay upright getting attacked like this was incredible.

  “Tighten up,” Maia ordered the group when Laura took her place. Another seagull hurled itself at her, this time smacking straight into her backpack armor. Maybe it could sense the star sapphires, she thought, swiping at it wildly and coming away with a handful of white feathers. A crow swooped low, circling their group, and when another seagull dove toward Laura, the crow intercepted, driving the screeching white bird off course.

  Laura had only the vaguest sense of Dan on one side of her and Kasper on the other, arms and legs hitting out, Kasper back in possession of the flashlight; it cracked every time it made contact with a gull’s beak. Another seagull soared toward her, its beady eyes fixed on her, and Laura—her legs shaking, willing herself not to duck—tried another new tactic: lifting her fist and punching it as hard as she could. The bird’s body felt tough as elephant hide under its downy coat, but it recoiled and flew away.

  Laura could taste blood—her own blood, dribbling down her face. The air was thick with floating feathers and drifting ash, with the rain, heavier now, splashing up from the floor. Her feet were wet, and she ground her heels against the floor, telling herself not to slip and fall. She was hot and panting hard, and couldn’t make out how many gulls were still attacking them.

  But she was doing it. They all were. They were staying upright, and they were fighting.

  “Sofie out, Dan in,” shouted Maia, her voice clear and imperious. Unfazed as ever, Laura thought, with immense relief—when Maia started to panic, she’d know they were in real trouble.

  “No way!” Dan shouted back. “I’m just hitting my stride.”

  He grabbed a seagull’s wing and tugged it so hard, dragging it toward the ground, that the seagull let out a blood-curdling scream, sounding more like an enraged woman than a bird. And then it—she?—was an actual woman, standing on the ground in front of them. Dark hair and eyes, in a white dress or robe; Laura could barely see. So this was a harpy, like Serena at the hostel. And also like the dark-haired woman who tried to mug Laura at the Trevi Fountain.

  Face contorted with rage, the harpy leapt at Dan, clawing at his face. Laura remembered Maia’s exhortation to fight dirty, and she grabbed a handful of the harpy’s hair, wrenching as hard as she could. The harpy’s head jerked back, and her scream was so angry and piercing, Laura almost let go. Another seagull was zooming toward her, but Kasper was reaching for it, grabbing one wing and hurling it to the ground.

  “Hit it,” Laura encouraged Dan, holding the harpy’s hair.

  Dan hesitated. “I can’t hit a girl.”

  “They are not girls!” shouted Sofie, wriggling in next to Laura. “They are harpies, and they want to kill us.”

  “Okay.” Dan took a breath and then swung at the harpy’s pointy face, making contact.

  Black and white feathers were everywhere—stuck to Laura’s bleeding face, trapped under her fingernails, drifting in the air. All but one of the crows lay dead or injured on the ground. And too many of the gulls around them were turning into dark-haired harpies, each one more ferocious than the next.

  Laura and the others were fighting almost back-to-back now, punching and kicking. While Dan tried to wrestle a harpy to the ground, Laura wriggled close to Maia: A sneaker in each hand, Maia was walloping the ears of another harpy who shrieked in pain and outrage.

  “Get her down flat,” Maia ordered, and Laura pushed on the harpy’s strong shoulders. Finally, the harpy’s knees buckled, and Maia leapt on her, shoving the harpy’s torso onto the marble floor. At last Laura understood what Maia meant. As soon as the harpy’s shoulders hit the ground, her body dissolved into nothingness. Just like the seagull that day in the cemetery, shot down by the Cupid on the gravestone. When the harpy’s body hit the ground, it couldn’t survive.

  “Get them to the ground!” Maia shouted, and the thrill of adrenaline coursed through Laura’s body. They could do this: They could defeat the harpies. They just had to get them to the ground.

  In the whirlwind of ash and feathers and splattering rain, it looked as though there were still four harpies fighting. But four harpies equaled about ten normal people, Laura decided, glimpsing one bulldoze Dan to the ground. Mercury still flew around overhead, cawing: If only he could fight! They could do with a few dive-bomb attacks on some harpy’s head right now.

  Instead she had to resort to pulling the hair of the harpy pummeling Dan. Fighting like a girl, Laura thought sardonically—well, she was a girl, an ordinary girl, not one of the Pleiades, or a demigod, or a monster, and anyway, it seemed to work. The harpy fell to her knees with a roar of rage, and Dan rolled free of her grip. Laura managed to jump on the harpy, pushing her until her back hit the marble and, just like that, she dissolved into nothingness.

  “Three more!” shouted Laura. There was blood running down her hand as well, and her skirt was torn—but she could still feel the stones secured in her waistband, pressing against her every time she breathed out.

  “Serena,” Dan said, his voice cracking with exhaustion, and they both faced the woman who’d seemed so nice, so pleasant, so helpful back at the hostel. Now she was revealed in her true form, an enraged harpy: Her once-pretty face was twisted and grotesque, her eyes bulging, her nose sharp as a beak, her forehead red and scabbed from the fight outside the hostel with one of Mercury’s hooded crows.

  She lunged for Laura’s n
eck, managing to make contact even as Sofie pummeled her in the belly. Serena’s hand gripped Laura’s neck, her twisted face so close that Laura thought for a moment the harpy might try to bite her. Although she was choking, Laura fought back, tugging at Serena’s clawlike fingers, but she didn’t have the strength to wrench the harpy’s hands away.

  Then Sofie’s face loomed, shoving the small flashlight into Serena’s gaping mouth until the harpy flung her head back, unable to breathe. Her grip on Laura’s neck loosened, and Laura pushed her away as hard as she could. Maia was there as well, whacking at Serena until she fell back onto the marble floor.

  “No!” Serena screamed, but it was too late. Her body dissolved into nothingness, her angry screech still echoing in the air.

  Then there was silence—or quiet, more accurately.

  Laura, on hands and knees, could hear everyone panting and heaving, completely spent. She could hear the rain falling. She could hear Mercury’s caw, and the rhythmic flap of his wings, and then even that stopped; he must have landed, she thought. The fight was over. They’d beaten the harpies.

  “Is everyone okay?” Maia called. The others nodded. Dan reached out a hand and squeezed Laura’s shoulder.

  But now she could hear footsteps approaching and her heart started thundering: not another one! She didn’t have the strength left to fight anymore. She didn’t think any of her friends did, even if two of them happened to be Pleiades.

  “Laura,” said a soft voice, and she raised her head, exhausted and relieved.

  It was Mercury, no longer in bird form, holding out one of his slender hands. Laura clambered to her feet, spitting out the feathers and ash clogging her mouth. Rain poured through the oculus now, splashing down onto the marble floor in a heavy curtain of gray. She gazed into Mercury’s black eyes, and he nodded: It was time.

  Laura plucked the sticky piece of gum from her torn dress and retrieved the stone wrapped in tissue, placing it in Mercury’s left palm. His hand closed around it. Then she squeezed her bracelet out of its hiding place, holding it by its broken chain, gazing at her grandfather’s blue-gray star sapphire one last time.