Born in Beauty

by Melody Rose

  “I’m going to miss you, Mom,” I said softly, but she still heard me.

  “I’ll miss you too, kiddo.” She kissed the top of my head. “Try to come home for Christmas this time, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said with a hesitant chuckle at the back of my throat. Last Christmas, the Academy forced me to stay and work on the Ultimate Weapon. That was when the campus was attacked by a bunch of harpies, and I got arrested. Yeah, it wasn’t my favorite holiday that year.

  “Good,” Mom said definitively, as if it was already decided.

  We sat there for a moment, my head tucked into her shoulder and her arm around me. We watched the assortment of people walk around, enjoying the day. I was still stuck in my head when a familiar tune broke me out of my reverie.

  “Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah,” Mom hummed.

  I giggled. “Really? Now?”

  “Now’s the best time!” Mom said enthusiastically. She forced me off her shoulder and held out her hands. “You go first,” she prompted and began the tune again.

  “Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah,”

  I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. Mom and I had been making up silly rhyming songs like this since I was a little kid. We did it for nearly everything, but especially when we needed to talk about our feelings and really weren’t sure how to. We did it as a camping song, a vacation song, a laundry song. It was really easy, and something Mom used to do with her Renaissance faire act back when she was in college.

  So in the midst of my worry about starting school again, Mom pushed me to make up a tune about how I was feeling. I obliged her with only a playful amount of resistance.

  “Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah

  I’ve been recruited

  Gonna start my second year

  To the Academy, I go

  Even though I have some fear.

  I have my dogs

  And my magic powers

  Though all that really means

  Is more study hours.

  Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah

  I hope I get rest

  And maybe some learning too.

  No harpies or chimeras

  Or fighting something new.

  I only want a calm year

  Something easy to pass.

  No sword-swinging involved

  Nor a pottery class.

  Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah

  Mom laughed at my song and took up the mantle. But her laughter was cut off abruptly, like she’d been zapped by something. While she followed the tune, her head bobbing back and forth, her eyes glazed over, and she looked strange as she sang.

  “Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah

  Many adventures to come

  For you, my daughter dear.

  Like a gross infection

  On campus will appear

  A distraction it will be.

  Do not fret at all.

  Though solve it you must

  Or a friend will fall.

  Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah

  Focus will be taken

  By a flash of silk and red.

  Follow the steps learned

  To stop the violent spread.

  Love will stay true

  Through the thick and thin.

  An old trick gone rusty

  Will be needed to win.

  Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah”

  Mom blinked, and a wide smile spread on her face as some color came back into her eyes. She patted me on the shoulder. “See? I told you a silly song would make you feel better.”

  I didn’t reply to her right away. In fact, after the supposed ‘silly song,’ I didn’t feel remotely better. An ominous feeling slithered its way through my stomach and settled there, like a snake claiming its territory. Which, in my opinion, made me feel incredibly worse.

  2

  “Hey, Mom.” My voice rose in pitch as I said her name. “What just happened?”

  Mom’s face fell as she leaned back, confused and a little offended. “What do you mean? We were just singing our song like we always do.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, still slowly and cautiously, like I was speaking to a child on the verge of a tantrum. “But do you know what you said?”

  “Oh honey,” Mom said with a wave of her hand, “I never remember what I sing during those things. I just make them up on the spot and then whoosh! They fly right out of my head.”

  Mom leaned forward and offered Khryseos and Argyreos her leftovers. Their long tongues lapped up the remaining salsa, guac, and shell crumbs with haste. I stayed silent as I watched the scene before me, my mom’s words rolling around in my head like a load of laundry in the washer.

  Normally, the songs were supposed to be funny or heartfelt, not ominous and creepy like hers had been. Not only that, but she had been completely weird during the whole process. Sure, she bobbed along and clapped her hands in rhythm, but something about the whole thing was off. I couldn’t put it into words, but I knew my mom. She was my best friend, my confidant, and my anchor. But whatever had just happened wasn’t my mom.

  “Mom,” I tried again, wanting to turn her attention away from the dogs, but I was cut off by a loud squeal aimed in our direction.

  “Cheyenne!” a small Panasian woman called from across the street.

  She was petite even with her elevated flip flops and short skirt, which appeared to make her legs longer. The girl wore her black hair in a messy bun atop her head and had thick purple glasses on her face. She flounced over to us with two wicker baskets, identical to my mom’s, flapping from her elbows. Except, unlike my mom’s, hers were filled to the brim with assorted fruits and vegetables.

  The whole experience was like seeing a penguin in the middle of the desert. Violet was my roommate at the Academy, a daughter of Hebe, and a fantastic chef. We’d been in contact over the summer, mainly with silly Snapchats or funny memes, but we hadn’t seen each other. Come to think of it, I had no idea she lived this close to go to this Farmer’s Market.

  “Violet,” I cried, but with much less enthusiasm and much more confusion.

  Khryseos and Argyreos recognized my roommate and greeted her warmly. She bent down to their level and let them lick her face while she did what she could to pet them, considering the weight and awkwardness of her baskets. Violet stood upright and then transferred her affection to me with a big hug.

  Being as she was shorter than me, her arms wrapped right around my middle as her head banged against my chest. Our contact was short-lived, though, as something shocked between the two of us, causing us to jump back. It was small, like a shock of static from a doorknob, but enough of a surprise to cause Violet to squeal in surprise.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said with a small smile.

  I looked my friend over and found myself happy to see her. Sure, it was out of context and completely unexpected, but Violet was one of the few things I was looking forward to seeing again when I went back to the Academy. She, Benji, Darren, and I had become fast friends during our first year, and we definitely knew we needed one another to survive the next three years.

  “How are you?” she asked, excitement coating her voice.

  “I’m good,” I answered, playing the game of small talk.

  From beside me, there was a not so conspicuous cough. I looked over and saw my mom looking off to the sky with a falsely innocent expression.

  “How rude of me,” I said as I reached down to grab my mom’s elbow. I pulled her up to her feet and brought her beside me. “Violet, this is my mom. Mom, this is my roommate at the Academy, Violet.”

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Mom said joyfully as she reached out her hand.

  Violet completely bypassed my mom’s hand and went in fully for the hug. Mom accepted it, though a little surprised at first.

  “Che
yenne’s said nothing but good things about you,” Mom said as Violet pulled away. “It’s great to get a face to a name.”

  “Same,” Violet said brightly. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Ms. Paulos.”

  “Oh dear, please don’t call me that,” Mom said with a hand to her chest like a southern woman who’d just heard someone take the lord’s name in vain. “Cassie will do.”

  “Sure thing,” Violet agreed. “I can’t believe I ran into you here.”

  “I can’t either,” I admitted. “I didn’t know you came to this Farmer’s Market.”

  “I normally don’t,” Violet admitted. She moved to set her baskets down on our bench, giving her arms a rest. “But I read online that there was this great sale on seeds, and I wanted to pick some up for campus.”

  “Seeds?” I asked as if the word was foreign. “You have to go shopping for campus? Even over the summer?”

  “Well, no,” Violet said with a slight eye roll as if that were obvious. “But I have Gardening next semester, and we’re supposed to bring some seeds. We’re going to be adding to the campus garden, taking care of our own little section of it. I wanted to have a wide selection because I didn’t know what I wanted to grow yet.”

  “Well, did the market have some good choices?” Mom asked, obviously intrigued by Violet’s seed hunt.

  “Absolutely!” Violet said. She clapped her hands together once and then dug in her back to show off her purchases.

  I had to bite my tongue to not scold my mom on asking my friend that question. When Violet got talking about food and ingredients, it was hard to get her to stop. Much like me and historical weapons or myths. She was a walking encyclopedia of knowledge when it came to spices, recipes, or all things delicious. Being a daughter of Hebe, the goddess of youth and cupbearer for the gods, it wasn’t a natural jump for Violet to have such a gift for cooking.

  “I like to think of it as a service,” Violet explained to me once last semester. “Like how she would serve the gods by being their cupbearer, I serve people by cooking.”

  It was a stretch, but not all of the demigod magical gifts were so obvious as mine. Darren had another obvious one as a healer which made sense as he was the son of Asclepius, the literal god of medicine. Benji’s mom was Demeter, and he could make weeds disappear, cleaning a garden or yard faster than a blink, but as much as he tried, Benji’s abilities didn’t go beyond that. It was only a facet of what his nature inclined mother might have to offer.

  Violet found what she was looking for and pulled out a handful of Ziploc bags, filled with multicolored and variously shaped seeds.

  “Okay,” Violet said, readying herself as she arranged them in her hand. “We’ve got pumpkins, zucchini, squash, lemons, oranges, carrots, and apples.”

  “Well, I vote not apples,” I said, making a disgusted face. “Because then I can't eat anything you make with them.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Violet said, pointing at me as she remembered. “You’re allergic.”

  “Guilty as charged,” I said as I held my hand in the air.

  “Oh god, I remember when we found that out,” Mom said as she held a hand to her forehead, lost in the memory. “You were just a baby, and I was feeding you baby food. I always thought apples would be safe, but we ended up in the hospital that day.” Mom shook her head as if the thought of it still distressed her. “We never had apples in the house again.”

  “Or Skittles,” I said disappointedly.

  “Skittles?” Violet raised a confused eyebrow. “They have apples in them?”

  “They use apple juice as a natural sweetener,” I informed my friend, kind of pleased that I knew something about food that she didn’t, though one could argue that candy wasn't real food.

  “Oh,” Violet said, then her eyes looked up to the sky, thinking. “I should think of doing that some time. It would make some of my desserts a lot healthier.”

  “Please don’t,” I said, with a slight beg to my voice. “Then I won’t be able to eat your desserts.”

  Violet let out a pleasant laugh. “I promise to make you an apple-free alternative to any desserts I make.”

  “Yes,” I said with a fist pump. “This is why we’re friends.”

  “Well, I hope it’s for more reasons than that,” Violet said, a hint of sadness in her voice. She reached up and fiddled with a necklace at her throat. It was on a thin silver chain with a small red ruby encased in a delicate outline in the center. She reached up and put the ruby in her mouth, nervous and sheepish.

  “I’m kidding, Vi,” I said as I put my arm about her shoulder. “We are definitely friends for more reasons than that.”

  Violet’s smile widened. “Awesome.”

  “Do you want to walk around the Market with us, Violet?” Mom invited. “We’re killing some time before her lunch ends, and she had to get back to her booth.”

  “You have a booth there?” Violet asked wide-eyed. “What do you sell?”

  “Oh, I’m just sharpening knives,” I said nonchalantly. “Making some extra money, you know.”

  “Don’t I,” Violet said with an exaggerated eye roll. “I’ve been teaching at weekly cooking camps for kids.” She stuck her finger in her open mouth and mimed gagging.

  I laughed at her reaction. “That bad, huh?”

  “It’s terrible,” Violet said with obvious annoyance. “And you can never eat anything they make because you’ll get sick.”

  “Kids are walking Petri dishes,” Mom said knowingly.

  “I know!” Violet agreed. “No matter how many times they wash their hands, it’s just so contaminated. I had a coworker who insisted on eating the food the kids made. She was like, ‘If they can eat it, so can I.’ Wrong! She ended up having to leave halfway through the day once and found out she had colitis.”

  “Gross,” I said, scrunching up my face at the thought of that kind of infection in your large intestine.

  “Right?” Violet held up a hand as if pushing away the disease itself. “I never touch their food. I’m looking forward to getting back to the campus kitchen and making real food with professional cooks. I bet you’re ready to get back to the smithy.”

  My roommate had a point. There was a large part of me that was itching to make things again, instead of just perfecting other people’s blades. I wanted to hear the smack of hammer on metal, the crackle of the fire as it heated the metal, and the hiss of the oil when I quenched a blade. It would also be nice to see Ruby, my blacksmithing mentor, again. She was one hundred percent healed after the fire of the old smithy, and I knew she would be anxious to get to work again too.

  Though we had to be even more careful this year, Ruby had Parkinson's, and sometimes her shakes made it difficult to hold the tools required for smithing. We didn’t want to burn down our brand new smithy the Academy built for the students and us.

  “Sure, but I’m going to miss being home too,” I admitted honestly, thinking of my mom standing right there.

  But she didn’t buy any of it. Seeing right through me, Mom elbowed me playfully and called me out. “Oh, be quiet. We all know you’d rather have your hands covered in ash and deep in the forge than be stuck at home with your mom for the summer.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, Cassie,” Violet said conspiratorially, “I’m her roommate, and sometimes I feel like I barely see her because all Cheyenne wants to do is forge.”

  “I’ve always been afraid of that,” Mom said with an exasperated sigh. “I’m surprised she has friends at all.”

  “Hey!” I called out, only slightly offended. “I get out of the forge every so often.”

  Violet and Mom had matching looks on their faces: doubtful. “Not nearly enough, I bet,” Mom guessed with surprising accuracy.

  “She’s either in the forge or training with Ansel,” Violet said, putting a mocking emphasis on my recruiter’s name.

  Inadvertently, my jaw tightened, and my heart thudded against my chest. I tried to slow my breathi
ng and temper my excitement. It was annoying how eagerly I reacted even to just hearing his name.

  Ansel Ballas was a soldier for the Fotia, or Fire, branch of the Military. He was stationed at the Academy as the head of the Fotia students even though he was a recent graduate. As the son of Apollo, he got all of his father’s infamous good looks with dirty blond hair that was always styled to perfection, a chiseled jawline, and a body that looked as though it had been sculpted by Michelangelo himself.

  Consequently, Ansel had the ability to channel his father’s sun fire. So we had similar gifts. Problem was, Ansel sometimes had the tendency to explode into a ball of fire, destroying everyone and everything in his wake. Being impervious to such intense heat, I was the only known thing to be able to calm Ansel down when he passed the point of control. It’d happened only twice, but both times warranted a lasting connection between the two of us.

  Not only was he ridiculously attractive, but the soldier had a kind demeanor and believed in me. Our conversation was natural and easy, never forced or awkward. He did what he could to help me out and be an advocate for my abilities, especially since I kept his secret about the continuing nature of his explosions.

  Oh, and we shared a passionate kiss after I managed to save his life from the traitorous Esme.

  This was especially troublesome because there was a strict policy at the Academy about fraternizing with the soldiers stationed on campus. That extended to dating between drafted and non-drafted students. The whole thing was absurd, but since Violet’s previous roommate had been kicked out for it, the Academy took the policy very seriously.

  Hence, nothing remotely romantic had happened between Ansel and me since New Year’s. And it needed to stay that way, no matter what my heart or my ovaries told me.

  “Ansel and I have similar powers,” I tried to defend my case to my mother and my roommate. “So we train together. That’s all.”

  “Uh-huh,” Violet said, clearly not believing me.