The Immortal Fire

by Anne Ursu

  There was a phone booth outside the station, and he ducked into it. He had to call his mom. He had no money, no calling card, nothing, but they had to let him call his mom, tell her he was safe.

  The operator, though, the operator didn’t believe him. He told her the whole story and she wouldn’t do anything. She thought he was a liar. It was hard for Steve not to scream at her, but—step back, calm down, consequences—he did not. She finally offered to reverse the charges, and soon Steve heard the familiar ringing tone. His heart leaped. It rang once, twice, three times, four. Then the voice mail picked up. At least he could leave a message.

  “Mom, I—”

  Click.

  “Why didn’t you let me leave a message?” he yelled at the operator.

  “No one agreed to pick up the charges,” she said.

  And then Steve did not step back, did not calm down, and certainly did not think of the consequences. He screamed into the phone, slammed it down—once, twice, three times—and left the phone booth.

  A police officer. That’s what he needed. He expected the police, in their funny hats and buttoned-up coats, to be all over the streets, twirling their nightsticks and whistling “chim chim-in-ey” or some such. He did not particularly want to ask anyone for directions to a police station, not any of these perfectly tailored Londoners hurrying off to their meetings and their shops who didn’t have the time to see if he was okay. He did not want to give them the satisfaction.

  In fact, Steve could not deny that he was feeling a little hurt. He didn’t ask much of his fellow man, just a little courtesy, a little concern. Was it too much, after his ordeal, to expect a little kindness? If he ran the universe, people would be a lot nicer.

  He could not say why, in particular, he turned down the street he did—it looked promising to him, and he did not realize it was just a narrow brick side street that was entirely deserted.

  Well, not entirely.

  A tall man appeared, as if out of nowhere, dressed for a costume party, and he was about to pass him right by just like the other ones. Steve wanted to turn and yell something, something hurtful, like, “Nice cape,” except he would say it in a way that showed he didn’t think his cape was nice at all.

  But then something happened. As the man’s eyes flicked casually over him—and were those special contact lenses he was wearing? The costume was kind of cool, really—his face suddenly registered concern, even distress, at Steve’s plight. The man stopped dead in his tracks and asked, his voice soft and sincere, “Why, are you all right?”

  His concern was so strong, so genuine, that it made up for every single person who had passed him by, that it made Steve’s heart lighten and even a little lump rise up in his throat, though he would not have admitted it if you asked.

  “No,” he said. “No. I’ve been kidnapped, and—”

  “Kidnapped!” replied the man in horror, his long-fingered hand flying to his chest. “Goodness me. That must have been awful.”

  “Well,” said Steve, “yes. Yes it was.” He held up his wrists. “I can’t even get these chains off.”

  “Oh!” gasped the man. “You poor, poor boy! Well, maybe I can help you with that!” And then, before Steve’s eyes, he pulled something out of his cape, something far too big to have been there in the first place. It was a three-pronged spear, a trident, like the kind mermaid kings always have, and frankly, it did not go with his costume at all. With a flourish, the man touched it to Steve’s wrists.

  And then he was free.

  Steve looked up at the man—who, upon reflection, did not seem much like a man at all.

  “Wow,” he said, eyes wide. “What else can you do with that?”

  “Oh, my boy,” said the man-like man, “let me show you.”

  PART FOUR

  Air

  CHAPTER 21

  Greece Is the Word

  CHARLOTTE EXPECTED THAT WHEN THEY ARRIVED in Greece she would feel awed, stunned, awash in the momentousness of it all. And, had her mission been ordinary, had she been on a trip with her parents, she might have been. But as they got off the plane and stepped into this country with its cartoon sun and Magic Marker sky, she felt only a sort of grim determination.

  As they walked down the stairway to the tarmac, Charlotte found herself looking surreptitiously around. She expected the sky to be roiling and black, with monsters swooping in from above, shooting fireballs, but apparently that sort of stuff happened only at Hartnett.

  Still, she could not escape the feeling that something was off. The very air felt anxious, unsettled, as if threatened by something it did not understand.

  They got off the stairs in silence, nodding to the driver Sir Laurence had arranged for them, then climbing into the big black car. The driver got into his seat and pulled out of the hangar, and then they were off on the long, winding road that would take them to Delphi.

  Zee got out the map, the book, and the French-English dictionary Sir Laurence had procured for them. The night before in Sir Laurence’s flat they’d sat up trying to get through as much of the book as they could. The author had tracked the Flame to Delphi, somewhere on the grounds of the Sanctuary of Apollo, where the Oracle was, but he had searched everywhere and come up empty. Their map was no help. It lacked the essential feature that had made treasure maps so functional for centuries on end—the X that marked the spot.

  Translating the book with the dictionary proved even slower than without, and despite the hours they had spent the previous evening and on the plane, Zee still had half of the book to go. It would have helped if the information had been in any kind of order, but whoever this French guy was, no one had ever explained to him the benefits of making an outline.

  So Zee worked while Charlotte found herself staring out of a car window at a new country for the second time in a week. But this was nothing like England. They drove out of the new glassy Athens airport into the countryside and found themselves in the mountains overlooking lush green valleys with groves of olive trees and, off in the distance, a strip of dark sea. They drove up and up, and the road grew more and more narrow. As they sped around steep curve after steep curve, Charlotte began to wonder if the gods weren’t going to need to finish them off.

  They came around a bend to behold a great valley. Charlotte had expected it to look like the others—thick with blooming olive trees—but anything that had been alive in this valley was gone. The entire place was black and charred now, with scattered shards of blackened tree trunks littering the ground. It looked violently desolate, as if Death himself had blown through the valley.

  Charlotte nudged Zee and pointed out the window toward the scene. Zee inhaled, then shook his head slowly.

  “What happened there?” Charlotte asked, leaning toward the driver.

  The driver paused. “No one knows,” he said.

  She and Zee exchanged a look, and Charlotte turned away from the window. She didn’t want to see any more. She got out a guidebook to Greece that Sir Laurence had given them and flipped to the section on Delphi. The Sanctuary of Apollo was on the slope of Mount Parnassus, near the southern coast of Greece. The Sanctuary was an archeological site, and a lot of the artifacts found were in the Museum of Delphi—lots of statues and stuff, and a fancy stone that was supposed to be the center of the Earth.

  This is all they had now—weird, rambling French travelogues and tourist guidebooks. Before, there had always been Mr. Metos and the rest of the Prometheans in the background. They were the army behind Charlotte and Zee, the tough guys with all the secret intelligence and fancy weapons and millennia of practice. Charlotte and Zee were just eighth graders, yes, but eighth graders with an ancient secret society of god-fighting part-Titans behind them. And now they were all alone.

  How long do you think they’ll survive without us? Timon had said.

  They drove on. At one point Zee leaned in to her and whispered, “Listen.” He tapped the page before him and began to read, “‘After giving the Flame to humanity, Pr
ometheus hid it in a place no Immortal could see. He gave the secret of the Flame to an ally, one who also had cause for anger toward Zeus.’” Charlotte’s eyes widened. The girl!

  “Anything else?” Charlotte whispered back. “Does it say who she is?”

  With a glance toward the driver, Zee shook his head.

  One who also had cause for anger toward Zeus? That hardly narrowed it down. But there weren’t any little girls in the myths that Charlotte knew about—unless she was the daughter of a woman Zeus had wronged. There had to be about a jillion of those.

  And then, finally, they were pulling into a vast parking lot lined with cars and tour buses.

  “The Sanctuary is up ahead,” said the driver, handing them some Greek money. “There’s a ticket booth. You can buy admission to the Sanctuary and the museum both, and then you can just go look around. I’ll be waiting here.”

  Charlotte and Zee looked at each other. “Oh,” Charlotte said, “you don’t have to wait.”

  The driver looked unmoved. “The man paying me says I do,” he said flatly.

  “Ah, well, we might be awhile,” said Zee.

  “That’s all right,” said the man, picking up some knitting. “I can wait.”

  They were in a paved clearing on the side of a mountain, surrounded by groups of tourists of various nationalities. They could see for miles around, and despite herself, Charlotte could not help but notice how beautiful it was. The air was clear, and the day was brighter than any Charlotte had lived before. The mountain kept rising sharply behind them, surrounded by its rounded green brothers and sisters. There was a village clearly visible on the plains below, and beyond that the Mediterranean Sea.

  Charlotte stared at it. The waters were choppy and agitated, the color had gone from wine-dark to just plain dark, and just looking at it made her feel queasy. It was angry, tormented, wrong.

  She turned her gaze away, but the uneasy feeling remained with her. It wasn’t helped by the group of soldiers standing in the clearing, eyeing the crowd, extremely large guns hanging ominously off their chests.

  At the edge of the clearing were some wide, steep stone stairs framed by a crumbling stone wall. Above them was the Sanctuary—a collection of ruins in the steep mountain wall placed here and there on a long, winding path. There were people milling everywhere, chattering and laughing. Charlotte had to fight the urge to evacuate them. They seemed like movie extras, oblivious to the danger that was around them, the danger that was silently approaching.

  Well, soon they would all know, wouldn’t they? If Charlotte and Zee could find the Flame, that is.

  “I told you to stay with the group!” A voice came booming through Charlotte’s reverie. A fat, sunburned man in tight shorts was storming toward them. Behind him was a group of American-looking high school students, watching him. Charlotte looked behind her to see who he was yelling at. There was no one there.

  “Come on, let’s go!” the man bellowed, motioning to the cousins angrily. Zee shrugged at Charlotte. It was as good a way to explore as any.

  “Mr. West,” said a boy as they moved toward the group, “they’re not—”

  “When I want to hear from you, Oliver Posner, I will ask! Now, this is your tour guide, Rosina. I want you to give her your undivided attention. The first person who steps out of line is back on the bus, you understand?”

  As a round, dark-skinned woman stepped in front of the group and began to talk, the boy shrugged at Charlotte and Zee, who shrugged back. A few of the students eyed them with the same open wariness you might show the crazy person mumbling to herself at the grocery store.

  They all moved toward the stairs, Rosina’s voice carrying through the air. “Once,” she was saying, “Zeus, god of the heavens, released two golden eagles from the opposite ends of the Earth to determine the Earth’s center. They crossed at Delphi, and Zeus placed there a stone called the omphalos stone, now on display at the museum. Omphalos means navel. For the ancient Greeks, Delphi was the center of the world, the navel of the Earth, the place where heaven and earth met. Delphi was the place where man was closest to the gods.”

  Oh, great, Charlotte thought.

  The group ascended the stairs and found themselves on a wide path made of crumbling stone that wound back and forth up the mountain, framed everywhere by ruins. Charlotte craned her neck upward, but the mountain was so steep she could not see much. “We are now,” said the tour guide, “on the Sacred Way. The visitor to the Oracle would travel along this path, lined with offerings….”

  Up they went along the path, stopping at ruins and piles of rock as the tour guide talked on and Mr. West glared at the group.

  “On the column behind this rock stood a statue of the Naxian Sphinx, a gift from the citizens of Naxos to the Oracle. We’ll see that statue later in the museum….”

  They’d arrived in front of a large wall made of polygon-shaped stones, with plants growing out of the cracks. In one corner was a small opening, like a crawl space. Above the wall loomed the columns of some decaying structure. Zee had taken out the map and began to unroll it. One of the schoolboys was looking at him like he was nuts.

  Two girls next to them let out a loud giggle suddenly, and Mr. West exploded. “Back to the bus,” he yelled at the pair. “I mean it! Go!”

  As the girls left the group, giggling the whole way, the tour guide led them up the path to a ramp and onto the ruins of the Temple of Apollo, the home of the Oracle of Delphi.

  They were on a rectangular structure about the size of a house. Most of the columns that had lined the sides were gone, though a few stumps were scattered here and there. Sections of stone wall of varying heights framed the structure, and a few students settled themselves down on the piles.

  “Here was the pronaos, or lobby,” said the guide. “It had inscriptions in the wall of some common aphorisms, like ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Nothing in excess,’ and over here was inscribed the Greek letter epsilon, or E. To this day, no one knows what it was supposed to signify.

  “Now, here,” she went on, stepping forward, “was the Altar of Hestia, where an eternal fire burned—”

  Charlotte perked up. Could it be that easy? “Excuse me,” she said, raising her hand. The students all looked at her in surprise and confusion. “I’m new,” she whispered to them.

  “Yes?” asked the tour guide, looking at her.

  “An eternal fire? Is it…uh…still here?”

  The tour guide frowned. “Well, no. This is a ruin.” A few students giggled.

  “I know, but…it’s eternal, right?” Zee was nudging her, but she motioned him off. “So it’s got to be somewhere. What happened to it?”

  “Well,” said the guide, “I guess I don’t know.”

  “Huh,” said Charlotte, biting her lip. Mr. West looked at her suspiciously.

  “Char,” Zee whispered urgently, clutching the map.

  “You!” shouted the chaperone, pointing at Zee. “Back to the bus! I warned you!”

  “But—,” said Zee reflexively. He looked startled, and Charlotte reflected that he had probably never gotten in trouble before. She wanted to remind him that this wasn’t actually their teacher, but it didn’t seem to be the time.

  “NOW!” said Mr. West.

  Zee shrugged and muttered to Charlotte, “I’m just going to look around. Come find me when you can get away.” And then he was gone.

  As the tour guide talked on, giving the history of the Oracle, Charlotte scanned the ruins, trying to imagine the temple in its glory days. People came from all over to the Oracle at the center of the world to hear prophecies. Somehow the place felt odd to Charlotte, as if some remnant of all of those hopeful travelers lingered on.

  She sighed and backed up toward a stone at the end of the temple, waiting for her moment to escape and meet Zee. When she sat down, she was surprised to find she was not alone. A woman in a white dress with long black hair was sitting there, filing her nails and looking bored. She glanced up at Charlotte ca
sually, then started as Charlotte looked back at her. The woman looked all around, then back at Charlotte, who was watching her curiously.

  “Can you see me?” the woman whispered in surprise, her oddly yellow eyes wide.

  “Um,” said Charlotte, looking around, “yeah.” The woman was very beautiful, except for an extremely large zit festering in the middle of her forehead.

  “Oh!” said the woman, putting away her nail file. “Okay. Um…” She tossed her hair and straightened. Putting her hands to her temples, she closed her eyes and began to hum. Charlotte eyed her.

  After a few moments of this, the woman opened one eye. “Don’t you have a question for me?”

  And then it occurred to Charlotte just who this was. “Are you the Oracle?”

  The Oracle’s face contorted in derision. “Um, duh! Who are you?”

  Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you know that?”

  “Oh, cute, are we? Fine, do you want to know your future? Want to know the name of the man you’re going to marry? Will he be rich and have lots of goats?” She put her hands to her temples again.

  “Wh-what?”

  “Goats!” said the Oracle, as if Charlotte had a very annoying hearing problem. “Don’t you lie awake at night and dream of marrying a handsome man with lots of goats?”

  Charlotte straightened. “Not particularly, no.”

  The Oracle raised her eyebrows. “I see.”

  She knew what Mr. Metos had said. There was no such thing as fate. Still, this was the Oracle. She could not help but ask. “Um, do you know my future?”

  The Oracle sighed, squeezed her eyes shut again, and hummed for about half a second. “Yes. You will meet a handsome and mysterious stranger.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  One eye popped open. “You will inherit a great fortune?”

  Charlotte crossed her arms.