The Immortal Fire

by Anne Ursu

  What could he do? His palm opened to reveal the small silver lighter. It was humming in his hands, seemingly conscious of what was about to pass.

  Then, out of the brightness, a shape. A god. The god of gods. Zeus, great and terrible—and, frankly, a little bit paunchy. He was ten feet tall, with a well-manicured sky blue beard and big, wide-set eyes the color of a storm cloud. In his hand was a long, curved, wickedly jagged metal thunderbolt that he grasped like a scimitar. He wore a silvery laurel wreath and a simple toga that revealed loose, flabby flesh that was still haunted by the ghosts of muscles past. His stomach rounded under the toga as if it was a planet to itself, and Zee was reminded of the bully in grammar school who based his power entirely on the threat that he might sit on you.

  Zeus gazed down at Zee and smirked, and rage boiled up in Zee’s stomach. He got the urge to grab Zeus’s thunderbolt and shove it down his throat—but that would probably not go according to plan.

  “What is so special about that lighter?”

  “Um,” Zee said, “it gives me protection.” There, that was good, wasn’t it? That would explain why he was clutching it like that, why it didn’t seem like the sort of thing a thirteen-year-old displaced British boy would be carrying around. It might not get him a biscuit, though.

  Zeus raised a blue eyebrow. Something very like lightning flashed in his eye. “Protection?” he said thoughtfully. “Hmmm…”

  With one deft move he swung his thunderbolt into Zee’s wrist.

  The pain blazed up Zee’s arm, and his mind went white. His back snapped straight, his arms flew up uncontrollably, and he heard somewhere a distant roar of agony. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor holding his wrist, which he was amazed to find was not on fire. The lighter lay some distance from his feet.

  Eventually the burning subsided into a throbbing and Zee came to himself again, enough to notice that Zeus was staring at him with an expression of mocking curiosity.

  “Hmm,” Zeus said. “Doesn’t work very well, huh? You should probably—”

  As Zeus talked, he bent down to pick up the lighter. When his great hand touched it, he let out a terrible scream that shook the room. His eyes flashed yellow and then turned back. He drew himself up and fixed his gaze on Zee.

  “What,” he spat, “is this?”

  Charlotte crouched behind the planter, willing herself to be very, very small. She knew she should creep away, but she could not seem to will herself to move. She should at least be hiding, but somehow she could not help but peek around the planter at the scene in front of her.

  On a purple chaise lounge across from her lay a gray-eyed goddess in a pantsuit and pearls with a large gray owl on her shoulder, working on what looked suspiciously like a book of Sudoku puzzles. A few feet away an overly tanned goddess in a kimono lay snoozing, while a cherub-like little boy ran in an orbit around her, shooting arrows randomly into the distance. In one corner a violet-skinned god with a long, purple, crazy-guy beard and a hot pink toga sat in a pile of vines, picking off grapes and sucking on them. In another a stern-looking, steel-haired goddess in a glittering cocktail dress was absentmindedly stroking a peacock and thumbing through a French fashion magazine, while a shiny-skinned god in gold lamé shorts and T-shirt roller-skated around the perimeter, picking at neon lute strings.

  No one seemed to notice the intruder in their midst—they all kept on complacently doing their things. The owl and the peacock, though, were looking around suspiciously. You might not think a peacock could look suspicious, but you would be wrong.

  “How’s that sun going, Apollo?” muttered the goddess in the kimono, plucking an earphone out of her ear. The cherub dashed by her and shot an arrow into the sky. From somewhere in the distance came a gruff, growly, “Ow!”

  Aphrodite, Charlotte told herself, goddess of love and beauty (and, apparently, suntanning). She had silver-white hair, blue-green ocean-colored eyes, and a burbling voice like the sea. The Cupid-like boy was her son, Eros, who cackled as he ran around recklessly. Charlotte could not help but notice that the arrows he was shooting looked quite a bit like the one that had been sticking out of the centaur’s butt.

  “This isn’t good enough for you?” snapped the roller-skating god. “Somebody’s having a tantrum, haven’t you noticed?” He pointed to the stormy columns.

  “What else is new?” Aphrodite mumbled sleepily.

  “Anybody know what that’s about?” asked Apollo. He sped up, and a moment later the scene grew brighter by a few degrees.

  “Someone freed the sacrificial cows, I guess,” said the owl-woman. Athena, goddess of wisdom.

  “Ha! Wish I’d thought of that,” muttered the steel-haired woman with the peacock. Hera, Zeus’s wife.

  “Who?” asked Aphrodite, looking up.

  “I guess a mortal,” said Athena with a shrug.

  Hera looked up. “There’s a mortal on Olympus?”

  “Doesn’t anyone listen to the PA?” muttered Athena.

  “Who cares?” slurred the grape-sucking god.

  “I do, Dionysus,” said Aphrodite, now sitting up. “And you should too. Do you want mortals bothering us all the time? Do you want to give all this up?” She waved her hand around. Charlotte did not, honestly, see anything that great about “all this”; they all looked bored to death. But no one seemed to want her opinion. “What if it’s those cousins?”

  Charlotte sucked in her breath, then clamped her hand over her mouth. The peacock whipped its head in her direction, and she crouched down and pressed herself against the planter.

  “The children?” said Athena scornfully. “Who cares?”

  Charlotte bristled, but this was probably not the time to stand up and yell, I am not a child!

  “They took Poseidon’s trident,” said Aphrodite, standing up. “What if they’re coming to overthrow us?”

  “Mortals can’t use the trident,” scoffed Athena.

  “One of us is helping them,” Aphrodite continued, not listening. “They have to be. How else would they have survived Poseidon? Do you see everything that’s happening? Someone destroyed my temple!” She stomped her foot.

  “They destroyed mine, too,” said Athena. “Quit whining.”

  “Come on,” said Hera, “Poseidon versus two pea-brained mortal whelps? He doesn’t have a chance!”

  The gods cackled.

  “Yeah, maybe they stunned him by using a three-syllable word!” said Apollo.

  “Or made him add two one-digit numbers together!” said Athena.

  “This is serious!” said Aphrodite. “Somebody’s using those mortals to get to us. Maybe we’re all going to be sea cucumbers. Maybe Cronus is coming back! Maybe the Titans are going to break free.”

  The Titans! Well, that would be interesting if it were true. After the Olympians had overthrown Cronus and the other Titans, they’d locked them deep within the bowels of the Earth. Of course, in that war every living thing on Earth had been destroyed, so it probably wasn’t something they’d want to repeat.

  “Come on.” Hera waved her hand dismissively. “The mortal children have been lucky so far. Perhaps they have grown arrogant. But if they are caught on Olympus, my ever-so-wise husband will finally get off his fat behind and do the right thing.”

  Charlotte’s heart began to race. Whatever the “right thing” was, it was probably not good. What was he going to do to them? The whole thing was more than creepy—the other gods were nodding like this was something they had all discussed, all knew about. No one had to say, “Well, gee, Hera, can you remind me what the ‘right thing’ is again? Because I haven’t been devoting all my time and energy to thinking about how to destroy these two eighth graders, so it’s just slipped my mind.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Aphrodite. “We’ve been begging him for centuries. Why would now be any different?”

  Centuries? Charlotte thought. That was a bit of an exaggeration. Although it looked like a year up here might feel like an eternity.

/>   “I appealed to his sense of justice,” said Hera, with a smirk.

  All the gods laughed, and something about the laugh sent a great shiver through Charlotte.

  “Well, then,” said Aphrodite, “I hope they are caught.”

  This, Charlotte reflected, would be a good time to make her exit, as sitting in the same room with five Olympian gods who are salivating at the thought of your capture is probably not a good road to self-preservation. She’d have to go back into the stairwell and duck out on another floor, and then find Zee and—

  So focused was she on creeping toward the small doorway that she did not see the arrow flying through the air, did not even hear the small humming noise it made as it came toward her. She noticed nothing until it burst through the skin on her back—which, it turned out, was incredibly painful, painful enough that it caused Charlotte to shriek.

  Zeus stared at Zee with his storm-dark eyes, and Zee could not think of a thing in the whole world to say. All language, all thought, left him, and he was just empty, meaningless, nothing, the void before the birth of the universe.

  “Pick it up,” Zeus said.

  Zee wanted to say no, to cross his arms and stand tall and firm—but what good would it do? There was no way out of there, out of this. Zeus was running his finger along his scimitar-like lightning bolt, and Zee felt his heart flutter a little. In films he had seen heroes stand strong in the face of torture, squaring their jaws, uttering snappy comebacks through gritted teeth, and Zee had always thought, Yes, indeed, that is what I would do, that is the right thing to do, that is the only thing to do, but it is one thing altogether to see it in films and another to have Zeus’s thunderbolt searing your skin. He would like to pass the rest of his life—as brief as that might be—without ever feeling that again, and in fact would go to great lengths not to. And if by some chance he failed, if Zeus touched him with that white-hot stick of burning death again, Zee would find himself very short on witty comebacks.

  He thought, suddenly, of his cousin, wandering around Olympus. Was she up in the hearth room now, standing bewildered among the wreckage, wondering what had become of him? Would she figure out that he had been captured, realize that she was in terrible danger, and run from Olympus?

  Well, Zeus might torture him, he might kill him, but it was Zee’s job to stay alive as long as possible. Because if Zeus was focused on him, he would not be looking for Charlotte.

  “Pick it up,” Zeus repeated, his words sharp as the scimitar he held.

  There was nothing else to do. Zee slowly bent down and picked up the lighter.

  “That’s better, mortal,” said Zeus, a terrible smirk crossing his face.

  Zee gritted his teeth and felt his fists ball up. He did not know what he had been expecting from Zeus; Hades had been inept and dithering, Poseidon had been—according to Charlotte—a narcissist with serious anger issues, and Zeus, Lord of the Universe, was just an overgrown, smirking bully.

  There was nothing divine about the gods, nothing noble, nothing that made them worthy of their power—except their power itself. They were just a bunch of immortals who happened to overthrow the previous batch of immortals who ruled the universe, that was all. Zee could not believe anyone had ever worshipped this worthless band of petty tyrants and spoiled brats.

  “Now,” said Zeus, eyes full of dominance, “light it.”

  Zee allowed himself to feel a small glimmer of hope. The Flame didn’t look different or special; it looked like an ordinary fire, the sort an ordinary boy might be carrying, even in this very unordinary place. Trying to keep his face impassive, he pressed down on the lighter.

  The Flame burst upward, flickering gently, commonly. Its yellow and orange dance was reflected in the crystal around him, tiny Flames everywhere, telling Zee he was not alone, he had an army of mortals with him, all burning with the fire of Prometheus, protecting him—all with their ordinary, extraordinary flames.

  Zee stood, brave and strong, bearing his worthless mortal trinket for the almighty Zeus, feeling suddenly that he might survive this.

  Zeus looked at the Flame, his face impassive, then confused. And the Flame flickered on, its reflection mirrored in Zeus’s stormy eyes. And then, suddenly, his eyes turned black, and then flashed red.

  “What,” he spat, “is that?”

  “Just a lighter,” Zee repeated, his surety gone.

  Zeus eyed the Flame carefully, steadily, the only motion the fire flickering in his eyes.

  “Where,” he said, his voice as quiet and final as death, “did you get that?”

  CHAPTER 29

  Consequences

  CHARLOTTE COULD HEAR HER SCREAM HANGING IN THE air like a big flashing neon arrow. Her heart started beating so fast it seemed it might run right off the rails. Everything seized up, and she was ready to burst off running somewhere, except her whole back stung with pain, and she felt something cool and deadly begin to spread where the arrow had joined with her flesh. She went green, her skin turned cold, and still she tried to crawl away, toward where the exit door used to be.

  She was too late. Eros had come running behind the planter and was staring down at her with his cherub eyes full of panic.

  “I didn’t do it,” he called to the room around him, hiding his bow behind his back.

  “What is it?” called one of the goddesses. “Who is it?”

  Footsteps, then behind Eros came Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena. All three gaped down at Charlotte.

  She could not move anymore. There was an intruder inside her, sharp and deadly and wrong. Something cold was pouring through her veins, and everything in front of her was bright and fuzzy. Blood mixed with some other substance she probably needed was spreading on her side and back, and she realized with great clarity that the warmth that was flowing out her body at the puncture point was her own life.

  She saw black spots in front of her eyes and vomited again on the floor, and somewhere in the distance she could hear Aphrodite say, “Ew.”

  Charlotte had faced her death so many times in the past few months she knew it like her own reflection. Yet it had never gotten easier; she could steel herself, try to be as brave as she could, but there is nothing welcome about death, and it wasn’t just that she had failed, that everything had come to nothing after all, but she did not want to die, not like this, not at all, she wanted to live her life and have lots of cats and what if it hurt and she did not want to be one of the Dead and she was cold and scared and she wanted her mom….

  There was a pressure on her, a hand, but it gave no warmth at all, and she could not even lie to herself that it was comforting. There was a shape bending over her, something glittery and sharp-featured, then she heard Hera’s voice, steely and cool:

  “Charlotte Ruth Mielswetzski.”

  Aphrodite pointed and screamed.

  “Oh, for the love of Zeus,” muttered Athena. “She’s dying. What are you scared of?”

  “I didn’t do it!” Eros said again.

  “It’s all right,” said Athena. “Zeus will be glad. This will be the end of it.”

  A moment of silence, then Hera called, “Heal her.”

  “What?” Apollo stopped roller-skating.

  “Heal her, Apollo!” she repeated. “I want her alive.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, you nitwit. Heal her.”

  “As you wish, but I’m not responsible for this.”

  He rolled over to her and placed his hand on her wound, and Charlotte felt suddenly warm again, like stepping out of a cold, dark house into a summer’s day, and she smelled something bright and meadowy and sweet. Then, pain again, like nothing she had ever felt before—which is saying quite a bit—like someone plucking her heart with their hands. She screamed, and the scream seemed to shake the very air, and then the arrow was gone. Her whole side throbbed. Apollo stood over her, crumbling some kind of plant between his fingers and thumb, sprinkling it along her back, placing his hands on the wound, and it was like being tou
ched by the sun itself.

  And then Charlotte knew nothing.

  When she came to, she found all pain was gone, and she felt with incredible clarity the beating of her heart, the blood in her veins, the rise and fall of her chest. It all seemed like such an amazing thing, that lungs could expand with air, that blood could course, that a heart could beat. She was awake, aware, alert, alive.

  And she was being carried by Hera.

  They were in the elevator, Charlotte draped in Hera’s arms like an old curtain. The brown-legged goat-man was strumming his guitar and humming something mournful. It was the saddest song Charlotte had ever heard; it filled her with a profound sense of something lost. The melody went through her skin, into her veins. Tears blurred her eyes, and her heart felt like it might break in two. Despite everything, there was suddenly nothing left in the world but that song.

  “Something a little cheerier?” asked Hera wryly. She had not noticed that Charlotte had awakened—or if she had, she did not care.

  The goat-man glanced up at her, then put his head down and kept playing the same song. The tune moved into Charlotte’s heart and settled in for a long stay.

  Then the elevator door opened, and Charlotte was assailed by bright, glimmering light. Her hands flew up in front of her face as Hera tightened her grip, strode forward, and called, “Oh, honey, I have something for you!”

  And then she dumped Charlotte on the floor.

  Zee stared as his scarred, blood-soaked cousin was dropped on the floor a few feet away from him. She was covering her eyes against the light and had not yet noticed him.

  The steel-like goddess who had borne her into the room made a great show of wiping off her hands. Then her eyes turned on him.

  “Zachary John Miller.” Her voice was like the sharp end of a knife.

  Zeus nodded.

  “You see,” she said to her husband. “I told you they would come.” She looked him up and down, and Zee felt his heart turn cold. Her eyes landed on the lighter, and something flickered inside them.