Cronus and the Threads of Dread

by Joan Holub

  “Right. I’ll get Chip on it,” Hera said with a nod.

  Poseidon created another bubbling fountain, and they all quickly drank and cleaned up. Then they made their way through the trees as Chip gave directions.

  “O-gip ight-rip!” the stone amulet instructed.

  “What’s it saying?” Athena asked. “Abandon ship?”

  “It’s telling us to go right,” Hera replied, shaking her head.

  Athena studied the webs carefully as they passed. “I think I know that pattern,” she said, stopping to look at one web. “It’s called a basket weave. Or maybe it’s a satin weave. Or is it a twill?” She frowned, confused.

  “Who cares what it’s called? These webs are a sticky pain!” Poseidon complained. He pushed aside a web that Zeus had just cut. Then he tried to move forward, but stopped. “Hey, I’m stuck!”

  Hera started peeling web off him. “Hold still.”

  Zeus sighed. “This is taking forever. We’ll never catch up with those Olympian-snatchers.”

  “Maybe we need a song to cheer us up,” Apollo said. “I just wrote one.”

  He began to strum his lyre and sing.

  “I’m stuck on you.

  You’re stuck on me.

  If we stick together,

  How happy we’ll be . . .”

  “Can you please sing about something else besides being sticky?” Poseidon complained, brushing off more web strands.

  Before Apollo could respond, a loud cry interrupted them.

  “Heeeeeeeeeeelp!”

  The Olympians looked at one another, surprised.

  “It’s coming from up ahead!” Zeus said, frantically hacking at the webs.

  Moving on, he saw a young girl he’d never met before trapped in the webs. Her eyes lit up when she saw Zeus.

  “Please! Can you help me?” she asked him.

  “Stand still,” Zeus said, starting to slice away at the web strands around the girl. The others caught up and pulled the strands away, setting the girl free.

  “Thank you,” said the girl. She wiped at her face and neck to get the last pieces of the webs off. “I was milking the goats this morning near our farm when the webs came down. I saw a really big spider and got scared and ran. But I got caught anyway.”

  “This stuff is easy to get caught in,” Poseidon assured her.

  “How far away is your farm?” Hera asked.

  The girl pointed. “Just through those trees.”

  “We’ll get you home,” Apollo said. “And if you have any food to spare, we’d be happy if you could share.”

  The girl smiled. “Of course!”

  They made their way to the farm. The trees opened up to a small field. Luckily, there were fewer webs here. The girl’s parents rushed out to greet her.

  “Alexia! You’re safe!” her mother exclaimed.

  “They saved me,” the girl said with a nod toward the Olympians. “Can we get them some food?”

  The grateful farmers filled the Olympians’ packs with bread, potatoes, chunks of cheese, and bright red apples. When the farmers learned that the Olympians were headed to the center of the spiderweb, they were surprised.

  “You all must be very brave if you’re going to face whatever beast is spinning that web,” Alexia’s mother said.

  “No, we just really, really love spiders,” Poseidon joked.

  Everyone laughed. Zeus said nothing. He wasn’t feeling really brave right now. Those spidery messages were getting to him.

  “Chip says to keep going east,” Hera reported as they left the farm.

  Zeus pointed. “So I guess we take that road over there.”

  The Olympians said good-bye to Alexia and her parents, then started off following Chip’s directions.

  The dirt road was well worn by wagon wheels. Web strands crisscrossed the path, their ends attached to trees and bushes on either side. Zeus found he could avoid webs by ducking.

  “Keep low,” he urged the others.

  They obeyed, ducking to avoid the webs too. Zeus stared down at the road. Sunlight streamed through the webs above, casting a pattern of shadows.

  Soon he found his mind wandering. He saw shapes in the shadows. There’s a tall man with long legs. That one looks like a snowy mountain. And that one up ahead looks like a giant spider—

  Zeus froze. He looked up. Uh-oh! High in the branches of a tree sat a huge black spider. Zeus could see its beady red eyes and sharp fangs.

  Behind him the other Olympians bumped into one another as they came to a sudden stop.

  “Bro, what’s the deal?” Poseidon asked.

  “Ssssshhh!” Zeus warned, pointing upward. “Something tells me we’re about to become spider food!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nowhere to Hide

  Spider food?” Athena whispered. She sounded terrified.

  “Sssshhh,” Zeus warned again. “It doesn’t seem to see us. I think we can pass under it if we go quietly.”

  “And don’t touch any part of the web,” Hera added.

  Zeus nodded and then slowly, carefully moved forward. Every once in a while he checked behind him. The other Olympians were moving slowly and quietly too. Athena was shaking with fear.

  Zeus looked up. The spider sat there, still as a statue. But he didn’t feel safe until the road finally veered right and the spider was far behind them.

  “That was close,” he said.

  “Yeah,” agreed Poseidon. “I’m glad we didn’t get turned into spider meat.”

  Athena shuddered. “Please don’t say that.”

  “Well, that spider might have been napping, but its friends have been busy,” Hera said, pointing up. “Look!”

  Another new message stretched across the sky.

  The Cronies will find you!

  “The ponies are fine? What does that mean?” Athena asked.

  Hera rolled her eyes. “It says, ‘The Cronies will find you.’ And that means that King Cronus has his army out looking for us.”

  “Hey! I bet he’s behind whatever is spinning those messages,” Zeus added.

  “Wait, you mean all those spiders in the sky aren’t spinning the messages?” Poseidon asked.

  “Those letters are enormous,” Zeus pointed out. “Something bigger than spiders has to be helping make them. Besides, I’m not so sure spiders can even spell on their own. I’ve been thinking. Maybe there’s something humongous waiting for us at the center of the web. Like another Creature of Chaos.”

  “What’s a Creature of Chaos?” Athena asked nervously.

  “A gross, nasty, mean, giant beast!” Poseidon replied. “We’ve battled all kinds of them. A giant python. Bees as big as horses. Birds made of metal. Weird warrior guys who hopped around on one foot. . . .”

  “And you defeated them all?” Athena asked.

  “Of course we did,” boasted Hera. “King Cronus keeps sending them to stop us, but he hasn’t succeeded yet!”

  Athena looked thoughtful. “But why is King Cronus worried about a bunch of kids?”

  “We’re not kids. We’re Olympians,” Hera said pointedly. “Heroes.”

  “Heroes in training,” Apollo reminded her.

  Hera shrugged. “Whatever. We’ve been training pretty hard. And Pythia says we’re supposed to overthrow King Cronus one day.”

  Something was stirring inside Zeus’s brain. “You know, Athena asked a pretty good question. I mean, we are a bunch of kids. Yeah, we have some magical weapons, but King Cronus and his army are much more powerful. So there must be a reason he’s so determined to stop us. Something he knows that we don’t.”

  “Like what?” Poseidon asked.

  “Like, maybe he knows for absolutely sure that we will defeat him,” Zeus said. “Maybe he keeps trying to stop us because he’s scared.”

  “Uh, and maybe not,” Poseidon said. He tapped Zeus’s shoulder and pointed to a nearby web with the words: YOU should be scared.

  Zeus gulped.

  “I didn’t th
ink that spiders had ears, but someone is listening to us, I fear,” Apollo said.

  “So, what now?” Hera asked. “The Cronies are looking for us, and the spiders are spying on us.”

  Zeus motioned for everyone to come closer. They formed a huddle.

  “We have to keep heading for the center of the web,” he whispered. “If we see any Cronies along the way, we’ll deal with them then.”

  The other Olympians nodded. They broke out of the huddle to see another message in a web hanging from the nearest tree: Nowhere to hide.

  “Just ignore it,” Zeus sighed. “Let’s go.”

  They kept walking. The tunnel they’d been traveling through in the webs ended, and they found themselves back on a path with webs crisscrossing in front of them. Zeus started hacking away with Bolt again.

  “Look!” Hera called out. “The big message in the sky is changing.”

  They all looked up as a new message appeared for the world to read, stretching across the entire sky: Mortals, save yourselves! Bring us the Olympians!

  “Oh, great,” moaned Poseidon. “Not only do we have the Cronies after us, but now everybody else will be after us too!”

  “Thankfully, no one’s around,” Zeus said.

  “Oh, really?” asked Hera.

  She pointed ahead. Swirls of chimney smoke could be seen over the next hill.

  “Illage-vip traight-sip head-aip,” Chip said.

  “Did he say, ‘Spit out your porridge’?” asked Athena.

  Hera sighed. “He said there’s a village straight ahead.”

  “So we’ll go around it. We’ll go off the road,” Zeus said.

  Poseidon frowned. “It’s awfully webby there.”

  “It’s the only way,” Zeus said.

  Then they heard the sound of footsteps and the roar of voices coming over the hill.

  “Too late!” cried Hera. “The villagers are coming!”

  “Quick! Into the trees!” Zeus commanded.

  They ran off the path—and immediately got stuck in a tangle of webs.

  “They’re everywhere!” Poseidon wailed.

  Zeus brushed a web away from his mouth. Some web strands had wrapped themselves around his legs, and he started hacking at them with Bolt. “I’ll free myself and then help you guys,” he yelled to the others.

  “Hurry!” urged Hera, because her legs were trapped in web strands too.

  Zeus cut away the webs holding him. The others were still hopelessly tangled. The sound of the villagers was getting closer and closer. Quickly, he freed Hera.

  “Hey there! Are you all right?” called a voice.

  Zeus slowly turned around. A group of five villagers approached them—two women and three men. He noticed that two of them were carrying pitchforks.

  One of the men looked at Zeus with wide eyes. He pointed at Bolt.

  “They’re Olympians!” he cried.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lost and Found

  Zeus held Bolt in front of him.

  “Yes, we’re Olympians,” he said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Wow, you sound just like Ares,” Hera whispered into his ear.

  The man shook his head. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to turn you in,” he said. “We know King Cronus is evil. You Olympians are our only hope!”

  Poseidon broke through the web that held him captive and stepped forward. “You know about us?”

  A woman with two long braids nodded. “People tell stories of your bravery all over the countryside.”

  Zeus felt pride surge through him. “We’re just doing what we have to do,” he said.

  “Which is mainly fighting monsters,” Poseidon added.

  Two of the villagers stepped up to help free Athena and Apollo.

  “Would you like to stay with us for a while?” one of the women asked Zeus. “We can keep you safe.”

  Zeus looked up at the sky. There was still plenty of daylight left.

  “Thanks, but we have to keep going,” he said. “We have to get to the center of the web as soon as we can.”

  The man frowned. “We’ve heard rumors,” he said. “Some say that the spiderwebs are covering up something King Cronus is building in the sky.”

  “Building in the sky? That doesn’t make sense,” said Athena.

  The man shrugged. “Well, that’s what we’ve heard. Good luck with your journey.”

  “Word is the Cronies are said to be way west of here,” one of the women added. “So you should be safe for a while.”

  “Thanks,” Zeus said. He turned to the other Olympians. “Everybody ready?”

  “My clothes are feeling a little bit sticky, but let’s move on; I am not picky,” replied Apollo.

  They marched over the hill and through the village. The villagers waved and clapped as they passed.

  “Dude, we’re heroes,” Poseidon told Zeus. “For real.”

  “Yeah, maybe we are,” Zeus said, grinning. Then his smile faded. “I’ll feel more like a hero when we’ve rescued the others, though.”

  Thoughts of Hestia, Demeter, Hades, and Ares kept Zeus quiet for the rest of the day as the Olympians trudged along. He was more eager than ever to reach the center of the web—no matter what waited for them there. But when the sun set, they were still far from their goal.

  “Better make camp,” Zeus said. They found a sheltered area under some trees—and away from the webs.

  Zeus used Bolt to make a fire, and soon they were sitting around the campfire, eating the food that the farmers had given them.

  When she finished her meal, Athena took off her aegis. She started to polish it with a scrap of cloth.

  “Getting the web off it?” Zeus asked.

  “No,” she replied. “It’s just . . . I remembered I liked polishing stuff. There was this locket. I’m not sure why I polished it, or even if it was important. But I think it was . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Poseidon leaned into Zeus. “She’s more foggy-brained than Pythia,” he whispered.

  Zeus gave him a warning look. Athena was sitting on the other side of him, and he didn’t want her to hear. Sure, she seemed a little . . . confused sometimes. But she was nice. And an Olympian. And Olympians had to stick together.

  He glanced over at Athena again. Her gray eyes were wide now. He looked down at the aegis and saw that a face was being revealed as she polished the shield. A horribly scary face, with slithering snakes for hair!

  Zeus’s eyes widened, too. He started to say something when Athena noticed him looking. She quickly covered the image with the cloth.

  “All done,” she said.

  Zeus was puzzled. Is she keeping the face secret for a reason? he wondered. Or is she just really, really creeped out by it?

  He tried asking her but she moved away. Maybe he was just seeing things because he was tired. Athena was still a mystery. He had a feeling they would learn what the mystery was before too long.

  Zeus soon fell asleep, along with the rest of the Olympians. When he woke up at sunrise, he saw Athena leaning over Hera. She was tickling Hera’s nose with a feather.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead!” she teased.

  Zeus braced himself. Hera was not going to like that one bit.

  Hera bolted upright, her blue eyes blazing.

  “Knock it off!” she howled. Then her eyes grew wide. She grabbed the feather from Athena.

  “Athena! You found it! My lost feather!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Eye Spy

  Zeus couldn’t believe it. Hera had lost her peacock feather days ago, and far away. But this one sure looked like her feather—long and green, with a dark blue circle inside a light blue circle inside a dark blue circle. The circles looked kind of like an eye.

  The other Olympians were awake now too.

  “Hera and her feather are back together,” Apollo sang.

  “I didn’t know it was yours,” Athena said. “I found it yesterday when we were walking and tucked it away. Is
it a magical object, like the others? What does it do?”

  “It can bring us luck,” Hera replied.

  “We could definitely use some now,” Poseidon said, stretching.

  Hera stood up. She held the feather in the palm of her hand. “Feather, can you check the paths ahead and find a route that’ll get us to the center of the web without getting snared by any more sticky threads?”

  The feather floated off her palm and started to slowly float away.

  “Hey, come back!” Hera cried. “We’re not ready to go yet!”

  But the feather kept going. Apollo strummed his lyre. “Oh, please, Hera’s feather, come hither,” he sang.

  Hera turned to him, annoyed. “ ‘Feather, come hither’? That doesn’t even rhyme, really. And how is that helping?”

  However, it seemed to work. The feather was already winging its way back into her hand. Her eyes got wide.

  Apollo smiled.

  “I think your feather likes rhymes,” he said.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Hera warned. “This is my magical object. Pythia said so.”

  Apollo held up his hands. “It’s all yours.”

  “I hope your feather does bring us luck,” Zeus said. “We need to get to the center of that web.”

  “It will. Remember how lucky we got when we were looking for Ares’s Spear of Fear?” Hera asked. “We found the Amazons who had it right away. And they just handed it over to us!”

  Zeus nodded. “You’re right. Okay, let’s see what your feather can do.”

  They ate a quick meal and washed up. Then they started back on the path to the center of the web.

  “Okay, feather,” Hera said. “We need some good luck on this trip.”

  The feather started to float away again.

  “I think it wants us to follow it!” Hera said. “Come on!”

  They followed the feather down a new path. The feather slipped easily through the weave of webs, but Zeus still had to whack away with Bolt. Poseidon kept pushing the strands aside with his trident.

  “This doesn’t seem like a very lucky path,” Poseidon grumbled as a sticky strand hit him in the face.