by Zachary Howe
The day had been so confusing, and the gamut of emotions Gordie had experienced would qualify him for a place in a psychiatric ward. The wound of losing his dad was still gaping, despite his recent preoccupations with fantasy. But right then he felt the need to push everything from his head except for the memory of his father.
The silence lasted for a long time. Gordie took to watching the clock as a substitute to more introspection. It was shortly after noon, and he was shocked it had only been three hours since his classmates were blasted from their seats. He closed his eyes to focus on the act of shunning such memories before continuing his post as time supervisor.
A half hour ticked away as he observed the progress of the minute-hand. Atalo cleared his throat. Another hour passed. Ellie sniffled. Then two hours. Finally, Atalo spoke.
“Can I make you two some food? You must not have eaten since breakfast.”
“I’m fine,” Ellie said.
“Me too,” Gordie agreed. He was not lying. He truly had no appetite. Of course, his grandpa was not appeased, and he headed to the kitchen to whip something up. Atalo returned in a few minutes with a plate of turkey sandwiches.
“Eat,” he said. “You need some food in your system.” Ellie didn’t seem to have the strength to argue, so she grabbed a sandwich and nibbled like a rabbit. Gordie followed suit, except his stomach was enlivened by its first nutrients in nearly eight hours, so he inhaled his lunch in true teenage form.
Ellie was evidently not fairing as well as him because she had consumed no more since her first bite. Gordie stood up and excused himself from the room as he could no longer sit idly. “I’m gonna go watch some TV,” he said to no one in particular.
“Good idea,” said Atalo. “I’ll join you in a bit.”
Gordie headed into the adjacent living room, plopped down on the cozy leather couch, and turned on ESPN. He was grateful that this room was secluded because he felt like he needed to get lost in TV for a while. He noted another Milwaukee Brewer failure with little concern—sports didn’t seem to mean as much as they had that morning.
With a pang of guilt he remembered that he had refused his dad’s offer from that morning to take him to an upcoming game. The thought stung, so he shook it off and focused his attention on the rundown of NBA victories. He continued to watch with little interest, and didn’t turn at the top of the hour when another SportsCenter began despite the fact that he was now being bombarded with all the same highlights he had viewed for the last hour.
“How’d the Crew do?” Atalo entered the room and sat in his leather recliner.
“They lost again,” Gordie said in monotone.
“Well, at least they’ll probably get the sweep against the Cubbies this weekend.” Atalo smiled, not realizing that Gordie had been actively avoiding the thought of that particular series.
“Yeah,” Gordie said. They watched in silence for a while.
Hours ticked by as the programming changed. The image of his father remained in his mind’s eye for an extended period of time. He allowed it because he needed to cope with it, become accustomed to it, eventually overcome it.
The sun had long since set. The family room was lit only by the light of the television. Ellie had remained at the kitchen table in solitude. Atalo had left his grandson in peace hours earlier to pass the time in his study, doing what, Gordie did not know. Gordie had sat in front of the television long enough, so he turned it off and returned to the kitchen.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“I was thinking about going to bed now. Do you think you could come with me? I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Sure, honey.” She smiled at him and rose from her seat for the first time in hours. “We’re going to bed, Dad,” she called to the other room.
“Okay, sweetie,” Atalo said, poking his head around the corner. “Sleep well. I’ll see you two in the morning.”
Upstairs Gordie headed straight to the guest bedroom, while his mom went to the bathroom, telling him she would be in in a minute. He made a nest on the floor and lay on his back listening to the sink run as the flow of water was interrupted with the distinctive sound of face washing. This went on longer than a normal cleansing, and Gordie imagined his mom splashing her face obsessively with hot water in an attempt to wash away the misery. He started to get anxious as he lay there. He was alone and settled down for bed, something he had wanted to avoid. As if she felt her son’s woe, Ellie sauntered into the room, knelt down, kissed him on the forehead, and climbed into the full-size bed with floral sheets that hadn’t been slept under in months. Her loving touch spread a warm relief through Gordie’s body, and he smiled, grateful for her company.
“I love you, Mom,” he whispered into the darkness to remind her that he was at her side.
“I love you more than anything in the world,” she replied, one-upping him. After that the silence resumed, even though Gordie got the feeling that his mom was as awake as he was. There was a clock on the wall in front of him that he could read, swathed in moonlight as it was. He once again took to watching the minute-hand make its painstaking revolutions.
He wasn’t tired so he didn’t know why he had suggested bed. His body coursed with unwanted energy. It was hard to remain still, like ignoring an itch under a cast. At a quarter to midnight, he was still reliving the events of the day in silent horror, wincing occasionally at the gruesome visions.
It was 11:59 pm and the terrors were no less pronounced. Gordie began to fear that he would not sleep a minute as he watched the second hand tick towards the twelve. Just as his angst reached its peak, the clock struck midnight—his body was instantly consumed with an overwhelming exhaustion and he plummeted into the deepest sleep of his life.
4
An Airport Surprise
It had been ten days since Gordie’s father was killed. The pain was still constant, but muted. The anger he occasionally experienced at the thought of it had become ever-present. The cause of his father’s death was still fresh in his mind, even though it had not been mentioned since the day they had arrived there at his grandfather’s house.
Gordie had succumbed to his grief for a few days after his world had been upended. He had wallowed in sadness, cried for hours on end. He had not left the guest room for two days after that first night. The thought of walking downstairs and not seeing his father at the breakfast table was gut-wrenching. He didn’t know why his sorrow was more severe the day after the incident, but it seemed that the reality of his loss had not truly hit him until then.
What tore at him the most was the knowledge that he was responsible for his father’s death.
His father died because Gordie had overslept. He dwelled on this. He was reminded of it in his dreams. He was aware of it during each endless, waking moment. Later in the week he had learned that over two hundred people had died as a result of the blast, which only exacerbated his depression. The devastation was unimaginable.
After Gordie had finally emerged from his den, he started devoting most of his thought to the possibility of his powers. He kept these thoughts to himself, however. He was afraid that bringing up his relationship with Mount Olympus might upset his mom. But now he felt it was time to end the embargo on discussing the elephant in the room; he couldn’t take it anymore. They were still living with Atalo, and every day was as monotonous as the last. Gordie hadn’t been back to school, neither did he have any intention of going back. He just felt that he needed to act, in some way or another. Idleness would no longer suffice.
It was midmorning on a Saturday. Gordie was distractedly watching TV in the living room. Next door in the kitchen, his mom and grandpa were making breakfast together. They were having a cheery conversation when he entered the room. He decided his mom’s spirits were whole enough for him to broach the subject of gods once again. He was nervous, and he didn’t really know where to begin, so he just dove in.
“We need to talk about Zeus,” he announced to the room at la
rge. Both Ellie and Atalo turned around looking startled, not having noticed that he entered the room. As their surprise dissipated, their faces transformed to express very different emotions. A small smile graced Atalo’s lips as he tried to keep a lid on his excitement, glancing back and forth between his daughter and grandson. Ellie’s look was more difficult to read: she seemed to be studying Gordie, her eyes narrowed like an eagle fixated on a mouse scurrying through a field hundreds of feet below—Gordie would not be made a meal of. He returned her gaze to impress upon her how serious he was.
The silence dragged on until Ellie’s gaze finally softened. “I think you’re right,” she said, with a look of resignation. Atalo looked elated and ushered her to the table.
“Sit,” he urged. “Pancakes are ready. I’ll bring ‘em to the table.” Gordie’s enthusiasm matched his grandfather’s, but he fought to remain stony-faced. She and Gordie sat at the table and were joined by Atalo as he hastily set down a steaming pile of pancakes, forgetting plates for them all.
The scene was tense, save for Atalo’s giddiness. It almost felt to Gordie as though they had never left the table from their first night at his grandfather’s house. Ellie watched him expectantly, but he was unsure how to start, so he just asked, “What do I do now?”
“You?” she asked. “You won’t be doing anything. You can go back to school next week and we will continue our lives.” There was a definite finality in her voice.
“How can you say that, Ellie?” Atalo looked shocked. “The boy is being hunted by the ruler of Olympus, and you think he should just go back to high school?”
“He was being hunted,” she said. “As far as I can tell he’s not anymore. Nothing has happened since Robert died—who’s to say it’s not over?” The mention of his father stung Gordie, but he was determined to keep the conversation on course.
“You can’t possibly think that, Mom? He’ll figure out that I’m alive sooner or later.” Gordie didn’t use Zeus’s name because he assumed they were all on the same page. Plus, it just felt weird. “You want me to just wait for death back at school?”
“He’s right, Ellie,” Atalo said. “According to the myths, Zeus is not omniscient, but I think we’re lucky to have made it this long without another incident. It’d be unsafe to stay here much longer.”
“So where do you suggest we go?” Ellie asked. “Mount Olympus?”
“Of course not. I don’t even know if it exists, but I think Greece would be a good place to start,” Atalo suggested, ignoring the look of shock on his daughter’s face. “More specifically, I say we head to the island of Lemnos to get the Nemean Lion Skin from Hephaestus.”
Ellie was dumbfounded, staring at her father with her mouth open. “You can’t be serious? Even if Hephaestus is real, how would you know where to find him?”
“I already told you,” Atalo said. “My father traded the Skin with Hephaestus. He wasn’t happy about parting with such a valuable possession, so he told me where I could find the blacksmith, in case I ever wanted to retrieve our heirloom. His workshop is inside Mount Mosychlos, which is now a submerged, inactive volcano. But there’s a way to reach it from the island.” He leaned back with a sheepish grin, relishing in the hungry look on his audience’s faces as they waited for him to expound. Gordie felt his grandfather’s tendency to be overdramatic was annoying in this circumstance.
“Well, how the hell do we do that, Dad?”
“There’s a large peninsula on the southern edge of the island that’s sparsely inhabited. From there, there’s a tunnel. It’s not manmade, but it’s not natural either. I haven’t actually been there myself, but my father told me where it was.”
“And what exactly is the point of us traipsing across the Mediterranean to find a glorified man-shawl?” Ellie asked. Gordie hadn’t really thought of that, but she made a fair point. He had been so enthralled with the prospect of fetching the Herculean garb that he never stopped to think about the purpose of such a quest.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Atalo said. This was a bad move. Gordie peeked at his mom, knowing full well that he would see a look of triumph on her face. Fortunately, Atalo recognized his slip. “This is a unique situation . . . obviously. It just makes sense to collect an artifact linking our family to Hercules! It’s as good a place to start as any. Not to mention the fact that we’ll be able to consult with an Olympian in doing so.”
“This is so ridiculous!” Ellie threw up her hands in frustration. “How can you possibly be considering this, Dad? If you think—”
“Enough,” Atalo said. Ellie’s eyes widened with indignation, as if he had just struck her. Ignoring her fierce look, he continued in a calm but stern tone. “Your husband’s death should have conveyed the gravity of our situation. To ignore it any longer would be ignorant and careless. I will not sit back and watch you put yourself and my grandson in danger. We cannot stay here and wait for death.”
The mention of Gordie’s late father had a sobering effect on him as well as his mom, judging by the softening of her expression. “I just don’t know how to process this,” she sighed. “How are we supposed to evade supernatural beings?”
“That I really don’t know. We need help, and if we have access to somebody related to our attacker, then we need to take advantage. Do you agree, Gordo?” His grandfather’s consultation of him was so unexpected that Gordie’s mouth went dry when he tried to respond. He had barely even contributed to this conversation that he had demanded in the first place.
“I-I think that’s a good idea,” Gordie spluttered. The truth was he had no idea what to do. He just wanted somebody to instruct him so he didn’t need to make decisions. He agreed that it would be cool to have the Lion Skin, but now that they were considering seeking out the Olympians, he was feeling apprehensive.
“Good,” Atalo said. “I think we should leave tomorrow.”
Gordie and Ellie were taken aback. Even Gordie was disconcerted by his grandfather’s rashness. Ellie’s face showed the same disbelief that her son was experiencing. They exchanged looks; their mouths open in mirror images of one another. Gordie looked down, studying the wood grain of the table. It reminded him of his bat and excitement flared inside him. Atalo studied his grandson as intently as he was inspecting the table.
“How ya feelin’ about this, Gordo?” Gordie heard concern in Atalo’s voice, but he didn’t want his grandfather to think he was scared.
“Great!” Gordie said. “I’m pumped. I bet I’d look damn good in that Lion Skin.” Atalo’s hearty chuckle assured Gordie that his grandfather was appeased by his response, but Ellie was still watching her son with worry—there was no fooling her. She may have even known Gordie better than he knew himself, because he truly didn’t know what he was feeling. He was excited that they could meet an Olympian in a matter of days, yet he thought waltzing into the neighborhood of a homicidal deity would scare the hell out of anyone.
“Gordie,” Ellie’s tone was soft, “you don’t have to do this. We can just move somewhere far from here and everything will be fine.”
Gordie longed to say yes just by virtue of the sadness in her voice. He took a minute to digest her proposition. He imagined moving to California and living near the beach surrounded by sun and palm trees; hanging out on the warm sand every day drinking piña coladas as the waves rolled in. It was a wonderful fantasy, but it was not realistic.
“No, it won’t,” he said. “Zeus found me once and he will again. Besides, if we just go hide somewhere then Dad died for nothing. I will destroy the person responsible for his death.” Gordie slammed his fist on the table for emphasis, but it was a weak display without the power of his heroic ancestor coursing through his veins. Ellie’s expression only saddened more by her son’s childish bravado, but she seemed to accept the inevitable.
“Okay. Just know that your father would have died a thousand times over if it meant protecting you. Revenge is dangerous, but I would go to the end of the earth to keep you safe. That may eve
n be necessary given our situation.” She smiled weakly, but it somehow looked even sadder than her look of pained resignation. Gordie wished she would stay there in Madison, move in with her father and continue teaching at the high school just down the street; lead a normal life and eventually recover from her husband’s murder—but he knew there was no way he could convince her to do so.
“Thanks, Mom. So how do we get there, Grandpa?”
“We’re gonna fly of course. How the hell else would we get to Greece?”
“What?” Gordie said, bewildered. “We’re just gonna take a plane? Can you do that on a, I don’t know . . . a quest?” Flying to Greece using modern transportation with the intention of looking for gods who were thousands of years old was not something Gordie could wrap his head around. It just didn’t fit. But he supposed his Grandpa was right: How else were they supposed to get there?
“Let’s be careful about calling this a ‘quest,’ Gordo.” Atalo had reverted to a cautious tone. “That word fails to express the seriousness of our situation. Your mom’s right—we aren’t ‘gallivanting with gods.’ This is no Easter egg hunt. We’re dealing with incredibly dangerous and unpredictable beings. We need to remain vigilant.” His grandfather’s chastisement felt a little hypocritical considering his giddiness with this whole business, but Gordie nodded politely. He caught his mom roll her eyes; she apparently felt the same way.
“So let’s go get those plane tickets, huh?” Atalo clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “I’m gonna need some help using the internet though,” he said, with a crease running from his hair line to the bridge of his nose.
While Ellie and Atalo went to his office to use the computer, Gordie remained at the table lost in thought. He had no idea what to expect from this endeavor and the uncertainty was the scariest part. Was he actually going to see Hephaestus? Would Hephaestus try to kill him? Was the god even real? Gordie kept trying to determine how Hermes could have been a hoax, but he knew in his heart of hearts that the youthful deity was all too real. Gordie was still excited, but an impending sense of doom had started to take hold of him; it was an odd combination. And it persisted.
