by Zachary Howe
“I didn’t know this resort had a pool,” Atalo chuckled.
“What else is bothering you?” Ellie scrutinized her son.
“What? Nothing,” Gordie responded a little too quickly, and he knew she knew it, but she dropped the subject. “So, what have you guys been doing?”
“A whole lot o’ nothin’, Gordo. You’ve been runnin’ around fighting werewolves, and I’ve been sittin’ here munchin’ on nuts and knockin’ back this hearty brew.” Atalo slapped the mug in his hand. “I’m certainly not complaining about that part, though.” He took a long draught from the mug and smacked his lips.
“Maybe you’ve had enough of that, Dad.” Ellie swiped the mug from her father before taking a swig herself.
“Hypocrite,” he muttered. “Hey Gordo, I was thinkin’ maybe me and your mom can go with you when you head back to this Dasos place. I sure would like to check it out.” He looked at his grandson hopefully as Ellie watched in silence.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Grandpa.” Atalo looked crestfallen. “I’m not even sure it’s possible, actually.” Gordie tried to relay what Chiron had told him about the different planes when they were in the pool, and how Hermes had locked the borders between realms, but he wasn’t sure he had explained it quite right.
“That is more or less how it works.” Gordie jumped as Chiron spoke over his shoulder; he hadn’t heard the clip-clop warning of the centaur’s arrival. Gordie didn’t look directly at him for fear that he would give away his spying with a nervous glance or tick, but Chiron didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.
“So, if the gods aren’t on our plane,” Ellie looked from Chiron to her son, “then we won’t be able to go with Gordie to complete any of these tasks.”
Atalo looked at Chiron with wide-eyes.
“That is correct. I am sorry. I do not know what you were expecting but, regardless of whether or not you could accompany him, I do not believe you should. These tasks should be completed by him and him alone, for a number of reasons.”
“Idealized discipline and a conquering spirit aside, he is still a child,” Ellie said. “He was almost killed on a fruit-picking expedition.”
“Which is why he will continue to train with me extensively before attempting any trial the gods have to offer. But you would do well to give your son some credit—he faced a fully grown lycanthrope and lived despite the absence of his power. Few humans could do that.”
Gordie’s jaw dropped open and he stared at Chiron, unsure of whether he appreciated the defense or was outraged by the hypocrisy. Ellie was looking at Chiron in much the same way.
“But I was going to meet Hephaestus,” Atalo interrupted in little more than a whisper. “My father did and I always thought I would get to, one day.” Gordie looked at his grandpa and for the first time saw him as somebody’s son. It made him uncomfortable.
“I am truly sorry, Atalo, but I find it implausible that your father ever met him to begin with,” Chiron said with a soft expression.
“But the bat—it’s Hercules’s club! How else could he have gotten it?”
“I cannot say.” Chiron knelt to pick up the bat, which was lying on the table. He turned it over in his hands, caressing it with his massive fingers. Then without warning, he slammed it on the table, causing all parties to jump and cry in alarm. The table cracked, but the bat remained unharmed as Chiron lifted it to his face to inspect it again. “Remarkable,” he whispered.
“See?” Atalo said. “It’s his!”
“I do not doubt it. And what’s more, I believe we can prove that this club has been altered by Hephaestus.” Chiron walked over to the great fireplace and dropped the bat in the flames.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gordie and his grandfather cried in unison.
Chiron ignored their shouts, grabbing a tongs and leisurely turning the bat in the embers, before pulling it out of the fire and setting it on the table. Gordie, Atalo, and Ellie leaned over to inspect it. Emblazoned on the bat were Greek letters:
‘Hφαιστος
“Do you know what that reads?” Chiron asked Gordie.
“If I had to guess I’d say Hephaestus.” Gordie shrugged.
“Very good.” He pointed at each letter as he spoke. “Eta, phi, alpha, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, sigma.”
“Is that where Tolkien got the idea?” Ellie snorted to herself and covered her mouth when she realized no one else was laughing.
“As a matter of fact, it was.” Chiron nodded with a smile. “He was a very fine author.” Ellie looked at him with her mouth hanging open again.
“You said sigma twice, but those two letters don’t look the same,” Gordie interjected.
“Sigma has two lower case forms. That second one is used at the end of words.” Atalo was the one who clarified this. Chiron looked at him with approval.
“Well done, Atalo. Do you know the Greek language?”
“I know the alphabet and I probably remember enough to get around a city.” He shrugged.
“There is a port city less than thirty kilometers from here. I would be delighted to take you and your daughter if you ever wish to go.”
“I think we might just take you up on that!”
“Very well, and feel free to peruse my library—you will find some very interesting literature there indeed. Elena, it would be my pleasure to translate anything for you, if you wish.” He smiled at her.
“Thank you very much, Chiron.”
Gordie thought it was a wise move for Chiron to be buttering up his mom and grandpa after the disappointing news that they could not join him on any tasks.
“Do you think I could go into the city?” Gordie asked, noticing he had been left out of the invitation. Chiron’s eyebrows met in the middle as he looked between his three guests.
“Potentially.” He unlocked his clasped hands and made a slight offer of gesture like a politician. “But first we must focus on your training. In two days you will be returning to Dasos as discussed, and after that we will begin work on combat.”
“Cool!” Gordie and Atalo shouted while Ellie shook her head and muttered under her breath.
Gordie could have sworn he heard “Idiots.”
***
That night they dined on salad with fresh fruits (not including dates or figs) and every nut Gordie had ever heard of, and some he hadn’t. Over the crackle of the flames Chiron regaled them with tales of the legendary heroes and their ilk, but these were not tales passed down through generations—these were anecdotes of their idiocy and debauchery: the time Hercules got drunk with a group of rowdy satyrs and woke up in the middle of the Sahara; or how Ajax lost a bet to Achilles and had to fight the Trojan War wearing a string of pearls and a toga; or the time Perseus tried to use Medusa’s head to petrify Dionysus because he felt he was a drunken fool, a transgression for which Dionysus had drowned him in a vat of wine.
Gordie and Atalo explained modern sports to Chiron who was fascinated to hear about the Olympics, and was tickled to hear about supposed world records.
“Heracles could throw a javelin from Sparta to Troy!” he said with a laugh when Atalo told him he held a Wisconsin state high school record. Atalo grumbled and took a long draught from his mug.
They laughed into the night until Atalo fell out of his chair. Chiron led the stumbling old man to his chamber as Gordie and Ellie navigated the corridor they had emerged out of together the day before. Ellie led the way as she had visited Gordie’s room numerous times while he was unconscious after his expedition to the Underworld.
“Isn’t this it?” he asked, as they walked past what he thought was his room.
“Yes, but you’re brushing your teeth first,” Ellie demanded while Gordie snorted. “I don’t care how many werewolves you fight—if you get a cavity, I will kill you.” Unable to hold it in any longer, he burst into laughter, and his mother did too.
“So where’s the bathroom?” Gordie asked, as his giggles died away. “I m
ean, there can’t be running water.”
“No, but there’s a fountain in my room.”
When they arrived in Ellie’s room there was a little stone basin with a drain and a steady stream of water falling into it from a hole in the wall. They brushed through more giggles, and Ellie kissed her son on the forehead before he walked back to his adjacent room.
When Gordie entered his room, he looked at the small wooden bed and the chair in the corner, still draped in the blanket his mother had lain under while waiting for him to wake from his coma, and he thought back to Chiron’s room. Despite the impermanence of this room, it was still homier than the starkness of the centaur’s. He felt another twinge of pity. As he climbed into bed, he remembered the other eye-opening experience he had had in Chiron’s corridor, and he turned over Apollo’s words in his mind.
“I know of the boy and I know his weakness. Do not force me to take matters into my own hands,” he had threatened Chiron. What was his weakness? Gordie figured his mother and grandfather were safe here with Chiron and concluded that Apollo must have been referring to his powerless days. Maybe that was why Chiron was hesitant to let him go to the city: because he would be out of his safekeeping—although Gordie thought that Dasos was sufficiently unsafe. He wondered if Chiron would follow him there again, as he had done on his first trip, and he figured he would, especially now. He also wondered what means Chiron had used to get there and smiled as he pictured Pompeia dragging the centaur through the river by a hoof.
Gordie drifted to sleep and dreamt of the naiad and Bridget, of Apollo’s disembodied head floating in a murky green light, and of the werewolf’s body being dragged away by some blurred image of a person.
11
Stars, Stripes, and Stygian Ice
Two days later, Gordie had returned from Dasos soaking wet, but carrying twenty figs and twenty dates in a silk pouch. He had asked Chiron for a bag, impressing the centaur with his ability to plan ahead. When he had arrived in the forest, he sprinted to the nearby tree he remembered as the date palm and then to the spot Laktizon had led him to find figs. He only stopped on his way back to the river to inspect the pine tree where he fought the werewolf, and was shocked to see the body was gone, a black trail of blood leading out the other side of the pine. All that remained was a mysterious symbol where the beast had been slain: a circle around a jaguar lapping water from a forest pool molded out of a strange silvery dust. Gordie thought it was both beautiful and sad, but he did not afford himself time to ponder over this for fear of running into Dasos the satyr (or any other creatures for that matter), so he had run to the river and called for Pompeia with his head in the current. The naiad had arrived on cue and brought him back to Mount Pelion.
By this time, a few more swims in the eucalyptus pool had healed his shoulder back to pristine condition, and he had even tooled around the hot tub with his grandfather who said the pool made him ‘feel like a horny eighteen-year-old again,’ something Gordie was both repulsed and tickled to hear.
It had now been six days since Gordie walked out of the Underworld only to collapse under a surge of power. This meant that in less than a week his latent strength would resurface. For the time being, however, Chiron pressed to train him in his vulnerable state.
After snacking on some of the fruits Gordie had retrieved, the centaur led him, Ellie, and Atalo to a plateau overlooking the forest. The two relatives tagged along because they had both expressed a desire to spectate, although Ellie’s was out of fear for her son’s well-being while Atalo only wanted to see a good show. A gentle breeze rustled them as they reached the open space, which rested between two peaks: that of Mount Pelion itself and a lesser mountain of the chain. The plain was prairie-like with patches of dry, tall grass in a grainy, dusty soil.
“What a view, eh, Gordo?” Atalo boomed as they walked onto the elevated but flat terrain that presided over the dense greenery below.
“It is quite spectacular,” agreed Chiron as he gestured to a large rock for Ellie and her father to sit on, while he led Gordie to the middle of the field. Once there, Chiron turned to face Gordie head on, carrying the spear that Gordie had seen in the centaur’s bedroom. Student looked up at master with bat in hand. The late morning sun glinted off the blade of the spear.
“Now, Gordon, we will learn the basics of combat. Your weapon of choice is this club, a blunt instrument used to bash one’s opponents into submission.” Gordie tapped the bat against his open palm as he listened to Chiron’s instruction. “Normally, this would be a very limiting weapon, but its indestructibility lends it some value.”
“Why is it limited?” Gordie asked.
“A sword or javelin can cut, causing great internal damage or instantly deal a death blow. Your weapon will do bodily harm, but will require great precision, i.e., a blunt strike to the head, or repeated attacks to defeat your enemies,” Chiron explained. Gordie thought about hitting someone in the head with his bat and was repulsed by the idea.
“Now,” Chiron continued, “although you do not wield a sword, your club can repel attacks in much the same way, especially because it is indestructible. So if I were to do this—” Chiron swung his javelin down on Gordie’s head like he were chopping wood. Gordie squealed and lifted the bat above his head, holding it at each end. The javelin bounced off the solid wood.
“Very good,” Chiron nodded, before he swung the spear around and stopped it right before whacking Gordie in the side, “but I just broke your ribs.” Gordie huffed, but didn’t respond.
The training session went on like this. Chiron occasionally hit Gordie with the shaft of the spear to give him a dose of reality. He was soon speckled with bruises. The centaur attacked slowly and calculatedly, only speeding up his movements when he meant to make contact with his target. At one point Chiron thrust his spear forward and Gordie, not knowing how to block a straight on attack, leapt to the side a second before being skewered.
“Be careful!” Ellie yelled from the sideline. Gordie and Chiron ignored her.
“That brings up an interesting point, Gordon.” Chiron set the butt of the spear in the dirt lifting a small plume of dust from its resting place. “The best way to block a thrust is to use a shield, of course. I wonder what that Stygian ice in your arm is capable of . . .” He nodded towards Gordie’s left hand, which Gordie raised to his face, turning it over while he inspected it. The skin was unremarkable, covered in peach-fuzz and a couple freckles here and there—no sign of jagged black ice.
“Yeah, but I don’t know how to use it. I mean, it just came out—I didn’t plan it.” Gordie was certain he couldn’t do it again if he tried.
“You do not know how to use it yet,” Chiron corrected. “But in time you will learn. Try it.” Chiron watched him.
Gordie held out his arm and stared at it. He clenched his fist, flexed his forearm muscles, screwed up his face and squinted at it without breathing until he thought he might pass out, but nothing happened.
“Nothing’s happening,” he said, exhaling forcefully. “I don’t know how to control it.”
“I see that.” Chiron turned and walked away from him, knelt down twenty yards away and scooped up a handful of pebbles. He turned back to Gordie and threw a rock at him without warning. Gordie jumped out of the way.
“Hey!” he yelled, but another rock followed and hit him in the chest, stinging immensely. Another rock flew and another. Gordie dodged some and was pelted by others.
“Do not dodge—block!” Chiron picked up more ammo.
Gordie stood still and held his left arm in front of him bent at the elbow as if he were holding an invisible shield. He knew it wasn’t going to work, but he had to try once, so he waited for a rock to come flying and focused all his energy into his arm. The rock sailed just over it and caught him on the chin.
“Dammit!” he roared, rubbing his chin as he spun around. Another rock hit him square in the back and he jumped around in anger. He did not try to block again as he danced around the pro
jectiles and squared up to hit the last one with his bat, which he did, sending it back at its hurler. He sneered as the stone hit Chiron in the navel, but scowled when he realized the centaur was unfazed.
Then Chiron reared and hurled his javelin at Gordie with lightning speed. Gordie only had time enough to register the whistling sound the projectile made as it cut through the air between him and his attacker. He thought of death as he tucked his head behind his arms in a meager attempt at self-defense. He waited for what he imagined would be unbearable pain—that of sharp steel tearing through flesh, but it never came. He heard a clattering sound and opened his tightly closed eyes to see the spear rattling to rest on the ground. A round shield of ebony crystal extruded from his forearm, and he looked at it in amazement as the Stygian ice sank back into his skin, converging from above and below his arm. He then registered the yelling coming from his mother as she sprinted towards him.
“What the hell were you thinking?!” she screamed at Chiron. “You could have killed him!” She reached Gordie and hugged him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, Mom!”
“I’m gonna kill him,” she growled as she stomped off towards the centaur.
“Mom, stop!” Gordie grabbed at her, but she broke free.
“You stupid bastard!” she yelled at Chiron, who, Gordie was surprised to see, was backing away in alarm. “You almost killed him! I- Dad, put me down!” Atalo had raced over and lifted his daughter by her midsection while she kicked and screamed. Chiron looked at Gordie with wide-eyes and Gordie pointed at him, bursting into laughter.
“Maybe we will be done for the day.” Chiron looked shell-shocked as he approached Gordie. Ellie’s threats could still be heard over the wind as her father hauled her back to the path that led to the cave.
“Good idea.” Gordie smirked. That was the last time Gordie’s mom observed a training session.
***
That night Gordie lay awake in his silent chamber, a blue torch flickering in the corner despite the complete stillness. He thought about Apollo and his threats, wondered what Hermes was up to, wondered if Zeus was going to attack Hades and if it was even possible, all while craving a burger because he hadn’t had red meat in over a week. As he stared at the dark ceiling he heard the sound of Chiron’s hooves approaching and sat up, curious what the centaur might want with him in the middle of the night. A few seconds later Chiron peeked into the room and saw Gordie was waiting for him.
