by Zachary Howe
Gordie walked towards him, and Giorgio recoiled. “Please Mr. Leonhart. I only did what I was told. I did not hurt her! She will tell you.” He backed away as Gordie approached.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.” Gordie rolled his eyes. “But I do want to know what’s going on. Why did Apollo do this?” He gestured towards Bridget without looking back at her. “Why does he need me so badly?”
“It would really be best if you asked him yourself, sir.” He gave Gordie an apologetic look, who was too busy shaking off being addressed as ‘Sir’ to be upset.
“All right, so, how do I talk with Apollo?” he asked, annoyed.
“I can assist you there!” Giorgio did a little hop, brushed past Gordie, and threw something high into the air. For a second nothing happened. Then there was a burst of green light before a floating portal came into view at the statue’s waist level. It was identical to the one through which Chiron spoke to Apollo back at his cave. Gordie looked up at it for a moment and then back down at Giorgio.
“Really? Did you have to throw it up there?” He jabbed his finger upward.
“I’m very sorry, my friend.” Giorgio covered his mouth with his hands and looked over them with puppy-dog eyes. “I was instructed to make your journey difficult. You must be tested, you see!” he said, waving his finger in the air like he had made an astounding discovery.
“Then why did you pay for my cab ride up here?” Gordie asked him, with a feigned look of stupidity on his face.
“Right, well, yes, about that, it would be best if that was our little secret.” He gave Gordie a sheepish grin.
“All right, so that will get me to Apollo?” he asked, pointing up towards the portal again.
“Yes sir, right to him.” Giorgio grinned.
Gordie sighed and turned back to Bridget. “I’m really sorry, but I need to go up there.” He pointed up at the portal again. “I promise I will be back for you.”
“You’re just gonna leave me here?” she asked with her eyes bulging.
“Don’t you worry, Miss Clemens.” Meess Clemuhns. “He will be back to you in a jiffy. Mr. Apollo only wishes to speak to him. He will be brief I am sure.” His big goofy smile seemed to appease Bridget.
“Fine,” she said, before she pointed back at Gordie. “But you get back here ASAP, Mister. I have some things to discuss with you in private,” she said with a coquettish grin—Gordie almost passed out. Suddenly, he had no desire to leave.
“I promise I’ll be back soon,” he forced himself to say. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Where would I go?” She walked back to the throne and plopped down in it, throwing her leg over one of its arms. Gordie turned away from her and looked up at the statue.
He walked over to one of the massive feet and placed his hand on the stone. It was very smooth. He studied the perfectly chiseled toenails and followed the line of a metatarsal up to the bulging ankle. He looked up the leg and was dismayed: it was smooth all the way up to the armored skirt thirty feet overhead—there was no way he could climb it. He looked back at Giorgio with an eyebrow raised and pursed lips, trying to convey his displeasure. The bellhop made his distinct apologetic face and shrugged, but then he began to quell under Gordie’s gaze, and pointed at the waterwheel from behind his hand, like he was trying to hide the fact the he was helping. Gordie looked over at it and watched it make its slow revolution. He sighed and walked over to it.
He studied the great black wheel and marveled at the elegance of the system. The water flowed into the chamber from the direction of the room where he first landed. As a result, the wheel had to lift the water to the shelf above, which required it to rotate against the current of the stream. This was offset by a steep chute sending water to the backside of the wheel from the shelf above, and then dropping into an opening below the mechanism. The water must have been diverted at the top so a portion of it could come back down to power the wheel. Still, to propel this system initially must have required great force given the size of the wheel, and Gordie wondered what type of being could have put it in motion.
He watched the water carry up and wondered if his added weight would force the wheel back in its natural direction, but he could see no alternative, so he waited for the next spoke to catch the inflow and hopped on. He slipped off and landed in the aqueduct. His head exploded with humiliation—that was the last thing he wanted Bridget to see, and a very loud snort had just come from her direction. He made a point not to look her way as he jumped back to his feet.
Since he was already standing in the current, he decided to approach the wheel from the front this time. As the next solid slab to lift out of the basin, he gave it an extra couple seconds so that its surface would be more level when he hopped on. When its lip passed his head he jumped and grabbed the edge with both hands, then pulled himself up to sit on its rim. Riding it like a kid on a ferris wheel, it slowly lifted him to the ledge above. As his spoke reached a forty-five-degree angle, he crouched, bracing his legs and keeping his palms on the lip behind him with his fingers curled over. He waited a few more seconds, then launched his body toward the shelf like a pouncing jungle cat.
Making the twenty-foot-jump easily, Gordie landed on his feet in the flowing water with a sense of redemption. He glanced down at Bridget out of the corner of his eye. She made no discernible expression suggesting she had been successfully allured, but he supposed it was enough that she was watching. His bare feet splashed in the cool water as he walked the ledge. He was surprised at the sheer volume of water on the shelf—the water wheel was quite effective. As he reached the back corner, he saw that a portion of the water was indeed diverted into a hole that led back to the wheel, propelling its revolution.
Turning left, he walked the ledge until he stood directly behind the statue where he was level with the bottom of the sculpted skirt. He looked it over, trying to find a handhold and shouted with delight when he did.
“What’d ya find?” Bridget had walked over and was standing beneath him, looking up the backside of the monument.
“There are little buttons or something on this guy’s skirt!” Gordie told her. She snorted.
“I don’t think he would appreciate you calling it a skirt,” she said, smiling up at him.
“Well, then he shouldn’t have worn a skirt.” Gordie winked at her and turned back to the prospective handholds.
Running down the back of the pteryx—over the meat of the right cheek—was a series of round fasteners, each a foot in diameter. They made a vertical line running along the seam of the garment, and Gordie realized with amazement that these would have fastened the armored skirt if it were a real piece—the minute detail of the monument was awe-inspiring. Even more impressive was that each one was carved to look like a roaring lion. He walked five paces to his right until he was directly across from them and looked down. The gap was thirty feet wide and he stood three stories up. Despite the fact that he knew he could survive the fall (based on recent experience), he was still apprehensive: after all, crashing onto marble hurts whether you are a descendant of Hercules or a descendant of the guy who invented cotton-candy.
“You may wanna move,” he told Bridget, trying to sound more confident than he felt.
“Wait. You can’t jump that,” she said, looking at the little lion heads, and back at Gordie with alarm.
“Don’t worry. I got this.”
“Be careful, Mr. Gordie!” Giorgio now stood at Bridget’s side waving up at Gordie.
“Yeah, thanks, George,” Gordie responded, with far less interest.
The back wall waited ten feet behind him. He stepped over the water, which ran in a trough two feet in diameter, and pressed his back against the wall. His feet were still wet, so he took off his shirt to dry them and donned the tee again. Placing his hands flat against the wall—feeling the smooth, cool marble on his palms—he looked at the lowest lion head, staring into its gray eyes. He took a couple quick breaths before he pushed off the wall, taking tw
o stutter-steps to the edge of the channel, springing over it, landing on the lip of the shelf, and jumping.
That now all-too-familiar feeling of weightlessness swept through him as he flew through the air, his arms windmilling. He had a flashback to branch-hopping with a werewolf on his tail. Below, Bridget and Giorgio watched him, both of their mouths hanging open. The roaring lion head approached quickly, and Gordie knew he was going to make it, but his excitement vanished when he realized he was about to head-butt the rigid jungle-king. He cocked his head to the left at the last second and wrapped his arms around the lion’s mane right as he smacked his face against the great stone buttock. The blow to his nose dazed him and he already had little purchase around the lion’s neck. His fingers slipped off and he began to fall, but at the last second he grabbed the jutting lower jaw, right behind severe stalagmite-like fangs. He dangled there for a minute, trying to shake away the stars that were bursting in front of his eyes.
“Gordie! Are you okay?” Bridget called up.
“Y’am good, easy’s pie,” he said, as he tried to uncross his eyes.
After a few more seconds of gathering composure, Gordie assessed his situation. The next ornament was a few feet above his head, but he had nowhere to place his feet in order to spring upward. He swiped at the roaring lion’s mouth, trying to find a handhold to pull himself up, but could not. He looked up at the next head again to gage the distance; he started pumping his legs. On the third backswing he pulled upward, not just a chin up, but with so much force that he was able to launch himself to the next projection. Snagging the lion’s snout, he was able to steady his feet atop the head of the cat he had just used as a spring board.
From here on out the climb was simple. Five more lion heads acted as his ladder to Apollo’s beltline where he was able to grip the top of the garment that hugged the god’s waist. The ledge was not wide enough for him to get footing, so he just hung and shimmied along it with his hands until he bumped into the giant lyre held at Apollo’s hip. The frame of the lyre was five-feet-thick; he had to reach backward and grab it with his right hand as he hung from the waistline with his left. He nearly slipped when he made this maneuver, and for a moment he hung there, stretched between his two handholds, trying to slow his racing heart. He looked down between his legs to see the anxious faces of Bridget and Giorgio forty feet below before he rested his cheek against the cold stone.
The lyre was held at an angle so it sloped downward—its U-shaped frame was not perfectly vertical. As such, he was able to pull his left hand off the skirt and grip the frame of the instrument with two hands. It was an awkward position because the thing was still more vertical than horizontal. His hands stuttered as his palms grew sweatier, then his grip failed, and he started to slide down the ledge. Just before reaching the bottom, he swung his feet over and landed on his back on the inside of the lyre’s frame. He sat there for a moment in the crook of the instrument, looking up at the great strings. Then he rose to his feet, steadying himself as if he were on a surfboard.
The ominous green portal hung in the air above, and he thought he could reach it if he could climb to the uppermost edge of the lyre. Using the strings like a ladder, he pressed his back against the frame to steady himself as he climbed from one to the next, until he straddled the uppermost string.
He leaned back against the lyre’s frame and exhaled. Without shifting his body he looked down at his audience. Bridget was staring up with avid concentration, while Giorgio stood by with his hands covering his mouth. Gordie gave them a shaky thumbs-up and dropped his hand back on his thigh, feeling disoriented by the height. He looked up the steady incline of the cylindrical string and took another deep breath. Leaning forward, he placed his chest on the stone, and hugged it for dear life. The cool stone calmed his nerves—he closed his eyes and allowed it to pacify him a moment longer. After a brief meditation, he reopened his eyes, and began to shimmy upward. It was a slow process, but the least nerve-racking portion of the climb by far. He climbed upward, passing above Apollo’s gigantic hand intertwined with the lower strings.
Shortly thereafter he reached the top frame of the lyre and sat up. He lifted his hands off the thick string—shooting them out to the side to catch his balance during a momentary bout of vertigo—then felt around the outside of the lyre’s frame carefully until he found a nook. He curled his fingers into the engraving and squeezed, testing the strength of his grip in the shallow niche. Deeming it adequate, he pulled himself upward.
Once again he was dangling, but this time fifty feet in the air. He scrabbled with his left hand to find another groove above the first and succeeded. Slowly but surely, he scaled the piece until he stood atop the uppermost ledge of the frame where he hugged the curved ornamentation. He pressed his cheek against the stone to steel his nerves.
“I hate you, Giorgio,” he whispered into the vacuous air. He turned his head so that his other cheek pressed against the stone, and he started when he saw that he was eye level with the green portal floating ten feet in front of him, forming a right angle with Apollo’s navel. In the portal’s depths he could see what looked like an empty foyer or greeting hall. The room swam in the fluid green light, appearing to be green itself, but he figured that was the effect of the gateway’s ethereal nature.
This was the very last leg of his ascent and the most trying. Where his leaps had been directed toward tangible objects before, no such comfort existed here. This would be a leap of faith. Hopefully he would pass into the portal, transported to its mysterious locale. Yet a part of him feared he would pass right through it, not to the other side, but to its backside, where he would then plummet fifty feet to the unforgiving floor below.
Gordie shuffled his feet until he was facing the portal directly with his right hand still palming the ornate frame for support, and made a concerted effort not to look down. Slowly, he lowered his hand to his side and stared at the doorway between worlds. With one last deep breath, he swung his arms, and jumped.
14
Apollo’s Confession
Gordie landed on his chest on a hard floor. Eyes closed, face pressed against the cool stone, he focused on reining in his ragged breathing. His body had only fallen a couple feet after he dove through the portal between realms, but his brain was convinced he had fallen fifty—or maybe that he was still falling. Eventually, his fright diminished and his breaths became slow and calm.
He opened his eyes and blinked. The floor his face rested on was a dark jade with verdant, smoky swirls frozen in its sheen. There was a great mural along the wall. Gordie looked at it sideways. It depicted a large man—a giant really—addressing a group of wide-eyed humans. One man stood in front of his people, accepting a gift from the giant. The great bearded man was bending down to this courageous fellow, handing him a crackling flame. The little man was holding out his hands, his palms forming a cup, anxiously awaiting the gift of fire.
“That’s gonna hurt, buddy,” Gordie mumbled as he pushed himself up.
“Indeed.” Gordie started and whipped around to face the giant man who had addressed him. “Almost all interactions between humans and the Olympians have hurt. Although, in this particular case, I believe Prometheus here suffered most of all.” Apollo waved his hand towards the bearded flame-wielder in the painting, but Gordie didn’t look. He looked up at Apollo, staring him in the face. He had seen him before, but he had not gotten a good look at him. Now he did, and he was surprised at what he saw.
Apollo’s sandy-brown curls were cropped close to his head, but they no longer supported the wreath he had seen him wearing when the god had communed with Chiron. His face was coated in stubble, some matching his hair color, but much of it a dull gray. His eyes were dim, with the shadows of bags underneath, and his forehead was lined. He looked like a young man who had seen too much stress in his short years. Of course, he was no youth. Neither was he a man, which was evident by his frame, towering feet above Gordie’s head. But he was slim. He did not have the venerable
strength that was apparent in Hades. He looked peckish, gaunt. And most of all, as Gordie had once noted before, he looked tired.
“Welcome, Gordon Leonhart, to Koryfion, my home.” He swept past Gordie in his radiant robes, which Gordie recognized as the pale gold of the sun, so bright they were nearly white. He turned to watch him pass and gasped. Apollo had walked to the end of the hall behind him, but it wasn’t an end: it was an edge.
Four massive columns stretched upward at the lip of the jade floor. Beyond was a purple hued sky that exists only on the border of the atmosphere. Gordie gingerly approached the edge and looked out. It was as if he were seeing the world from space. He was so sure he was out of the ozone layer that he started to have trouble breathing, knowing that there should be no air up here for him. Once again, he had to override his brain, and tell himself he was safe before he could regain composure enough to look back out. Land masses huddled around a great blue sea. He could make out the topography and the vegetative state of the land. The upper landmass had patches of dense green on a texturally varied landscape; the lower landmass was mostly brown, but flat.
“Is that the Mediterranean?” Gordie asked.
“It is . . . Your new home.” Apollo stared down at the world.
“Home is a stretch. But let’s cut to the chase. Why did you kidnap my girlfriend?” Gordie felt he had license to refer to Bridget this way (although he would not have dared if she were present). “And why am I here? You don’t look like you’re in fighting shape.” He tried to sound threatening, so he was annoyed when Apollo sniggered.
“I do not wish to fight you, young Leonhart. And I apologize for the means which I have used to draw you here. I would have come to you on my own, but I believe you are aware that Hermes has closed the borders between our worlds.” He looked down at Gordie with no expression.
“Yeah, but why did he do it?” Gordie asked.
