Quiver

by Lisa Borne Graves

  Lunch was relaxing without Aroha’s now blatant jealousy of Callie. Aroha had gone to speak to Zeus about Ares, and I desperately hoped they’d reunite, and Aroha would stay away from New York. Frankly, the immature games she played to gather her mortal worshippers was plain sad. But Archer had much more reason to fear her return than I had. How deep and complex that fear ran, I didn’t know, but I noticed a jumpy edge to him. My curiosity grew, along with concern for one of my oldest and best friends.

  “What’s up, Archer?” I asked. We were on the way to fourth period.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re jumpy, nervous, worried. You were practically wringing off that poor girl’s hand at lunch,” I told him.

  “Was I?” he asked, his mind elsewhere. He ran his hand through his hair with a sigh, making it stick up. “Lucien, I can’t tell you what I’ve done because you won’t be able to hide it from her. I’m not listening to Aroha anymore.”

  I stopped walking. The prophecy came slamming back at me, and my mind recalled the images. I saw Archer again, screaming, fire, and Callie. I hadn’t recognized her when I’d dreamt it, not knowing her in person yet, but it was unlike me not to realize it had been her once I met her. But how? But why? I couldn’t fathom how one mortal girl would change the immortal world forever. “Love,” the oracle had told me. I thought she had meant figurative, that through love the world would change, but what if the coded message had meant Love personified, as in Archer? Now figuring out who in Hades this girl was had become paramount.

  I masked my concern but was freaking out inside. He had to listen to Aroha. It should be impossible for him to ignore her demands.

  I lowered my voice and spoke too quickly and quietly for mortal ears to register. “You mean you stopped obeying her? How…I mean, how is that possible?”

  Archer was supposed to follow Aroha’s orders. When one of our superiors—superior as in a parent or an elder—makes a command of us, we cannot easily ignore them. Yes, there are some small loopholes, but most of the time, Archer had to obey us previous generations of gods. The older we become, the stronger our blood becomes, and the harder we are to disobey. None of us, even the oldest blooded, including the surviving Titans, could defy a direct order from Zeus. He held a power over all of us that we could not fully understand. The god of gods answered to no one.

  “I don’t know exactly. Sometimes I can disobey if her choices are selfish,” he explained.

  Well, that was pretty often, but I held my tongue on that. “I see where this might be going.” I put my hand up to stop him. Once he told me the truth, I’d be unable to hide it; assumptions were safe from Aroha’s probing questions, and when Aroha got to cross-examining, she was relentless as Socrates crossed with Poirot.

  What Archer was cryptically telling me was that Aroha most likely wanted Callie to be in love with someone else, and knowing Aroha, she’d chosen someone awful. Plus, it was obvious from Dan’s pathetic lamentations over Aroha’s absence that Archer had made him in love with her. It was a killing-two-birds-with-one-stone situation: Dan would forget about Callie, and him liking Aroha would appease her forever-ravenous ego. It wouldn’t work, but I didn’t have the heart to tell Archer. Aroha’s fury was not something I wanted to witness.

  “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” I warned Archer about his mother.

  “I swear she is descended from a fury.” Furies, or Erinyes, which was what we originally called them, are awful beings from Tartarus, which is not a part of the Underworld any god wants to enter. Not at all something he should liken to his mother.

  “Stop insulting your mother.” I commanded him, testing him to see how much he could disobey.

  He opened his mouth but then closed it, his eyes full of anger. “I hate it when you do that.”

  “What?” I played dumb. But I was relieved. He couldn’t disobey me. All was still right with the world. I’d try to forget the prophecy for now. It was insane to think some mortal girl could change the world, our world, which had been the same for thousands of years.

  “Pull the seniority card on me.” Then he sighed and gave me a hopeful grin. “I need you to go to the movies with me and Callie tonight.”

  “No, I’m not playing the third wheel.” I’d sell my soul to Hades rather than be alone with them, but I also couldn’t tell him all my reservations about Callie. He never understood the prophecies—it freaked him out that I relied on them when I was unsure where they came from. At least, that was what I told the others. They’d be unnerved if I told them of my dreams. Ghosts from the Elysian fields haunting me in my sleep was not something I wanted to share, even with my best friend. Somehow, the Fates always allowed me this one lie. I never had to divulge where the prophecies came from; it seemed dreams weren’t part of truth’s domain.

  “No, I mean say you’re going and then cancel. I can’t ask her to go alone with me, can I?” He was fidgeting.

  “I can’t lie,” I reminded him.

  “You can to a mortal.”

  “I don’t want to. Don’t get angry with me. I need to know the truth if I am going to support you with this. Did you make Callie love you? Have you—”

  “Did I shoot her? No!” According to the expression on his face, I was mentally unhinged for the mere suggestion.

  “I had to check. Seriously, do you really like this one?”

  “Yes,” he said with such conviction that I had no choice but to believe him.

  “Then forget the binding nonsense. Be with her. Bind her to you. You can give her around ten years.”

  “Then what?” Archer gave me a look of horror at the mere thought of only a decade. It was beyond anything I understood. He was so pathetic and intense when in love, so sickening to me, that I could hardly stand him. At least, he had been with Psyche in the beginning. I really hadn’t seen him in love since. Aroha would claim Archer was a true lover and that I was a chauvinist afraid of commitment. What did she know? She was more in love with herself than with anyone else. She whined all the time about Ares loving war more than her, when all she had to do was take a glimpse in the mirror to see she was the same. If I let myself ponder too long on my fellow immortals, I would get depressed again. This was a long existence. Sometimes bitterly long.

  “Then you’ll have to leave her,” I told him. “That’s the way it works. I forget how you never fall in love.”

  “And what if I don’t leave?” His jaw set defiantly.

  I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Archer, you’ll have to. She’ll find out something is up if you don’t age, and you can’t tell her the truth. Remember Semele?” I tried to warn him that this might go horribly wrong on him. The prophecy showed me as much.

  “Dionysus’s mom? I don’t remember her personally, no.” He was younger than Dionysus, so the thick sarcasm was not lost on me.

  “Quit being a smartass. You remember the legend?”

  “Hera tricked the mortal woman into asking Zeus to reveal his true identity after he had sworn on the Styx, and he was forced to destroy her.” Archer mumbled. He sensed a big lecture was coming.

  One does not swear on the Styx lightly. Archer summed up a serious affair in one sentence, but it was much more complicated than that. Zeus was forced to destroy Semele, even though he loved her more than anything. She beheld him in “all his glory,” which killed her. No human can withstand the full brunt of our powers. The mortal mind is unable to handle it, and sometimes their hearts cease to beat, but it all depends on what kind of powers we are predisposed with. I most likely would blind someone, like staring directly into the sun during a partial solar eclipse. We constantly hold back our powers to protect mortals.

  “I’m not going to be stupid enough to swear on the Styx.” Archer rolled his eyes. He had no trouble acting like a mortal teen, being spoiled and pampered his entire life. He was Zeus’s favorite grandchild, or at least, that’s how it looked to all of us.

  “You don’t have to mess up that drastically to
get her destroyed. No one can know about us. The rules are there for a reason. Just be careful, be guarded, and see how things pan out. You met her a week ago. Stop getting so ahead of yourself.” I should have told him about the prophecy, but how could I if I couldn’t fully decode it?

  He gave me a bitter smile. “Yeah.”

  “And watch the father. The mythologist who has bred her to know all of ancient Greek history? Do not let them figure out anything.” Of course, he picked the worst human possible to be with, who knew all about us, possibly even that we were real. I began to wonder if that was the answer. If Callie found out who we were, Zeus would smite her, and if Archer were truly in love, would he dare to avenge her? But how could he? Zeus was more powerful than five of us put together. Just ask the Titans in the Underworld.

  No, there was more. There had to be. Sometimes Zeus let a mortal or two into our world as long as they told no one else. It was a way to get new blood into our family tree by making the demigod from such a union immortal. Some of us—degradingly so—referred to them as “hybreeds,” a crossbreed of human and god. This was where Dionysus, Athena, and various others came from, including the rest of Aphrodite’s love retinue, who had been left behind with Zeus. Archer scoffed. “How could a mortal ever find out about us?”

  “Dr. Syches. The name sounds familiar. I don’t know why,” I mused. I’d have to Google him later. “Be careful, Archer. Zeus could kill her if she or her dad finds out.” I could do no more without telling him about the prophecy.

  After school, I searched the parking lot for Archer. He was sitting on the hood of his BMW, driving today, which was unlike him. Bet he did to show off for Callie. I met up with him to find him all smiles, completely untroubled, unlike earlier.

  “What’s with the mood swing?”

  “It’s just a beautiful day.” He said simply. He smiled, shifting his gaze to the school.

  I turned to see Callie enter the sunlight, scanning the parking lot and shading her eyes. Beautiful was an understatement. She spotted Archer and came over to us, only having eyes for him. Did I dare ask him again if he shot her with an arrow last period? Could he be that selfish?

  “Hey, can I have a ride again?” she asked Archer.

  “Sure, but I’m headed to the movies,” he said slyly.

  “What are you seeing?”

  “Dunno yet,” he shot back with a grin.

  I shifted my weight to my other foot uncomfortably.

  “You going?” She turned her attention to me.

  “Uh…wasn’t planning on it.” I decided not to play into Archer’s game of lying to her, then standing them up.

  “So, who’s all going?” she asked, beginning to get confused.

  “You, if you come with me,” he said.

  “Are you asking me to go to the movies with you?” she asked shyly, biting her lower lip. She was utterly adorable. I was beginning to see why he was having so much trouble leaving her alone. There was this mysterious magnetism.

  “I’m inviting Lucien as well but fully intend to tell him the wrong place and time,” he said to her, winking.

  “Ha, ha. I don’t want to go.” I could kill him sometimes. Normally, I wouldn’t care if he’d make himself look better at my expense, but with Callie, it felt different. I was actually embarrassed. I cared how this mortal viewed me. I could see it already. The way Aroha, Archer, and I were responding to her was already changing us, our dynamic, and how we related to one another. I didn’t understand why, but I had to figure out who she was, and by doing so, I could solve this mystery.

  “So just me and you then?” she asked, not understanding how difficult she was making it for Archer.

  I suppressed a smile, gloating over his struggle.

  “Where did I say I was going?” Archer played dumb.

  “The movies.” Callie’s brow wrinkled, not understanding why he was behaving so oddly.

  “So, you’re asking me to go to the movies then?” he asked, following it up by giving her the smoldering look mortals swooned over, while trying to suppress a smile. It was creepy how it drew them in. But she didn’t crumble into the blubbering mess most girls did when we gazed upon them. I found this interesting and unnerving, but Archer didn’t notice.

  “I thought you were asking me, but if it helps, I’ll ask you,” she toyed back in a flirtatious banter, finally catching onto his game.

  “It helps tremendously.” He grinned.

  “Can I go to the movies with you then?” she said, blushing, embarrassed. She was playing his game without understanding why.

  “Thought you’d never ask.” He put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer.

  Archer then glanced at me, eyes questioning, wanting to see if he was safe. He was being careful. She had asked him out first. Now he could ask her anything—well, almost anything—without binding her to him.

  I gave him the nod. “Well, I’ll see you later then.” I excused myself.

  As I walked away, I heard Archer ask her, “What do you want to see?”

  I didn’t listen for the answer but walked on. I couldn’t help but feel alone now. Archer’s sudden discovery of happiness made me yearn for my own. This did nothing to improve my depressed and troubled spirit.

  My mood sank lower, as it always does when night approaches. Obviously, I adore the light. The sunlight promotes truth; under the cover of dark, metaphorically and physically, lies breed. I was stronger in the sun. Like a plant, it was food to my flesh. But it wasn’t just darkness that made my mood sink. I had nothing to do. No Archer. No Aroha. I never realized how much I had depended on them during the last century, and only days ago, I had thought of leaving them. Worst of all, I had no one to share this mystery with.

  I settled down to my duty much earlier than I normally would. I sat at my desk, took out my laptop, and scoured news headlines from today, from all around the world and in multiple languages. I searched for infamous court cases. Not much new caught my attention as I speed-read through over a hundred websites, just a few small cases and crimes the humans could deal with themselves. I took out my list, added a few cases that needed watching over—guilty people where everyone knew it. Usually, the evidence was so overwhelming against the accused, the mortals could manage justice without immortal influence, but as seen in the past, this assumption was wrong often enough.

  The top of my list needed attending to. A child’s murder in France where the man might be let off because his wife was going to testify as his alibi. Without her, the evidence was more than enough to convict him, but she was ready to perjure herself to protect him. I couldn’t take the chance. Truth would prevail as long as I existed.

  I was surprised Athena hadn’t stepped in yet on this case. Our line of work brought us constantly together, figuratively that is. I would expose the truth, she would force justice, and one didn’t work without the other: veritas est aequitas—truth is justice—meaning that truth exposed brings justice to the people. It was the motto I adopted when we lived in Rome. Athena and I had a brief courtship during the Roman Empire, if I could even call it that. It never progressed. Athena was a lover of the mind and soul, not the body, but she had taught me to view women differently. Back then, men barely regarded women as people, and Athena proved them all wrong. I was a man, though, and I still needed the body. A brilliant mind is a brilliant mind, while a brilliant body is…well…enough said. Basically, Athena might still be a virgin, and as much as I should respect that—over thousands of years of celibacy? Yeah, not me, no way. That’s crazy. I’m lucky if I leave mortal girls alone for a year.

  I focused back on my work. In France, I found Madame Pinchet at home, restlessly attempting to sleep. I pictured myself in her mind and was there. “You will tell the truth tomorrow,” I commanded her.

  She sat up in bed, shocked, searching for the source of the unseen voice.

  “This is your conscience speaking. You will tell the truth or suffer the consequences. Think of that child. Your husban
d is guilty.”

  “He’s guilty,” she repeated in a trance.

  I left her mind.

  “He deserves to die. I’m not going to jail for him,” she murmured as she turned over in her bed. Madame Pinchet was quickly fast asleep, the arms of truth soothing her into a peaceful slumber. It had set her free, and she would do the right thing tomorrow. It always worked, mortals’ minds being so malleable.

  Back in New York, I continued to promote truth where needed. I kept an eye on criminals, helped the police find leads, and exposed cheaters, thieves, and liars; basically, I did all I could to make the mortals honest people and expose those who were incapable of telling the truth. There were so many lies and injustices breeding around the city that Athena must not have visited the US in a while. I wondered what she was up to and where she was in the world.