Juliet Dove, Queen of Love

by Bruce Coville

  As she turned to go, a tiny voice behind her said, “Hey, Hyacinth! How ya doin’?”

  “Jerome!” said another voice. “Be quiet!”

  Juliet spun back around. Ms. Priest looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “That’s a very interesting backpack,” was all she said.

  “You’re not kidding,” said Juliet.

  The boys followed her home, of course, and twice there were near fights, which Juliet prevented only by speaking sternly to Gil and Arturo. She was surprised she was able to do that, but the thought of them actually fighting over her was even more horrifying than the thought of saying something about it. She left them clustered at her doorstep, gazing at her lovingly. Once inside she hurried up to her room, Clarice and Byron close at her heels.

  “Boy, whatever that amulet is, it really does work,” said Byron once they had closed the door. “It’s like you’re a total love magnet or something!”

  “Just shut up about it, will you?” snapped Juliet, fumbling with the straps on her backpack. She put the pack on her bed and Roxanne and Jerome scrambled out, looking somewhat worse for the wear. Jerome shook his head and began scratching behind his right ear.

  Before Juliet could decide what to do next, a voice from the attic called, “Juliet? Come on up, would you, sweetheart? I need you to model for me.”

  “It’s my mother,” explained Juliet to Roxanne and Jerome. “I have to go.” She left the room, frustrated at being called away and at the same time relieved at the chance for a break from the weirdness.

  Juliet always had mixed feelings about posing for her mother. She liked helping out. But the character her mother had her posing for was actually based on Juliet herself. It was not easy for a shy person to have a comic strip version of herself sent all over the country.

  It didn’t help things any when her mother said, “Juliet, are you sure you can’t bring yourself to enter the poetry jam? It would mean the world to your father.”

  “Don’t you remember what happened that first year? It was only the most embarrassing moment of my entire life!”

  “You know what they say about falling off a horse,” said Mrs. Dove, without looking up from her drawing board. “The best thing to do is to get back on and ride again.”

  “That’s if you want to ride at all,” said Juliet bitterly.

  Mrs. Dove sighed. “Juliet, I want you to be a strong and powerful woman when you grow up. If you can’t speak in public, it’s almost like being mute.” She reached for an eraser. “Hold still for just a minute. I need you to keep that pose!”

  She drew for a few minutes longer. Then, speaking casually, she said, “Is something going on with you and the boys, Juliet? There’s an awful lot of messages for you on the answering machine.”

  Juliet tried to speak, but no words would come, so she just shook her head. Mrs. Dove, used to getting this response to her questions, had no idea it was because her daughter was under a spell.

  By the time Juliet was finished posing, it was time for supper. Because of the kitchen floor project, Mr. Dove had brought home food from the Chinese takeout restaurant—a great relief to the younger Doves, who always approached dinner with a certain amount of nervousness.

  Before Juliet could return to her room, there was yet another interruption: Ms. Priest arrived, carrying a small leatherbound book.

  “I brought this for Juliet,” she said when Mrs. Dove had invited her in for coffee. “I thought she might be interested in some of the stories it contains.”

  “Tales of the Gods,” read Mr. Dove, glancing at the cover of the book.

  Ms. Priest nodded. “Juliet needed some specialized information about the Trojan War.”

  Mr. Dove’s face lit up. “Ah, great stuff! Helen of Troy! The face that launched a thousand ships.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” asked Margaret.

  “It’s from a play by Christopher Marlowe, who might have grown to be as good as Shakespeare if he hadn’t gotten himself stabbed in a tavern brawl,” said Mr. Dove. “It’s about this guy named Dr. Faustus who makes a deal with the devil. In return for his soul, he asks for the most beautiful woman who ever lived, who happens to be Helen of Troy.” Mr. Dove had his poetry-quoting look in his eyes. “‘Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’”

  “How can towers be topless?” asked Margaret. “Did they forget to finish them?”

  “It’s poetic license,” said Mr. Dove, looking as if he had bitten down on something very sour. “Marlowe is simply saying that the towers were very tall.”

  “Easier ways to get the point across,” said Margaret, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

  “Easier, but not as beautiful,” said Ms. Priest softly.

  “But what’s it all about?” asked Byron. “Who was Helen of Troy, anyway?”

  “The most beautiful woman who ever lived,” repeated Mr. Dove. “Except for your mother, of course.”

  “Wisely spoken,” said Ms. Priest.

  Mr. Dove turned to his children. “Have you really never heard of Helen?”

  The younger Doves shook their heads.

  Mr. Dove sighed. “Things are not as they used to be. I don’t know who to blame for this dreadful lapse in your education—myself, or the school. I think I’ll run for the school board next year. Do you suppose I could get elected on the motto ‘Less self-esteem, more poetry!’?”

  “Unlikely, dear,” said Mrs. Dove, patting his arm.

  Margaret scowled at him. “If you even think about doing that before I graduate, I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Not even to ask for money?” asked Mr. Dove hopefully.

  Ms. Priest turned to the children. “I don’t really have the story prepared. But I could tell you the broad strokes of it if you’d like.”

  “Please!” said Juliet, who suddenly felt it was very important.

  “Very well. Helen of Troy was the most beautiful woman in the world. But the story starts before that. Actually the story starts, as all stories do in their way, with the very beginnings of the world, for in that time were spun the threads that stretch forward to this very moment. Take anything in the now, and if you have the eyes to follow it, it can lead you all the way back to the beginning.

  “But that’s a bit too far for our purposes, so let’s just say that the beginning in this case was the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, which was a great event to which most of the gods were invited. Most, but not all—for one goddess, Eris by name, was not invited.”

  “Why did they leave her out?” asked Clarice.

  Ms. Priest tilted her head. “Eris was the goddess of discord, and so brought strife wherever she went. And who wants discord at a wedding? But discord came, anyway. Angered at being left out, Eris made her presence known by tossing a golden apple labeled ‘For the Fairest’ into the midst of the party.”

  “That sounds like she was being nice,” said Byron.

  “Not really. There was only one apple, and many goddesses, and naturally each of them wanted to be seen as the most beautiful of all. In the end, it came down to three main claimants: Hera, queen of the gods; Athena, goddess of wisdom; and Aphrodite, goddess of love.”

  “I thought Venus was the goddess of love!” said Clarice, who was very proud of living in Venus Harbor.

  “The gods and goddesses have gone by many names,” said Ms. Priest. “The Greeks called the goddess of love Aphrodite; the Romans named her Venus. Yet both groups told many of the same stories about her. Anyway, after a period of quarreling, the three goddesses asked Zeus—he was the king of the gods—to choose who should receive the apple. But Zeus was far too smart for that; he knew that in choosing he would please one goddess but anger the other two so deeply that they would make his life an ongoing misery. Finally he convinced them to ask a mortal to judge. They decided on a lad named Paris, a prince of Troy who was at that time living as a shepherd. Unfortunately, the goddesses were not content to let the lad c
hoose on his own. So each of them tried to bribe him.”

  “They’re not very well behaved for goddesses,” observed Margaret.

  “All too human, in their way,” agreed Ms. Priest. “Now, Hera would have given the young man great wealth, and Athena promised victory in any battle—for that as well as wisdom was in her power. But those things paled next to the offer of Aphrodite, who said that if Paris picked her, she would provide him with the most beautiful woman on Earth to be his wife. Not surprisingly for a young man, Paris declared Aphrodite the winner. And the goddess, true to her bargain, arranged for Paris to wed Helen, the most beautiful woman on Earth.” Ms. Priest paused, raised an eyebrow, then said, “Both of them ignored, for the time being, the fact that Helen was already married to the king of Sparta.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Byron.

  “Indeed,” said Ms. Priest. “After Paris had stolen Helen from her home, Helen’s husband raised a fleet of a thousand ships to attack Troy, the walled city where Paris had taken his new wife. The war between the Greeks and the Trojans raged for ten years—and ended with the total destruction of what had been the greatest city in the world.”

  “All for love,” said Mr. Dove sadly.

  “Or what passed for love,” said Ms. Priest, her voice a bit more tart than usual.

  “Then all for eros,” said Mr. Dove.

  “Eros? I thought it was Eris who caused all the trouble,” said Juliet. She was slightly confused because her father was usually very precise about words.

  Ms. Priest smiled. “Eris was the goddess of discord. Eros is the word the Greeks used for romantic love—and also for the god who handled that particular matter, who happened to be Aphrodite’s son. Given the amount of discord caused by romantic love, I’ve always thought it somewhat amusing that the name Eris and the word eros are so similar.”

  “They say that the more important something is to a culture, the more words the people have for it,” said Mr. Dove. “I’ve always wondered what it says about us that we have only one word for love.”

  “How many did the Greeks have?” asked Juliet.

  “Well, there was eros, for romantic love,” said Ms. Priest. “And philia, which was brotherly love.”

  Juliet and Byron looked at each other and both made a face.

  “That’s where Philadelphia gets its name,” said Margaret, sounding superior. “It’s the city of brotherly love.”

  Mr. Dove beamed at his oldest daughter.

  “But the highest form of love was called agapé” said Ms. Priest, “the selfless love of one person for another. This is not the love that desires to possess, but the love that comes from an open heart and desires the greatest good for others.” She looked a little sad when she added, “Maybe the reason we don’t have a separate word for such love is that it is so rare in our modern world. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. Maybe the reason we’re always so confused about love is that we don’t have the proper words to discuss it in all its forms.”

  She sighed and stood. “Well, we can’t cure that now. I just came to bring you this book, Juliet. It has considerably more detail about the Trojan War—and some other things you might find of interest.” She seemed to put a great deal of emphasis on these last words, and she looked Juliet directly in the eye as she pressed the little volume into her hands. “It’s worth reading,” she said, her voice soft but insistent. Then she turned quickly away and said her good nights to the rest of the family.

  “Boy, how do you rate?” asked Margaret, after Ms. Priest was gone. “Personal book delivery! I wish I could get that kind of service when I’m doing a research paper.”

  “If you’d start your papers on time, you wouldn’t need that kind of service,” said Mr. Dove, who lived in a permanent state of semi-annoyance at the fact that his oldest daughter was the kind of student who would drive him mad if she were in one of the classes he taught. “Come on, help me do some more work on that floor.”

  Juliet excused herself and headed for her room, hoping desperately that Ms. Priest’s book might hold the secret for freeing her from the amulet.

  NINE

  The Other Realm

  “Well, it’s about time you got back here,” said Jerome, when she walked in. “We were starting to worry about you.”

  Both the rats were sitting on Juliet’s pillow—which made her glad that she had actually made the bed that morning, since it meant the pillow was covered by the bedspread.

  Roxanne gave Jerome a nudge. “For heaven’s sake, don’t be such a nag, Jerome. She was just downstairs with her family. Weren’t you, Juliet?”

  “Yeah, and she brought some of ’em back with her,” said Jerome, pointing to the door.

  Turning, Juliet saw that Byron and Clarice had followed her upstairs.

  “We want to know what’s in the book, too,” said Byron.

  Juliet sighed, then smiled. “All right, come on in.”

  Soon Byron and Clarice were sitting side by side on her bed. With Roxanne and Jerome still crouched together on the pillow, Juliet felt almost as if she were on stage—not a feeling she particularly enjoyed. Positioning her desk chair so that she was facing them, she sat down and looked at the book. Three or four slips of paper protruded from its upper edge. She assumed they were simply bookmarks, until she opened to the first one and saw that it was actually a note from Ms. Priest.

  The other thing she saw at the same moment—a thing considerably more startling—was that the book itself was written by hand. The writing was neat and precise, so it was easy enough to read. At first she wondered if it was someone’s journal. But when she turned to the front, it had a regular title page—though no copyright page.

  The title page read:

  TALES OF THE GODS

  A History Beyond the Myths

  by S. H. Elives

  Someone must have copied it over for him, she thought. His handwriting isn’t nearly this good.

  After slipping another piece of paper into the spot that had been marked by Ms. Priest, Juliet read the note.

  Dear Juliet,

  I was interested—and disturbed—by your visit to the library this afternoon. I spent much of the rest of the day trying to find the information you need. After consultation with Mr. Elives, and scouring my own shelves, I have come to the conclusion that the amulet you are wearing originally belonged to Helen of Troy.

  If I am correct, this is an enormously powerful object, capable of causing considerable chaos—as I suspect you have already begun to realize. Mr. Elives and I are both seeking more information. In the meantime it seems that powers we once thought to be gone, or at least at rest, have caught you in their web. I have marked some sections of this book. I suggest you read them carefully.

  Very truly yours,

  Hyacinth Priest

  “What does it say?” demanded Byron.

  Juliet read the note aloud. Roxanne and Jerome glanced at each other. “This is getting weirder by the hour,” muttered Jerome.

  Juliet began to check through the book. The first section Ms. Priest had marked told more about the Trojan War. She read it out loud, so that they could all hear it, but though the story was interesting, she didn’t think there was anything in it that applied to the current situation.

  The second section was another matter. The page was labeled “Where Have the Old Gods Gone?” and Ms. Priest had marked a certain paragraph for special attention.

  Now, the time came when the world turned from the old powers, who had gone by many names in many places. Thus ignored, these old ones began to retire to their own world, and in time those who had been called gods fell into a kind of sleep—a dream from which they only roused upon occasion. All, that is, save she who had been known as Eris, for she remained fascinated by humans and the trouble that she could bring to their midst—trouble from which she drew strength, and power.

  Juliet continued to read aloud from the book until they heard Mrs. Dove coming to get Clarice for bed, at which point Roxanne and
Jerome scrambled into a desk drawer that Juliet had left open for them to hide in. Clarice resisted going to bed, but she was asleep on her mother’s shoulder before she left the room. Once they were gone, Juliet returned to reading aloud from the book. She had been reading aloud to Byron at night since he was two years old, so this was not something that aroused any attention from the rest of the family.

  By the time Mrs. Dove called Byron for bed, all four of them, kids and rats alike, knew a great deal more about the Trojan War. And they had all been startled by the behavior of the gods and goddesses involved.

  “Margaret was right,” said Byron at one point. “They don’t act very grown up for gods!”

  “I guess if you’re a goddess you don’t have to act grown up,” said Roxanne.

  “That’s a scary thought,” said Juliet, putting her hand to where the amulet lay hidden beneath her shirt. She sighed. “I hope that woman who wants to talk to me tonight will be able to help me with this.”

  “I almost forgot about that!” cried Byron. “Are you still planning to go out there?”

  “I have to. What if she knows how to get me out of this mess?”

  “Can I come with you?” pleaded Byron.

  Juliet shook her head. “ ‘Do not come until all are asleep,’” she said, quoting the letter again.

  Byron heaved a sigh. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go to sleep until I know what happens.”

  “You’d better, or nothing will happen at all,” said Jerome.

  With another sigh Byron left the room.

  The night drew on. Good nights were said. The house seemed to settle in on itself. But still, Juliet could hear her parents downstairs, listening to the late news on the television. She began to fear she would fall asleep and miss her appointment with the mysterious woman.