Her lip curled in a sneer, Athena flicks a hand at him. “Begone, Uncle. I’ve had enough of you for today. We’ll complete the ceremony without your help.”
He looks like he’s gonna object, but he must see something in Athena’s eyes that makes him think better of it. With a shrug, Hades disappears from the stage.
A serene smile on her face, Athena turns back to the crowd. “Now Amazons, let us give our full attention to Rada. It is no surprise that one of our own is the first to claim two of Zeus’s powers for herself.”
There’s polite clapping as Prisha makes her way to one of the chairs, a woman I presume to be her mentor walking alongside her.
The gods lined up at the back of the stage watch impassively as she passes them. If any of the gods gathered here are disappointed by Prisha’s loss and Rada’s win, they’re doing an excellent job of disguising it.
From the other side of the stage, Rada emerges, towering over her mentor. In the aisle, Jordan roars, then remembers himself and shifts into a human form.
“That’s my girlfriend!” he announces. “Hey, Hepa! I love you, baby!”
The mentor with Rada covers her face, apparently embarrassed. By what, I certainly don’t know. She’s cute, for sure, with girl-next-door good looks. But I wouldn’t rate her above a California four. Jordan shifts back into a panther when a few Amazons draw a bead on him for being so openly enthusiastic about Hepa. He skulks lower to the ground, where he’ll be less of a target, but his eyes never leave Rada’s mentor, and he’s openly purring.
Rada and Prisha face each other, both of them holding their heads high. Athena begins to murmur something, and at first I think the mic system must have gone out, but then I realize it’s not words…not English, anyway.
The other gods join in the chant, and a light begins to glow in Prisha’s chest. Alarmed, she looks down, her hand going to the spot. I grab Zahara’s hand, but Prisha doesn’t appear to be in any pain. As the gods’ volume grows, so does the brightness inside of her. They extend their arms, and motion to it, beckoning the light to come forward.
It travels up Prisha’s throat and into her mouth, her skull brilliantly lit like an X-ray in reverse. The gods move their hands in unison, directing the light toward Rada.
Hepa leans down and says something to Rada that makes her eyes go wide with surprise. At first, she looks worried, but Hepa puts her hands on either side of Rada’s face, and must give her some kind of mentor pep talk.
Rada nods, faces the light, and opens her mouth as widely as she can.
I notice that some of the gods’ arms are shaking with effort, as if holding Prisha’s power in a sustained manner is difficult. I can’t help but wonder what it would do to Rada if it simply went full tilt into her mouth. The light gets closer to her lips, and then it’s in her mouth and sliding down Rada’s throat. Every muscle in her body is taut, spectacularly outlined as the light settles in her chest.
The gods lessen their volume and the light begins to fade.
Everyone lets out a sigh of relief. Even Rada. Except it comes out like a thunder clap.
“Sorry,” she apologizes to the auditorium. “Sorry everybody, sorry!”
Laughter answers her, and even Prisha seems a little relieved to be free from her disobedient ability. She gives Rada a hug, and there’s another rumble, this one reverberating the entire auditorium.
“Oh gods,” I say to Zahara. “I really hope she gets that under control soon, or neither one of us is going to be getting any sleep.”
“Maybe she’ll get lucky and the next winner will be whoever is the loudest,” Zahara says, winking at me.
“Oh, Brandee Jean can get loud,” I tell her. “No special powers necessary.”
Zahara laughs, and we’re both on our feet, clapping for Rada. When she raises her arms, the auditorium goes wild for her, her fellow Amazons thrilled by her victory.
I’m happy for my roommate, I really truly am. But a small part of me can’t help but worry how that feeling might change if it were to come down to just the two of us.
All those Amazons would be behind Rada, cheering her every step of the way.
And then there’d be poor little me, who even my own mentor considers a long shot.
16
Even though I’ve been at Amazon Academy for a bit, I have yet to master my riding class. A lot of that is due to the fact that I’ve been competing for Zeus’s crown.
The few classes that I’ve attended I’ve spent on the sidelines, watching the Amazons, like Rada and Lilliana, be outright badasses. Meanwhile, I cast forlorn glances at Whiskey, while he side-eyes me like he’s secretly plotting a prison break.
Rada has a mount she’s trained since childhood, but for the purposes of the competition, that mare is sitting out while Rada trains the stallion she captured in her trial—Madathan. He’s an impressive dappled gray, and Rada keeps bragging that he’s eighteen hands. I nod and try to look impressed even though I have no idea what that means.
The riding class—Bareback Ride & Shoot—had me snickering when I saw my schedule, but the instructor—a goddess named Epona—wanted nothing to do with my jokes. When I couldn’t get Whiskey to leave the stables, she informed me that a girl with no horse was not welcome in her class, and neither was my sense of humor.
The next class, I dragged him out of the stable (quite literally—he refused to move his legs), leaving ruts that looked like someone had taken an ATV to Epona’s immaculate equestrian field.
My last few attempts in class have not impressed her, either. Even though Rada told me we should train our mounts to a saddle for the purposes of the competition, the first time I’d carried one out to the field, Epona actually gave me a welt across the cheek with her riding crop.
I went after her, ready to pull Epona off her horse by her big, blonde braids, but Rada held me back, whispering urgently into my ear a reminder that this is a bareback riding class, which means no saddles. Later in our room, she explained that in general Epona likes horses better than people, but she really hates anyone who misuses a horse. And she definitely hates me because of how messed up Whiskey is. You’d think maybe the lady could focus her ire on Artemis, who decided to make bagging a horse part of the competition. But no, I’m the bad guy. And so I find myself at the top of yet another god’s shit list.
The welt faded, but the damage to my pride remained, like the time that Prissy Highbanks lined my Diva cup with Icy Hot. I’d made it through my tap routine in record time, but the burn lingered.
Today the rest of the Amazons in Epona’s class are exhibiting how very well they can do exactly what the name of the class implies—ride bareback while shooting their bows. It’s astonishing. Rada wraps her long legs around Madathan, muscles tightly defined as she swings low, hiding most of her body behind his as he gallops past the target. I can barely see her red hair skimming the ground as she releases an arrow from under the crook of Madathan’s neck. It whistles through the air and then lands with a thunk in the center of the target’s bullseye.
“Nice,” Lilliana says, admiration in her voice as she brings her own mount—a white mare—into the ring. “Rada will send these napos back to where they come from in no time.”
“What’s napos?” I ask Zahara, under my breath.
She pretends to think for a second—something she does as a special favor to me, since she knows how much it freaks me out every time she can just instantly recall the answer to just about anything, with the gift of Zeus’s knowledge.
“It’s Greek for shit head,” she tells me.
“Hey, we’re not all napos,” I shout back at Lilliana. “Trevor is the only one Zahara slammed a doot on.”
It’s not the right thing to say. Pretty much me saying any words at all to Lilliana immediately make them not the right ones, because she circles her mount back around to where I and the rest of the contestants are standing with our horses, most of them still too skittish to be ridden. I silently swear at myself for drawing her
attention.
Like Mama always said, if you can’t keep your legs shut, at least keep your mouth shut.
But it’s too late now. Lilliana is eyeing me and Zahara, as Rada circles back around the other side of the ring, her brow furrowed as she watches her fellow Amazon.
“So,” Lilliana says. “You can run your mouth, but not your horse. That about right?”
There’s a smattering of giggles, the loudest coming from Sophia, who has been feeding her horse sugar cubes since she caught him. He nuzzles her snazzy riding jacket, looking for more.
“I can run my horse just fine, thank you very much,” I sniff at Lilliana. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with Whiskey,” I insist, walking my fingers up his snout, and emphasizing his name with an affectionate tap between his eyes.
He falls over into a dead faint.
Laughter rises all around me, mostly from my fellow contestants—I easily pick out Sophia’s and Trevor’s among them. But Alaric frowns, his eyebrows coming together in a little peak above his nose. He probably has more money riding on me for the next trial and is now doubting the wisdom of that choice.
Well, he can kiss my hair-sprayed ass. And everyone else in this paddock, too. Without thinking, I square my shoulders and grab Lilliana’s reins just as she’s about to ride away.
“I challenge you to a race!”
“You what?” Lilliana asked, her eyes wide. “Are you serious, napos?”
“Oh I’m dead serious, napos-eater,” I say, which technically translates as shithead-eater, but it must sound good enough because everyone around us goes, “Oooooooooo.”
“Very well,” Lilliana tosses her hair, unconcerned. But she should be. She is in desperate need of a hot oil treatment. “Shall we?”
She nods her head toward the track, and I agree with a tilt of my own head. Rada slips off her horse, landing next to Whiskey, who is still out cold on the ground.
“BJ, are you insane?” she asks. “You’ve never even sat on Whiskey… and I think he might be dead.”
“Oh, he’s not dead,” I say, giving him a casual nudge with my toe. “He’s taking a nap.”
Alaric joins us, his serious gaze following the rest of the crowd as they head toward the track, most of them cheering Lilliana, and a few looking back at me to see if I’ll follow.
“How about if we all participate?” Alaric suggests. “Might be good for the rest of us to get a taste of what it’s like.”
Easy for him to say. He already sits his horse like he was born in a saddle…which, come to think of it, he might have been. I’m sure his family’s English estate probably has all kinds of things like flowers and ponds and geese and horses that don’t fall down when you tap their heads.
“Go ahead,” I say, trying not to be jealous when Zahara and Malik easily swing up onto their own mounts, guiding them toward the track. “I’ll catch up.”
I say the last thing like it might be a real possibility, but the truth is that I have to manually get Whiskey to his feet, which involves a lot of propping and relying on gravity and physics to get him on all fours. Once that’s done, he just kind of side-eyes me, like he’s hoping I’ll forget that he exists. Which is not going to happen.
He exists. I exist. And the two of us need to become one if we’re going to not look like absolute napos.
“Okay, Whiskey,” I tell him. “I’m going to get onto your back now, and you’re going to let me.”
Sounds simple enough, but without the saddle I don’t have a stirrup, so I just have to get my leg as high as it’ll go, which is not a problem. Brandee Jean Mason did not win the Straight Razors and Straighter Women contest three years in a row with a pair of stubby little nub grinders underneath her.
Once I’m on Whiskey, I start to feel a little better. He’s a big fella and I can see far from up here…too bad the first thing in my line of sight is the track, where everyone is waiting on me to start the race.
And also too bad that I don’t know how to make Whiskey go over there. I kick him a few times in the ribs, which only makes him shudder. I slap his bum a couple times but there’s no response. Guess he’s not into that type of horseplay.
I try everything I’ve watched the Amazons do to make their mounts go, and none of it is working.
It reminds me of Chessy Jamison, a girl from the All-Midwest A-Cups Extravaganza. It was supposed to be for the less endowed, and technically as a C-cup, I wasn’t eligible. But Mom made me not drink anything for three days and then Saran-Wrapped my chest, squeezing me in at the last minute. Chessy, on the other hand, was an all-out A. And by that I mean there was no chance of anything falling out. She was so flat-chested she went without a shirt at the pool all through seventh grade. With her pixie cut, nobody knew any better until they spotted her tampon string one time.
Regardless, Chessy should’ve had Miss A-Cup all wrapped up. But she balked—and hard—during the talent portion. They announced her name twice, but Chessy refused to take the stage. Her mom showed up behind the curtain and told her she’d better haul ass or she’d make her haul ass.
Chessy had this whole Victor/Victoria act that really played up her androgynous look. But in the All Midwest A-Cup Extravaganza, she wasn’t the only girl who could sometimes pass for a boy, and as luck would have it, the contestant before her did a number from the exact same show. She did it better than Chessy too. The crowd went wild. Some of the fathers actually woke up enough to clap.
Absolutely panicked at the idea of doing the same thing, but worse, Chessy had frozen. Gone dead still, just like Whiskey.
Until her mom gave her a wet willy.
She’d popped her finger in her mouth, slicked it up good, and just jammed it right into Chessy’s ear. The girl had gone onstage like it was the only place on Earth she wanted to be.
“Alright, Whiskey,” I say to the immobile horse underneath me. “It’s like Mama always says, sometimes you gotta stick your fingers places you’d rather not.” And I spit on my fingers, and dig them into his ears.
The reaction is immediate, and impressive.
Whiskey takes off like a bolt, all of the muscle underneath me bursting forward with a speed that would have thrown me off if I didn’t have my fingers buried so deep. It’s useful for steering too, so I point him towards the track. The assembled crowd scatters, and Lilliana screams, “Are we starting?” as I fly past her.
I have time to yell back, “Yes!” But that’s about it.
I’m being thrown about like a rag doll with half her stuffing, and it takes all I’ve got to catch my breath. We round the first bend before I figure out that I’m clenching my legs too tightly. With the power of Zeus in every part of me, Whiskey is starting to flag because I’m cutting off his oxygen. I release a little, and he rewards me with a burst of speed, his mane flying into my mouth as all the careful braids I put into it fall apart under the breakneck pace.
I bend low over Whiskey’s neck, like I’ve seen Rada do, and peek under my arm to see if anyone is behind me. There’s a cloud of dust that we’ve kicked up, and only one shadow breaking through it. Only one rider even close to me. They break through the cloud and I see that it’s Sophia, her eyes bright despite the dirt.
“Napos,” I say under my breath as we clear the second turn, more riders gaining on us.
I got Whiskey to take off by giving him a wet willy, but I don’t know how to tell him to keep going, or to speed up. And suddenly, I realize why that is. I’ve got my fingers buried so deep in his ears, he has no idea what I want from him. I pull one out. It comes free with a horrible popping noise I’d rather not think about, but I lean closer to his neck, my mouth near his ear.
“Hey Whiskey,” I say. “If we win, I’ll get off you.”
His speed doubles like I’d just given him fresh batteries. We break through the finish line with no one even near us, Epona standing watch to mark me as the winner.
But I don’t have time to relish the victory. I promised Whiskey something, and he wants it
. We come to hard stop right away, and I go sailing over his head, rolling ass over ankles.
Still. We won. I get up before anyone else finishes, and go to Whiskey, cradling his head in my arms.
“Good boy,” I tell him. “You’re a really good boy.”
He nods his head, like maybe he agrees, and maybe we’ve reached an understanding.
Epona walks over, eyeing us like we’re something she found at the bottom of a thousand-year-old manure pile.
“Very good,” she says, eyeing me up and down.
“Thank you,” I say, shaking dirt from my hair. “Guess I’m not so bad at this after all.”
She sniffs. “The class is not only Bareback Ride,” she reminds me. “It is Bareback Ride & Shoot. You can do only one of the two things. I would say this gives you a solid C.”
I nod happily, pleased with that result.
But as I walk away, I remember what Harpocrates said about trying not to lose not being the same as winning. It also occurs to me that if I somehow win this thing, the Amazons are not gonna accept anyone who got a C in riding and shooting.
With a sigh, I turn back to Epona. “So is there any way I could get that grade up with some extra credit?”
17
I feel like Whiskey and I have reached an understanding, and my good mood follows me the next morning when the remaining contestants gather before a field of corn for the next trial. No, not a field, I realize after a moment.
It’s a maze.
I adjust my pink camo hoodie and change my high heels into silver sparkly sneakers instead. I mean, I can traverse a maze in heels and look fierce while doing it, but when given the option, I might as well be stylish and comfy.
I hum a little as I spot shine one of the sequins. Good outfit. Good mood.
I think this is gonna be my day to shine.
“You’re perky,” Rada says.
“Corn,” I tell her, sweeping my arms out to encompass the maze in front of us. “You could not put a Wisconsin girl in a more natural habitat. The rest of you might as well quit and go home now. I got this one.”
Amazon Princess Page 13
