Cassandra the Lucky

by Joan Holub

  “The war is over,” said Medusa. She’d slipped on her stoneglasses, Athena saw. Otherwise Homer and the artist would’ve turned to stone. Because that’s what happened when mortals dared to gaze at her.

  Homer eyed the dozen snakes wriggling around on top of Medusa’s head and took a step backward. “I know that. I was just suggesting a re-enactment to illustrate the article in Teen Scrollazine. Good advertising, you know? Mr. Dolos, my publicist, said that some dramatic images in the article would showcase me and my scrollbook.”

  At the name of his publicist, Medusa’s eyes and those of all twelve of her snakes narrowed. Mr. Dolos was also the owner of Be a Hero, of course. He was a wily promoter of people and products. And for a short time a while back, he’d tricked Medusa into letting him put a scary-looking version of her head on some shields he’d sold in his store in the Immortal Marketplace.

  “Hey! What’s happening?” Poseidon demanded suddenly. His eyes were on the game board.

  Athena checked it just in time to see a line of sheep running out of Polyphemus’s cave. But where was her hero?

  “Look! Odysseus and his soldiers tied themselves to the bellies of those sheep to sneak out of Mr. Cyclops’s brother’s cave. How clever!” she heard someone say.

  Hooray! Odysseus had followed her whispered instructions, Athena realized. He and his men had escaped the cave by clinging to the undersides of Polyphemus’s sheep as the woolly creatures had trotted outside to graze on the hillsides. Unfortunately, Polyphemus was right behind them. And, even worse, Odysseus had apparently decided to steal the sheep. Argh! She hadn’t advised him to do that!

  As Odysseus and his men sailed away, he shouted to Polyphemus, “Don’t forget what I told you. My name is ‘Nobody’!”

  Polyphemus gnashed his teeth. Then he called to his giant Cyclops friends for help. “Nobody stole my food! And now he’s sailing away with my sheep!” he told them.

  His friends just laughed. Because, in their opinions, if nobody had stolen Polyphemus’s food and his sheep, then what was his problem? Odysseus and his twelve ships made a clean getaway from the island.

  By now Zeus was booming with laughter. He always enjoyed a good joke. Athena couldn’t help grinning too. She was pretty sure she and her hero had won that round against Poseidon. She felt proud of Odysseus for thinking of that Nobody trick all by himself. He must have guessed that when the Cyclops called for help to defeat Nobody, he’d sound silly and his friends would simply ignore him. He’d been right! Smarts like that were what made her hero, well, a hero!

  Homer had been watching the whole thing. “Awesome escape plan! Was it yours?” he said, looking at Athena with admiration. She nodded.

  “What a scoop! Hold still, you three,” the artist instructed Athena, Homer, and Zeus. Zeus immediately stopped laughing and did his muscle pose again. “Mortals will go wild to see all this action,” the artist proclaimed as he sketched. “Everyone has always wondered what this game board looked like and how it works.” Swiftly he did a drawing of the trio in front of the Hero-ology game board.

  Just as the sketch was finished, a gleeful expression came over Homer’s face and he looked at Athena. “I just got a scrolltastic idea for my next scrollbook. I’m going to follow you around from now on and write about Odysseus’s adventures on his way home to Ithaca!”

  Seeing Zeus’s raised eyebrows, Homer quickly added, “With Zeus’s permission, of course.”

  “Great idea!” the artist whooped. “This’ll be fantastic publicity for your book signing too. So, tell me, what will you title the new scrollbook, Homer?” He paused, his quill pen poised to quote the author’s reply.

  “I know!” Zeus exclaimed before Homer could speak. “How about Zeus on the Loose: The King of the Gods and Ruler of the Heavens Saves the Day. Or maybe Zeus’s and Odysseus’s Excellent Adventure. Or just Odyssey Goes . . . um . . .” He paused, considering how to finish.

  Everyone stared. He’d misspoken Odysseus’s name in the third, incomplete title. And they all knew Zeus hadn’t really been on  the adventure with Odysseus, so putting his name in the first two titles was a little misleading.

  Thinking fast, Athena jumped on that last error. “Odyssey?  That’s perfect, Dad! You just tweaked my hero’s name to make up a new word that means ‘trip’ or ‘journey,’ right? You’re suggesting that Homer could call his sequel The Odyssey?” She sent a meaningful glance toward the other students. “Has a ring to it, don’t you think?”

  They must’ve caught on that she was trying to smooth over the awkward moment, because they began nodding and smiling. A few even cheered.

  “But—” Homer began.

  Catching his eye, Athena shook her head in warning. Wasn’t it better to accept this title than to be stuck with the earlier ones Zeus had suggested?

  Homer took the hint. “Um, yeah, it’s catchy . . . I guess.”

  A broad smile crossed Zeus’s face, and he clapped a hand on the author’s back. “Thanks, Homie!”

  “Ow!” Homer yelped when Zeus’s electricity zapped him. But then, seeing that the artist had begun sketching the two of them together, Homer managed a weak but toothy smile.

  Just then the lyrebell rang, signaling the end of first period. Athena sent Odysseus a last look of concern. He could still get in plenty of trouble before class tomorrow. But she couldn’t stay here and hero-sit him all day. She had to get to her other classes!

  Once Athena, Apollo, and Aphrodite left the classroom together, Aphrodite dashed off for her dorm room up on the fourth floor. “I’m going to change out of this hideous outfit,” she called with a wave. “See you later!”

  Persephone and Artemis came down the hall toward Athena just as she and Apollo reached her locker, and they all stopped to chat. Athena’s hand brushed the skirt of her chiton, and she felt something in her pocket. She reached in, found Medusa’s fortune, and read it again. She’d stuck it in there earlier, when she’d been in a hurry to help her hero and had forgotten to give the slip back to Medusa.

  Now she frowned at it. Hadn’t it said something different before? “Hey, look at Medusa’s cookie fortune,” she told the others. “Before, it said, ‘Nobody will make you giggle.’ Now it says, ‘Somebody will make you giggle.’ ”

  “Huh?” Her three companions crowded around to read it together.

  “Are you sure you and Medusa just didn’t misread it at first?” asked Artemis.

  “I don’t think so,” said Athena.

  “You know, I’m not sure I believe in prophecies all that much,” Persephone commented.

  “Excuse me?” Apollo said in a teasing voice. “I’m trying not to be insulted by that statement.”

  She grinned at him. “I believe in your prophecies, of course! I only meant the ones in those fortune cookies we got. Mine was so blah. And it brought me bad luck.” She pulled the fortune out of her scrollbag and read: “ ‘Your green thumb will not turn brown.’ ”

  “What? Let me see,” asked Athena. Persephone held out her fortune so Athena could read it for herself. It did say that. “That’s weird. I thought it said your thumb would  turn brown.”

  Persephone cocked her head. “You know, that’s what I thought at first. And it did turn brown in a way. I accidentally killed some poor unsuspecting zinnias this morning before class.”

  This was getting even weirder! thought Athena.

  “I don’t believe in those cookie fortunes either,” Artemis said. “Remember mine said I would hit every target? It was wrong. I missed five in a row yesterday for the first time in my life! I think those fortunes brought bad luck too.”

  Apollo’s eyes rounded. “What are you talking about? I saw your fortune. It said you’d miss  five targets.”

  “Oh, really?” Artemis dug around in her quiver. She pulled out a torn textscroll, some arrows, a dog leash, and a broken quill pen. Finally she found her crumpled fortune and handed it to him.

  Athena peered over his shoulder. “Ye gods! W
hoa! She’s right! It does say she’ll hit every target. Wait, I put my fortune and Aphrodite’s in my scrollbag, I think.” She pulled two slips of papyrus from her bag and scanned them. Her eyes were wide as she handed one to Apollo.

  He read it aloud. “Aphrodite’s says, ‘You have great fashion sense.’ ”

  “See what I mean?” Persephone put in. “Blah. Because everybody knows that about her.”

  “So what does yours say?” Artemis asked Athena.

  “ ‘An owl, of course,’ ” Athena admitted.

  Her three friends stared at her. Goose bumps rose on Athena’s arms. What was going on here?

  “I guess you must’ve misread it the first time when you thought it said, ‘A horse, of course,’ Persephone mused slowly.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Athena heard herself say. For some reason she suddenly actually believed that to be the case! “Those cookie fortunes got it all wrong. Strange. Usually they’re pretty accurate.”

  “Did you notice what’s on the back of this, besides the drawing, I mean?” Apollo held up Medusa’s fortune and pointed at the name scrawled at the bottom of it. “It says, ‘Cassandra.’ And it’s printed on papyrus letterhead with the Oracle-O Bakery logo.”

  “That shop is in the Immortal Marketplace,” said Artemis.

  “Maybe we should go there and investigate,” Athena suggested. “Find out who this Cassandra is and why she’s sending us these crazy fortunes!”

  5

  The Oracle-O Bakery

  Cassandra

  AS SOON AS CASSANDRA WALKED downstairs from her bedroom to work in the bakery Saturday morning, she saw it. The big half-built carousel beyond the bakery’s front door that hadn’t been there the night before. It was pretty hard to miss, since it stood right in the middle of the IM’s atrium.

  The carousel was twenty feet tall and its platform was three rows wide, with the highest row toward its center. But it wasn’t painted or decorated yet, and there weren’t any animals or chariots to ride.

  Helenus shook his head. “Whoa! I didn’t see this coming.”

  Cassandra hesitated. She had foreseen it. She’d even put the idea for the carousel into a fortune for Zeus. But Helenus didn’t know anything about that. She and Andromache hadn’t known how Homer and the carousel fit together when Cassandra had written her fortunes either.

  “Well, even the very best of oracles can’t know everything ahead of time,” she told her brother. Though she was annoyed that everyone thought his prophecies were way better than hers, that wasn’t his fault, so she tried not to be mean about it. “It’s pretty much random what parts of the future can be seen.”

  “True,” Helenus agreed readily.

  Laodice had been behind the counter, ready for the store’s first customers. But now she moved to just inside the glass door, craning her neck to see what was going on outside. “Look! Mom’s out there. With Zeus!” she announced in an excited voice. It wasn’t every day the King of the Gods and Ruler of the Heavens came to the IM.

  Cassandra went to the storefront window and studied the big crowd that had gathered around the carousel. “Why is he hanging out with Mom?”

  “And who’s that mortal guy with spiky blue hair talking to Zeus and her?” Helenus asked. Before anyone could guess, Helenus noticed something that interested him even more. “Hey! There’s Ares—the godboy of war! Awesome.” He took off to go talk to him.

  “Ooh!” said Laodice. “And that hunky Poseidon’s out there too! And Heracles and Pan! They’re all even cuter than their pictures in Teen Scrollazine,” she said, sounding thrilled. She raced back to the counter, grabbed the hand mirror she kept underneath it, and primped her hair. After checking her makeup, too, she made a dash for the door like their brother just had.

  Cassandra went after her, planning to follow. She wanted to know exactly what was going on. But as the two girls pushed out into the atrium, Laodice exclaimed, “Wow, look! Those four mega-popular goddessgirls are here too!”

  Cassandra froze. She could see the goddessgirls now. Athena, Aphrodite, Persephone, and Artemis were easy to spot. Even among a crowd of other amazing immortals, they stood out. They were fantastically beautiful! Zeus’s wedding had been so busy that she hadn’t gotten to talk to them. And even though she had often imagined telling Athena and Aphrodite how mad she was at them if she got the chance, she suddenly panicked. She wasn’t up for a confrontation right now.

  Her heart started beating faster. They must not  see her! Quickly she ducked back inside the shop and dropped to a crouch, out of view behind the shelf of cookies just inside the front door. Then she peeked up over the shelf to survey the mob around the carousel while she tried to calm herself. It wasn’t unusual for immortals to come here to the IM. But she’d never seen this many at once.

  As Cassandra watched the four goddessgirls, Persephone wandered off to talk to a boy. She couldn’t see his face from the bakery, but it was probably Hades. The rumor was that they liked each other.

  All of a sudden, Athena turned her head in the store’s direction. The big Oracle-O Bakery sign painted on the front window seemed to have caught her eye. She nudged Aphrodite and Artemis, who were on either side of her, and then pointed at the bakery. The girls looked toward it and then over at Zeus. Seeming to decide they wouldn’t be needed for a while, they headed for the store.

  “Yikes!” Cassandra almost had a heart attack. Staying hunkered down so they wouldn’t notice her, she began backing away from the door. It had been one thing to send troublemaking fortunes to them and to gossip about them with her friend Andromache. The possibility of actually having to face them after what she’d done made her feel a little embarrassed and scared.

  Had they guessed that she’d sent the fortunes? Were they mad? Had they come here to pay her back? Would they rat her out to Zeus? He could obliterate the entire IM with a thunderbolt if he wanted to.

  When the bell on the door tinkled, Cassandra ducked behind the store check-out counter to hide. She scrunched down to sit on the floor, wrapping both arms around her bent knees. Maybe the goddessgirls would just go away if no one came to help them. As they came inside, she listened to them talking among themselves.

  “Mmm,” one of them said. “This  store  smells  sooo good.”

  “If I worked in a bakery, I’d be as big as the Academy because I wouldn’t be able to resist sampling all these sweets,” said another of the goddessgirls.

  “My dogs would go crazy in here,” said a third voice, which had to be Artemis’s. Everyone knew she had three hounds that she adored.

  “Hello?” one of them called out in a loud voice. “Anyone here?”

  The bell on the door tinkled again as someone new came into the store.

  “Welcome!” said two familiar voices, one high and one low. Laodice and Helenus! They must’ve seen the goddessgirls heading for the store and followed them in, Cassandra realized.

  “We’re looking for the fortune-teller. The one who puts fortunes into your cookies, I mean,” said one of the goddessgirls. Cassandra’s intuition, which was almost as good as her fortune-telling skills, told her that it was probably Athena.

  “I do all the Oracle-O fortunes,” Helenus told them, sounding thrilled to meet the goddesses.

  “Oh! Well, we’re looking for someone named Cassandra, though,” Athena went on. “Because we got these fortunes.”

  Cassandra peeked out around the edge of the counter a little and saw Athena show him a small slip of papyrus. Helenus and Laodice frowned at it.

  “Where did you get this?” Helenus demanded, sounding upset now.

  “Only the spoken fortunes are meant to go to Mount Olympus Academy,” Laodice added. “Written fortunes go to Earth. There must’ve been some mix-up.”

  “So no one named Cassandra works here?” a goddessgirl with beautiful blue eyes and golden hair asked. Aphrodite, Cassandra figured.

  Just then Laodice came over to the counter. She almost tripped ov
er Cassandra as she went to step behind it. “What are you doing down there?” she exclaimed.

  “Shhh,” hissed Cassandra, putting a finger to her lips. But it was too late.

  Suddenly a girl with long, wavy brown hair leaned over the counter to see what Laodice was looking at. It was Athena. Her skin glittered softly as her intelligent blue-gray eyes studied Cassandra. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” Cassandra replied in a squeaky voice. She uncurled and jumped to her feet. “Were you looking for me? I’m Cassandra.” Then she added, “I was just getting a box.” Reaching down, she grabbed an empty cookie box at random from some shelves behind the counter and then set it on the countertop so she wouldn’t look like a liar.

  “Did you write these?” asked Athena. She held out three of the papyrus slips that Cassandra had put into the cookies she’d given Hermes two days ago to take to MOA. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But now Cassandra wasn’t so sure. Although, Athena looked more puzzled than angry.

  Cassandra nodded. She gave the fortunes a cursory glance, her mouth twisting when she saw the words on them. Of course the fortunes had changed from the way she’d originally written them. Because of the curse, any fortune she wrote down changed after it was pulled from a cookie and read. It could take only minutes or as long as a day, but eventually her words would rearrange themselves to make her appear a liar. Or at least a bad fortune-teller!

  Even if she put a spoken fortune into a cookie like Helenus did, within a day after the cookie was opened and its fortune spoken, the recipient would remember her words all wrong.

  “I’m really sorry for any trouble or anguish those fortunes may have caused,” Laodice told Athena, looking worried. “Please accept our apologies.”

  Cassandra knew that what she had done could reflect badly on the store, and now she wished she’d never done it. Andromache claimed that immortals lived to make life difficult for mortals. What would her family do if they didn’t have the store? Immortals had the power to take what little mortals had completely away from them. They could do anything they wanted!