Completely Smitten

by Kristine Grayson

  “He said I should come back when I was twenty-five. By then I would know what kind of troubles I faced and we’d deal with them.”

  “Have you gone back?” Atropos asked.

  Darius shook his head. “I was thinking of going after the Olympics. But I’ve been busy.”

  “He’s been unsupervised,” Clotho said.

  “He is young,” Lachesis said.

  “He does not know the law,” Atropos said.

  “And he’s standing before you,” Darius said. “Can we include me in this conversation?”

  “Still, he has no discipline,” Clotho said.

  “He has no respect for traditions,” Lachesis said.

  “He has done more than any other to destroy loving relationships,” Atropos said.

  “Probably because he has not had one himself,” Clotho said.

  “Hey!” Darius said. “I have family.”

  “Loving family?” Lachesis asked.

  Darius frowned. He hadn’t seen his family since he was ten. That was when he had been sent to Athens to apprentice to an older mage. That mage had been Bacchus, who had left him on his own until he came into his powers, then gave the lessons that he had just described to the Fates.

  “He cannot answer,” Atropos said. “He does not know.”

  Clotho sighed and shrank to her normal size. “Standard judgments might be inappropriate here.”

  Lachesis shrank too. “I did like the idea of tying him to a tree and shooting him with arrows for a thousand years.”

  Atropos smiled. It was not a nice smile, especially at three times normal size. “And having him pluck the arrows out before the shots could be fired again.”

  “Such a punishment will only push him farther into darkness,” Clotho said. “Right now, his actions can be attributed to ignorance and a need for attention.”

  Darius didn’t say anything. For the first time since he’d been spelled to this place, he was worried. He hadn’t thought they could do much to him, but this talk of thousand-year punishments was beginning to upset him.

  “No one has taught him appropriate behavior,” Lachesis said.

  “Perhaps we should tie Bacchus to a tree,” Atropos finally shrank to her normal size.

  “I think all we need to do with him is deny him wine for the next millennium,” Clotho said. “That will be punishment enough.”

  “But what of Darius?” Lachesis asked.

  “He needs to learn the true nature of love,” Atropos said.

  All three Fates stared at him. The hair on the back of Darius’s neck rose. “I’ll learn. I promise. You can teach me anything.”

  The women smiled in unison. It was a very unsettling look.

  “Don’t worry,” Clotho said. “When we’re through with you, you’ll know more about love than anyone else in the world.”

  “Why does that sound like a threat?” Darius asked.

  Lachesis put her hands on his shoulders. “Because,” she said gently, “it is.”

  THE AGING, ANNOYING GOD OF LOVE

  (Last Year)

  TWO

  ARIEL SUMMERS SHOULD have heeded the warnings. Every portent had shown that this trip was going to be strange.

  She wasn’t superstitious, not really. Sure, she had her rituals before every race, just like other athletes she had met. Some athletes kissed their religious medals; others carried a lucky rabbit’s foot; still others recited a little mantra or prayer.

  Ariel laid out her transition equipment in a very special way—shoes first, then bike, then shirt—and she always put on her swimming cap exactly fifteen minutes before the swimming portion of the race started, no matter how hot it was. She painted on her own numbers, starting with the right leg, and never let anyone else pin her singlet to her shirt.

  Rituals were important because they told her body that it was about to participate in a triathlon, and it helped her mental preparedness. It had nothing to do with superstition. She really didn’t believe that because she forgot to put on her cap at the right time on the day of the Ironman Canada, she had been doomed. It had only been coincidence that she had torn her rotator cuff. It had nothing to do with failing to follow her rituals.

  Nothing at all.

  But she couldn’t help feeling a little odd about this hike into the Idaho’s River of No Return Wilderness Area. First of all, there was the name: the River of No Return. Part of her worried that it was prophetic.

  Then there was that incident with the park ranger as she headed onto the trail. Usually trailheads in areas this remote were unguarded. A hiker signed in and then was left on her own. The little sign-in box was miles from anything or anyone. Often there wasn’t even a Port-A-Potty nearby, just a rickety wood outhouse that could barely stand and lacked toilet paper.

  But three days ago, when she started her hike, a man stood right next to the sign-in box. He looked like the cartoon character Dudley DoRight (not like Brendan Frasier, who played him [quite admirably] in the movie)—oversized chin, small piggy eyes, and exceptionally muscular chest. He wasn’t wearing a Canadian Mounted Police Uniform since it would have been out of place in Idaho, but his brown rangers’ uniform had a similar effect, right down to the narrow pants, which he had tucked into his boots.

  “Where’re you going, Miss?” he’d asked in a booming cartoon character voice, and she’d nearly aborted the trip right there.

  After all, it had been clear where she was going. She was already in the mountains. Ahead of her was a narrow trail that led through the tall pine trees toward the river. The trail only ran in one direction, and since she had just arrived at the trailhead, it would be logical that she was going into the wilderness.

  “I’m, um, going on a hike,” she said.

  “You should have a companion.” He had frowned at her, and if he had volunteered to accompany her, she would have ended the trip right then and there. The whole point of this hike was to do it alone, to test her own strength and stamina, and to reflect on her future.

  She didn’t need an oversized cartoon hero babysitting her in case she encountered a crazed squirrel.

  “I decided to go this one alone,” she said.

  “In that case, sign here.” He gave her a big grin and patted the paper attached to the box. She gave him a reluctant look, then filled out one of the sheets and shoved it through the little hole, just like she was supposed to do.

  When she was done, she frowned at him. “I’ve never encountered a ranger at the trailhead before.”

  “Just waiting for a friend, ma’am,” he had said and for an odd moment, she was afraid he’d give her a salute. But instead, he nodded at her and wished her well.

  And so she started down the trail, feeling disconcerted, as if time had gone out of sync.

  The feeling really hadn’t left her. It was the morning of her third day and she was almost halfway through the trip. This night would be spent at a hot springs often used by rafters. She had thought it would be a good idea to stop at public sites a few times along the way, to see people, just in case she did run into trouble.

  She hadn’t so far. The weather was lovely—cool in the evenings, warm during the day. The sun was out all the time, but it was thin at this altitude, and it wasn’t as hot as she had expected, considering she was making the trip in July.

  Her backpack—in which she carried everything she needed—was comfortable, and the wilderness area was lovelier than she had been prepared for.

  For the last two days, the trail had run above the river. Two thousand feet below, the river’s waters frothed over rocks and down waterfalls. Rafters went by, the guides looking serious and the rafters themselves screaming or laughing and having a good time. They almost never looked up and saw her, and she was grateful.

  Ariel always did best alone. She had learned that after her parents died. Before that, she had been a coddled only child, touched by fairy dust, as her mother used to say. The world had seemed safe and easy.

  Then, three days aft
er her twelfth birthday, her parents’ car had been hit by a truck that had crossed the median, and there had been nothing left—of the car, of her parents, of her life.

  Ariel had gone to live with her unmarried aunt in Monterey Bay. By the age of thirteen, she had made no friends. She had come home one afternoon to hear her aunt talking to social services.

  “She’s such a strange child,” her aunt had said. “Never speaks, just watches television. I don’t even think she’s cried. I have no idea what to do with her.”

  “Are you able to care for her?”

  “Well, enough, I suppose,” her aunt said. “After all, she should stay with family, although God knows I never wanted children.”

  That was all Ariel heard. She dropped her books, banged out the back door, and ran as far from the house as she could get. Midway through her mad dash, she realized that running felt good. It made her feel like a strong human being—one who could survive on her own.

  From that moment on, Ariel became determined to be the strongest girl in her class. She could out-run, out-jump, out-ride, and out-swim all the girls and most of the boys. Her aunt hated the athletics, saying they were not feminine, but Ariel loved them and refused to give them up.

  Which was why she was here, on this mountainside, all alone. Every time she hit a setback, she spent some time by herself, proving her own strength. This hike would allow her to focus on her future. She had some important choices to make.

  The rotator cuff injury was too severe. Her doctors had ruled out any more competitive swimming. They might have allowed her to participate in a sprint tri, but she wasn’t good at the short length. Her strength was the Ironman—a 2.5-mile swim, followed by a 100-mile bike ride, and ending with a 26.2-mile run—all done within a single day.

  She loved the challenge of it, pushing her body to its extremes. That was why she was here.

  Walking through the primitive area of Idaho alone was an extreme.

  And it was strange. That morning, it had gotten even stranger. As dawn’s thin light was just filtering through the evergreen branches, she had crawled out of her tent to pee. Dew glistened silver on the grass, and overhead she could hear birds chirping.

  She had tiptoed across the cold ground toward the two rocks she had designated the night before as her bathroom site, when she saw a man pointing a bow and arrow at her.

  He was short, bathed in gold, and he had little wings on his back. Gold curls rimmed the bottom of his skull like a skirt, but he was bald on top. Wrinkles covered his face, and it looked as if his nose had been flatted by a steamroller. He had a scar on his shoulder, and in his mouth, he clenched a half-smoked cigar.

  “For this,” he said, “I come out of retirement. Like I still owe the Fates something. I was drunk that night I told the Enquirer everything. It wasn’t like I blew too many secrets. A single one-time punishment, they say. Jeez. What kind of trick will they pull next time they need a marksman, I ask you?”

  He grimaced at Ariel.

  “Why am I asking you? You, who are so uneducated as to have no clue who I am. You, who fail to realize you are in the presence of greatness.”

  Then he released the arrow.

  That snapped her out of her reverie. She ran for the trees, her breath coming hard, her body working without warm up. She moved faster than she ever had—she was not a sprinter—and finally she found an outcropping of rock that protected her.

  When she looked back, the little man was still there, cursing. The arrow was stuck in the ground. He bent over and grabbed the shaft, tugging at it.

  “Like those three harpies will ever know,” he was mumbling. “As if I wanted to help him in the first place. Why they assumed we’d become friends, I have no idea.”

  He pulled, and the arrow finally came loose. He looked at it and frowned. Then he broke the arrow over his knee. Wisps of smoke, in the shape of red hearts, floated out of the arrow’s center, and then faded as if they never were.

  “Good enough,” he said, and shoved the broken pieces of arrow back in his quiver. Then, in a blinding flash of white light, he disappeared.

  Ariel rubbed her eyes. She was crouched on the damp ground, behind the rock cropping, breathing hard. Dawn’s light still filtered through the evergreen boughs, and dew still covered the grass—except in the places where her footsteps had disturbed it. Footsteps that made it look like she had been running.

  But there was no little man with a cigar and wings, and there was no broken arrow that created smoky red hearts. She must have been asleep and dreaming.

  Sleep-running.

  That was a new one, and a bit disturbing too, especially since most of her campsites from now on would be near the river. What if she slept-ran into the water—or over the edge of a cliff?

  That was the thought that had been worrying her all day. She really wasn’t thinking about competitive swimming or torn rotator cuffs. She was wondering if the stress of the last few months had damaged her mind.

  Twigs, leaves, and broken branches covered the dirt path. Even though the hiking trail had been open for a month, no one had bothered to clear the winter debris. A sign, posted at the fork, warned of slides and unstable rocks, but Ariel didn’t plan to dislodge any of them.

  She was smart enough to keep an eye on her surroundings at all times. People died every year in Idaho’s River of No Return Wilderness Area. She didn’t plan on being one of them.

  She planned to come out of this trip refreshed, her confidence in her body’s abilities renewed. The rotator cuff injury had shaken her, and the loss of the Ironman—particularly when she’d been favored to win Hawaii this year—was especially hard.

  Some of the other tri-geeks, people she’d known since she started running tris in high school, told her to swim through the pain. But she had done some research on her own. If she did, she might lose the use of her arm altogether. She planned on living another seven decades, and she felt that the use of her arm was more important than being in some record book as the winner of the Hawaii Ironman.

  Even if it did come with endorsements and great publicity. She hadn’t been doing triathlons for the money anyway. She had been doing it for the challenge.

  Hiking was a challenge. It was just a different kind of challenge, one that she hadn’t tried before.

  Physical activity had always been her escape in the past.

  She saw no reason why it wouldn’t work now.

  * * *

  Darius sat on a hillside, feeling grumpy. He had no reason to feel grumpy. The day was beautiful—the sky a clear blue, the sun shining down through the pine trees. The air smelled fresh and clear, summer in the mountains. In the distance he could hear the roar of the river, and it wasn’t even accompanied by the screams of rafters.

  The hiking trail was empty. He hadn’t seen anyone all day except, of course, Cupid.

  Cupid had shown up at Darius’s front doorstep shortly after dawn, looking angry, disgruntled, and generally out of sorts. Darius’s greeting hadn’t helped.

  “They still making you wear diapers?” Darius said as he peered through the screen door.

  “Fine way to greet a man you haven’t seen in five hundred years.” Cupid’s voice rasped from too many cigars. The butt of his last one stuck to his lower lip and moved when he talked.

  “Hello, Cupid,” Darius had said. “I thought you gave up the arrows and wings around the birth of Christ.”

  “I thought so too. Damned Fates decided I needed a refresher course. They slapped the wings on me last night. I think they’re just drunk with power.”

  “They have been holding the same job for a very long time.”

  “Too long, if you ask me.” Cupid shuddered. “You know, it’s cold up here at this time of the day. May I come in?”

  Darius looked at Cupid’s wings. “If you don’t shed.”

  Cupid snapped his fingers, but the wings didn’t disappear. He sighed. “Guess I haven’t finished my little task. Or is there a mandatory time limit on
form-altering spells?”

  “I have no idea,” Darius said as he held the screen door open.

  Cupid stepped inside. “I’d heard that the Fates made you four feet tall with a long white beard and a hideous mug.”

  Darius started. He hadn’t realized any of the magical knew about that part of his sentence. They knew about the other part, of course. He was a laughingstock because it had been nearly three thousand years and he still hadn’t put one hundred soul mates together.

  He’d just finished the ninety-ninth couple a few months before and he had come to his Idaho house as a getaway. The Fates granted him two weeks every year—taken either in whole or in part, whenever he chose—when he got to look like himself. For the last few years, he’d been taking a week in solitude, up here.

  “But you look just like you always did,” Cupid was saying. “How’d you keep from losing your hair?”

  Darius didn’t answer that question. Instead, he asked, “Where’d you hear that I got slapped with a different body?”

  Cupid shrugged. “Bacchus, maybe. Or whatshisname, later called himself Rasputin—crap. The brain’s going.”

  “So are the wings,” Darius said, looking pointedly at the feathers covering his hardwood floor.

  “They’ll be gone by the end of the day, I’m sure,” Cupid said. “And none too soon. They itch.”

  He sat on Darius’s overstuffed couch and put his feet on the coffee table Darius had made out of a tree stump.

  Darius debated whether or not to offer him food. The sooner he got Cupid out of the house, the sooner he’d be alone again. “To what do I owe this visit?”

  “Old times,” Cupid said, pulling the ancient wool blanket Darius had on the couch over his torso. “Do you know there’re not a lot of folks who can remember Ancient Greece anymore?”

  “You just mentioned Bacchus.”

  “The last time I saw him was Spain four hundred years ago. He did something to really piss off the Fates and disappeared into deep storage around then.”

  “What about Pan?”

  “Went legit about ten years ago. Does concerts in the style of Yanni. Makes a mint, and doesn’t like talking to the riff-raff.”