The Flame of Olympus

by Kate O'Hearn

  ‘But this isn’t an arm or leg. It’s a wing,’ said Emily. ‘And aren’t most wing bones hollow? We could do more damage if we pull it and set it wrong.’

  Joel nodded. ‘Maybe, but we can’t leave him like this either.’ Suddenly he had an idea. ‘What if we take a really good look at his unbroken wing? We study it and learn how it works. Then if we look at the broken wing, we should be able to see the difference and know how it should be. After that, we could try to set it.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Emily agreed. ‘But where do we start? With his wing or with the spear?’

  It was Pegasus who answered that question. As though he’d been listening to every word, the stallion lifted his good wing again and then whinnied and pounded the shed floor.

  Emily stroked his muzzle. ‘You want us to pull out the spear first?’

  In answer Pegasus nuzzled her hand.

  Joel joined Emily at the stallion’s head. ‘Then I guess we start with the spear,’ he said.

  Emily and Joel went back down to her apartment to collect more supplies.

  Joel looked around and whistled. ‘You apartment is a whole lot nicer than the dump I live in. Is it just you and your folks?’

  ‘My mother died of cancer three months ago. Now it’s just me and my dad.’ Emily felt the familiar lump start to form in the back of her throat. Taking a deep breath, she forced it back down before the tears began. ‘What about your place? I always heard brownstones were great. Lots of room and you’ve actually got backyards.’

  Joel shook his head. ‘Not where I live. Our brownstone is small and falling apart. The plumbing doesn’t work and the paint is peeling.’

  Emily grabbed the last of the medicated creams and antiseptics from the medicine cabinet.

  ‘Did your mother ever teach you how to sew?’ Joel asked.

  ‘Sew?’ Emily repeated. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because once we pull that spear out of Pegasus, he’s going to bleed. We’ll need to sew the hole closed to stop the bleeding and start the healing.’

  ‘You want me to sew Pegasus back together?’

  ‘Do you have a better idea?’ Joel asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Emily said. ‘Superglue. They sometimes use that stuff in micro-surgery instead of stitches. They actually used it on my mother for one of her surgeries. After they told my dad, he got a supply of it for emergencies.’

  Joel frowned. ‘Really? Glue?’

  Emily nodded and walked back into the kitchen to collect the glue. It was tossed in the bag of supplies. Finally she pulled open the freezer and reached for the last tub of ice cream.

  ‘I offered Pegasus vegetables earlier and all he wanted to eat was my ice cream. So maybe he’ll want some more.’

  ‘Pegasus likes ice cream?’

  When Emily nodded, Joel looked embarrassed. ‘Do you think I could have something to eat? I haven’t had anything today and I’m starving.’

  Emily stopped and looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. This Joel was nothing like the angry Joel from earlier. ‘Sure, grab what you like. But let’s take it upstairs.’

  Back on the roof, they unpacked the supplies. Emily had been right, the moment Pegasus smelled the ice cream he went straight for the tub. When he finished it all, he stole the box of breakfast cereal from Joel.

  ‘Hey,’ Joel protested. ‘That was mine! You’ve got your own food.’

  ‘I don’t think he likes anything healthy,’ Emily said. ‘Look, he hasn’t touched the apples I left for him. Or the carrots either. All he wants is really sweet things.’

  ‘Well, he could have left me a little,’ Joel complained. ‘All that sugar can’t be good for him. It’s not like you can get it on Olympus …’ Suddenly Joel snapped his fingers. ‘Of course, now I understand. It makes perfect sense.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Don’t you see? Pegasus needs sweet foods. That’s all he eats on Olympus!’

  ‘How do you know?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Because I’ve read all about it.’ Joel sounded more and more excited. ‘The Roman myths are my favourite books! All the legends say that on Olympus, the Gods eat ambrosia and drink nectar. It’s what keeps them immortal. That’s why Pegasus wants it, to help him heal. Some say that ambrosia is very much like honey, so he wants sweet food. Do you have any honey in your kitchen?’

  ‘Honey?’ Emily repeated. ‘Joel, you’re crazy. Those are just legends. We can’t base our treatment of Pegasus on some dusty old myths.’

  Joel nodded, ‘Oh yes, we can. Pegasus is real, right?’

  Emily nodded.

  ‘And Pegasus is from myth, also true?’ When Emily nodded again, he continued, ‘So if he exists, the others must too.’

  ‘Wait,’ Emily said, holding up her hand. ‘You’re saying that Zeus, and Hera, Poseidon and all the others are real?’

  ‘Jupiter, Juno and Neptune,’ Joel corrected. ‘Zeus is the Greek name. Since I’m Italian, I prefer the Roman myths. The leader of Olympus is Jupiter.’

  ‘Zeus or Jupiter,’ Emily protested, ‘it doesn’t matter. But you can’t really think all those myths are true?’

  ‘Why not,’ Joel said jumping to his feet. ‘Look at him! Pegasus is standing right here, just as real as you or me. So if he’s real, why not the others?’

  Emily also stood. ‘Because it they were, why haven’t they come to get him? If Zeus—’

  ‘Jupiter,’ Joel corrected.

  ‘All right,’ Emily said, exasperated. ‘If Jupiter is real, why doesn’t he know Pegasus is hurt and come to help him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Joel admitted. ‘Maybe he can’t. Or, maybe he doesn’t know yet. But I do know that if we don’t help Pegasus, Jupiter is going to be really angry with us when he does get here.’

  ‘I don’t care about Jupiter or any of the others,’ Emily said as she started to unpack the medical supplies. ‘All I care about is Pegasus. So let’s get started.’

  They cleaned the wounded area around the spear. Then Emily said to the stallion, ‘I’m really sorry, but this is going to hurt.’

  Standing beside Pegasus, towel at the ready, Emily helped support the heavy wing. Beside her, Joel wrapped his hands around the broken end of the spear. He braced himself against the side of the stallion. Together they counted down. Three, two, one, go! Using all his weight and strength, Joel started to pull.

  Pegasus did his best not to buck as the spear was drawn slowly from his side.

  ‘Hurry, Joel,’ Emily cried, trying to hold the stallion steady.

  Pegasus’s head was thrown back and was twisting in the air. His large, wild eyes revealed his agony and his front hooves ripped at the shed’s floorboards. His screams tore at Emily’s heart.

  ‘Hurry, it’s killing him!’

  In one final, grunting heave, Joel drew the vicious barbed spear from the stallion’s side. Blood flowed from the deep open wound.

  ‘Put pressure on it!’ Joel panted, trying to recover from the strain. ‘We’ve got to stop that bleeding!’

  Emily pulled down the towel from her shoulder and pressed it to the wound. Beneath her hands, she could feel Pegasus trembling.

  ‘You’re all right, Pegasus,’ she soothed. ‘You’re going to be all right. The worst is over, the spear is gone.’

  ‘We’re not done yet,’ Joel said grimly as he took over applying pressure to the wound. ‘Go get the glue, Emily. We’ve got to finish this.’

  With Joel’s help, Emily was able to squeeze the open edges of the wound together and use the glue to hold it closed. They covered it in clean bandages and taped it in place using silver duct tape.

  ‘Well, it’s not pretty, but it might just work.’ Joel gently patted the stallion’s side. He turned to Emily. ‘That was a great idea about the glue. I would have never thought of that.’

  Emily shrugged. ‘I’m just glad it worked. I don’t think I could have put stitches in him.’

  ‘Me either,’ Joel agreed. ‘Now, we just have to sort out that wi
ng, and he’ll be well on his way to recovery.’

  It was late in the afternoon when Emily and Joel finished setting Pegasus’s wing. Despite Emily’s concerns, it wasn’t nearly as awful as removing the spear had been. Joel’s idea of using the stallion’s good wing as an example worked perfectly. Before long, they had pulled the broken bones into place as best they could and were applying a splint and holding it steady with bandages and duct tape.

  When they finished, even before they could celebrate their success, Emily’s phone started to ring.

  ‘It’s my dad. He doesn’t know about you or Pegs, so try to keep quiet.’

  When Joel nodded, Emily answered the phone, ‘Hi Dad.’

  ‘Em, where are you?’ Her father asked, sounding worried. ‘I’m home and you’re not here.’

  Emily checked her watch and was shocked to see the time. ‘I’m on the roof,’ she explained.

  ‘What are you doing up there?’

  Emily improvised. ‘Well, remember I told you I heard sounds from up here? I wanted to see the storm damage from last night and I lost track of the time.’

  ‘Stay there, I’ll be right up.’

  Emily felt a sudden rush of panic. ‘No Dad, don’t come up. I’m um, I’m working on a surprise for you and I don’t want you to see it yet. I’ll be right down.’

  Before she gave her father the opportunity to say anything further, she hung up.

  ‘My dad’s home,’ she explained. ‘I’ve got to get down there so he doesn’t come up. Will you stay with Pegs? I promise to be back as soon as Dad goes to bed. He’s been working long shifts and will be tired. When he’s asleep, I’ll bring up some more food for all of us.’

  ‘Don’t forget the honey if you’ve got some,’ Joel called after her. ‘And anything else with sugar in it. Pegasus will need it if he’s to heal.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Emily promised as she walked over to the roof entrance. Turning on her flashlight, she gave Joel a wave before entering the darkened stairwell.

  On her way down, Emily tried to think of what she was going to tell her father. She worried what he would say when he saw her black eye. But whatever she said, she knew she couldn’t tell him about Pegasus. She had given the stallion her word and wasn’t about to break it. Even to him.

  She opened the door of her apartment. ‘Dad?’

  ‘I’m in the kitchen,’ her father called.

  Inhaling deeply, Emily made her way to the kitchen. She saw her father standing at the refrigerator in his police uniform, his back to her. He looked almost funny as he pulled out multiple items and tried to hold them all in his arms.

  ‘What a mess,’ he said without turning to her. ‘Everything is defrosting. We’d better eat a lot of this before it goes bad.’

  He turned around, saw her face and dropped everything in his arms. Bottles of pickles and vegetables went rolling around the kitchen floor.

  ‘What happened to you? Em, your eye is black!’

  ‘I know,’ Emily said, trying to sound casual. ‘I tripped when I was on the roof and fell into the rose bushes. Somehow I managed to hit myself in the eye. Actually,’ she corrected, ‘I think I kneed myself in the eye.’

  As her father inspected her face, he whistled in appreciation. ‘Good grief! I haven’t seen a shiner like that in ages. It must hurt like the devil!’

  ‘Kinda,’ Emily admitted. ‘But not as bad as the thorn scratches.’ She pushed up her sleeves to reveal the deep gashes on her arms. ‘I guess the roses won the first round.’

  ‘Looks like they won the whole fight,’ her father agreed. ‘We have to get those cleaned up.’

  Emily remembered that she and Joel had taken all the medicated creams and bandages up to the roof for Pegasus. ‘It’s OK, Dad,’ she said quickly. ‘I already put some stuff on it. Really, I’m fine.’

  ‘All right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But look, I don’t want you going back up there alone. By the looks of things, it’s become dangerous.’

  ‘But Dad,’ Emily protested. ‘I want to do something special for you. I … I’m fixing the garden! You know how much Mom loved her garden, we all did. After so long, it’s gone completely wild. Please let me do this. It’s really helping me deal with things.’

  Emily hated herself for using her mother’s painful death as an excuse to continue to go up to the roof. But she couldn’t allow her father to forbid her, not while Pegasus was still up there and in desperate need of help.

  ‘Please Dad, I really need to do this.’

  Finally he sighed. ‘Well, at least wait for me to help you. After the blackout, I’m owed a few days’ leave. Why don’t we make it our special project?’

  Emily knew this was the best she could hope for with her father.

  ‘That would be great. But if I promise not to do anything heavy, can I at least go up there to try to clean up a bit before we get to the real work?’

  ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘But only if you promise to be careful and keep away from the edge.’

  ‘I will.’ Emily quickly changed the subject before her father could change his mind. ‘So what are they saying about the blackout?’

  ‘Well, it’s not good,’ he said as he went back to work in the refrigerator. ‘The power company has put its entire staff on it, but it looks like we’ll have no electricity for at least two days, maybe three.’ He paused and looked at her again. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’

  Emily nodded. ‘It means you have to go back to work, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I was going to tell you that it means no school for a few days.’ Then he reluctantly added, ‘But yes, I’ve got to go back to work. I’m due back in at midnight. It was only because of you being home alone that I was able to steal a few hours away.’

  Emily lifted the jug of milk out of her dad’s arms. ‘Then you shouldn’t waste this time here. Go sit down and I’ll see what I can make us for dinner. Then I think you should try to get some sleep.’

  When her father smiled, it made his dimples appear. ‘Hey, who’s the parent here?’ he demanded, laughing.

  ‘I am,’ Emily teased as she started to use as many thawing items as she could to prepare their supper.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he admitted. ‘This has been one strange twenty-four hours.’ He sighed heavily as he sat down at the kitchen table. ‘There is looting going on all over the city because of the power outage and security systems going down. Uptown, people are getting hysterical. Some even went into their local police stations claiming to have seen these huge, grey, four-armed creatures coming out of the sewers. Insisting they were some kind of demons and this was the end of the world.’

  ‘Wow,’ Emily said as she pulled out a frying pan and set it on the gas stove. ‘That is strange.’

  ‘But that wasn’t the worst of it,’ her father said. ‘Remember I called you from Belleview? I was there to draw up a report on this mystery kid that had been brought in. Seems he was hit by lightning and fell out a window.’

  ‘Ouch! That had to hurt,’ Emily said as she started to scramble some eggs. ‘Was he killed?’

  ‘Nope,’ her father answered. ‘The doctor said he should have been. Not only did he not die, he’s healing faster than anything they’ve ever seen before. His bones are knitting together in record time and the burn on his back is shrinking by the minute.’

  Emily stopped scrambling her dad’s eggs. ‘He’s healing really quickly?’ she said. ‘Who is he?’

  Her father shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure. He said his name was,’ – he paused and stood up, then bowed at the waist and raised his hand in a flourish – ‘Paelen the Magnificent, at your service.’

  Emily couldn’t help laughing as her father repeated the sweeping, formal gesture. ‘Where’s he from?’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue,’ said her dad, sitting down again. ‘He claims he doesn’t remember much, but after being a cop so long, I know a lie when I hear one.’ He paused as if reaching for something just beyond his grasp. ‘It’s … it�
��s really strange, Em. There is something seriously wrong with that kid, but I just can’t put my finger on it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A few things, really,’ her father answered. ‘The strange way he speaks. Real formal, you know? Then there’s the way he was found, wearing only a bloodstained tunic and winged sandals studded with jewels. He’d obviously been struck by lightning, but somehow he survived that as well as the fall. When the paramedics arrived, they found him clutching this beautiful golden bridle. Between the jewelled sandals and the horse bridle, it all had to be worth a fortune. But he refused to tell me where they came from or how he got them.’

  Emily felt her pulse quicken. Paelen the Magnificent? Healing quickly? Wearing a tunic and sandals, and clutching a golden horse bridle? She knew it had something to do with Pegasus. She just didn’t know what.

  The eggs were quickly forgotten as Emily took a seat at the table beside her father.

  ‘So is he still at the hospital?’

  ‘No,’ he answered darkly. ‘And that’s another story all its own. When the staff saw his blood test results, they nearly had a fit. Things kind of went downhill from there.’

  Emily’s ears were ringing. Everything her father said was shouting Olympus. Somehow, there was another Olympian in New York! She had to tell Joel as soon as she could.

  ‘What do you mean? What happened?’ Emily finally asked.

  ‘It seems one of the nurses called the CRU when she saw the results. Not long after that, several of their agents arrived at the hospital to collect him. But when I challenged them on it, they called my captain. I was immediately ordered back to the station and told to forget everything. As always, it’s all very Government hush, hush. I have no idea where they took him or what they plan to do with him. But from what we know of the CRU, I sure wouldn’t want to be in that kid’s shoes. Or winged sandals either, for that matter.’

  7

  Paelen was sitting up in bed in a secure hospital unit. Men in white coats were hooking up a lot of strange wires to him. Several were taped to his chest, while others were secured to his face and head. When he tried to rip them off, two men in white overalls rushed forward and caught hold of his hands to restrain him. But when Paelen proved too strong for them, more men arrived. They wrestled his hands down until he was finally handcuffed to the sides of the bed.