by Joan Holub
Achilles shot him a surprised glance. Pallas had already overheard him say they’d been temporarily suspended from swordplay competition. She guessed Agamemnon was embarrassed about that, and so he was trying to act cool and mysterious about why they wouldn’t compete.
“Give us a sec,” Eurynome told the boys. Then she pulled Pallas a short distance away to where they wouldn’t be overheard.
“I just thought of something,” Eurynome began. “Yesterday I was doing some homework on that Greek poet guy Hesiod. In his writings he said stuff about how the godboy Hephaestus has this amazing blacksmithing forge at Mount Olympus Academy. One time Hephaestus used it to make a shield for Dionysus that had constellations and cool things carved on it in silver and gold.” She looked at Pallas expectantly, her brown eyes twinkling.
“So?” Pallas prompted, not understanding her point.
“So . . . if we did enter the Greek Fest thing, you could borrow one of those boys’ swords to compete. But you could also bring your dad’s sword. Then, if Hephaestus is at the festival, you could give it to him and ask him to fix it when he has time. He’s got that great forge and all, so maybe he will. Especially if you tell him you’re Athena’s friend.”
Pallas’s mind began spinning with possibilities. Although both girls were already good with a sword, their actual training time was limited to one hour a day in Cheer Blades class. And part of that time was devoted to learning cheers and marches, not learning fight moves. So the boys’ coaching actually could prove useful.
Besides that, if Athena had seen Pallas’s snafu during the event in the atrium, performing well in the festival would prove Pallas hadn’t turned into a klutz. She could redeem herself!
“So what do you think?” Eurynome nudged. “Remember, there’s also the possibility we’d wind up with one of those boys’ swords too.”
“I’m in if you are,” said Pallas. Eurynome grinned, and they high-fived.
After making a deal and a plan to train with Achilles and Agamemnon tomorrow and every day after school for the coming week, the girls left Mighty Fighty to head for the TJH chariot. Realistically, it was a longshot that she’d wind up with a new sword after the festival, Pallas knew. And if Hephaestus didn’t agree to fix her dad’s sword, there was no way she’d be able to afford to buy her dad a new one anytime soon. It would take a whole year of babysitting to buy just half a sword! Still, even a longshot was better than no shot.
On the chariot ride home, Eurynome said to Pallas, “I meant what I said before. You are the best on the whole Cheer Blades team, better even than anyone on those other teams today too. I really do think you have a good chance to win that competition.”
“Thanks. You do too, though,” Pallas said encouragingly.
Just then someone in the chariot started a cheer, and the two girls happily joined in. No matter what happened, thought Pallas, at least she and Eurynome would get some additional training. And although they’d have to give up the grand prize if their longshot came through and one of them won next Saturday, they’d still wind up with one brand-spanking-new sword from those boys!
4
Baby
Athena
SUNDAY MORNING ATHENA WAS UP and out on the MOA sports field an hour early for her swordplay practice with Zeus. She began by doing some warm-up moves on her own to stretch out so that she would be at her best when her dad arrived to spar with her and give her pointers.
Artemis stopped by on a walk with her three dogs, and the two goddessgirls discussed strategy and worked on some of Athena’s stances. However, eventually Artemis ambled off with the hounds, leaving Athena to wait on the sports field. And wait and wait and wait. When Zeus was forty-five minutes late, she finally headed into the Academy to check on him and see if anything was wrong.
The minute she stepped into the main office, she saw Hebe’s fountain from the café. It was hard to miss, since it sat in the middle of the office now. Curious to see how it worked, Athena walked around it. Weirdly, she could discover no source for the clear fresh water that still bubbled merrily in the lower two tiers. The top tier, where the lettuce leaves and baby had been the day before, was empty.
Since her dad’s nine-headed assistant, Ms. Hydra, was busy over by the far wall and hadn’t noticed her arrival, Athena didn’t stop and sign in before visiting her dad, like students were supposed to. Instead she slipped past the assistant and made for Zeus’s office a dozen steps away. As was often the case, his office door hung crazily from its one upper hinge. He didn’t know his own strength and regularly slammed it so hard that it broke.
There was a strange sound coming from his office, like doves cooing off-key. Creak! She pulled the door partly open and peeked inside. Zeus was there, all right. He was bent over a crib beside his desk, cooing to Hebe! Apparently he’d completely forgotten about his practice with his older daughter.
His attention all on the baby, he didn’t notice Athena. “Goochie, goochie goo! Who’s Daddy’s favorite girl?” he said, making silly faces at Hebe.
What? Athena froze, her feelings totally wounded. Since she’d come to MOA, he had always called her “Theeny, my brainiest, most favorite daughter in the whole wide universe.” Well, it looked like Hebe was his favorite now! She glared at the crib, wishing the baby had never appeared in that fountain.
A tiny hand reached out and grabbed Zeus’s beard. When he tried to pull away, the baby started crying.
But he only laughed. “Hey! All that crying and beard-tugging is going to give me a headache. Not as humongous as the horrible headaches your big sister used to give me, though!” he said. Then he went crazy laughing in his usual big booming way, as if he’d just made a hilarious joke.
What was that supposed to mean? When had she given him a headache? If anything, he was the one who gave her a headache sometimes.
Because having Zeus as a dad wasn’t easy. He could be loud and corny and embarrassing. And when electricity shot from his fingertips whenever he got angry or excited, he sometimes accidentally zapped her, her friends, and even her crush, Heracles. In spite of that, she truly admired and adored her dad. He’d made no secret of the fact that he was mega-proud of her too. But now Hebe had come along and stolen his fatherly affection. It wasn’t fair!
“Hey, Theeny!” Zeus said casually, having noticed her at last. “You know . . . I was thinking. Let’s make that Greek Fest next weekend a celebration in Hebe’s honor. What do you say?”
There were many things Athena wanted to say about that idea. Mostly that no, it was not a good one! She had worked hard to organize the festival in Athens, the city named in her honor. And now her dad wanted to turn the festival into one that honored this baby interloper?
When she said nothing, Zeus acted as if the matter were already settled. “Good. I knew you’d agree.” Not even seeming to care that he’d missed their training session, he switched to his new favorite subject—making Hebe happy.
“Hand me that toy, will you?” he asked Athena. “It’s Hebe’s favorite.”
Athena set down the bag she carried. The sword she’d bought yesterday was inside it. As she moved farther into her dad’s office, her eyes went wide in surprise. His floor used to be cluttered with half-read scrollazines; old art projects; exercise equipment, including file cabinets he used as barbells; board games; maps; and empty bottles of Zeus Juice.
Recently he’d cleaned all that up, though. And he’d donated much of his junk—or artifacts and artwork, as he liked to call it—to a museum that a student named Calliope had created as a class project. But now the office was a total mess again, a jumble of baby bottles, toys, bibs, baby outfits, and pacifiers.
Athena handed him the toy squeak doll he’d gestured to. Only, instead of giving the toy to the baby, he started playing with it himself, squeezing it to make it talk.
Squeak! “Necessity is the mother of invention,” said the doll. Zeus let out a high-pitched giggle at this, that sounded totally unlike him. Squeak! “True friendship can exist only b
etween equals.” Squeak! “Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.”
That doll was squeaking out quotes by the philosopher Plato! Zeus knew that Plato was one of Athena’s very favorite authors. To her it seemed kind of a betrayal that he was sharing the philosopher’s words with Hebe. She was too young to understand them, anyway!
“Hello?” someone called from the outer office. A head wearing a winged cap poked in around Zeus’s door. It was Hermes, the messenger god who flew all over the various realms delivering packages and urgent messages in his chariot. He’d even brought Athena here to Mount Olympus after Zeus had first summoned her from Triton to attend the Academy.
“Just dropped off a bag of mail on Ms. Hydra’s desk,” Hermes informed them.
“Uh-huh, good,” Zeus replied, distracted. His attention was on two dolls now—the Plato one and another one that looked like the philosopher Socrates. He held both dolls in his meaty fists and perched them on the edge of Hebe’s crib. Then he moved them around to mimic some kind of battle, pitting Plato against the other doll. In Athena’s view, having them fight made no sense. Everyone knew that Plato was Socrates’ prize student in real life!
“You okay?” Hermes asked Athena, coming to stand beside her. He was holding a cup of water and sipping from it.
“Mm-hmm,” she mumbled, trying not to look as upset and confused as she felt at the moment.
“Well, there’s something for you in the mail I just delivered,” Hermes told her, gesturing outside Zeus’s office door. Her dad didn’t even look up when she grabbed her sword bag and followed Hermes out the door, returning to the main office.
All nine of Ms. Hydra’s heads, each a different color, were still intent on whatever they were doing over by the wall. She hadn’t yet bothered to open the bag of mail on her desk. And none of her heads looked over as Hermes and Athena approached her. What was up?
Athena’s eyes practically popped out when she finally saw what Ms. Hydra was doing—coloring with ink pens on the wall! Since the assistant had nine heads but only two hands to hold the pens, the heads had begun arguing over which colors to use. Each favored their own matching color.
“I say we draw a yellow sun with a happy face,” said her cheerful yellow head.
“That’s lame. We should draw a big, green monster like Typhon,” her grumpy green head put in.
“No. It’s my turn to choose, and I want to make a purple flower!” argued her impatient purple head.
“Ah-hah! Here they are.” Hermes had been digging through his mailbag and now pulled out a bundle of letterscrolls. Sheepishly he held them out to Athena.
She went over to get them and saw right off that the return address was the same on all six letterscrolls. “Pallas sent me all these at once?”
“Um, not exactly. They’re dated over the past six weeks. I’d misplaced them in my chariot and just found them,” Hermes told her. “Sorry about that.”
Although she’d been majorly busy lately, in the back of her mind, Athena had kind of been wondering why she hadn’t heard from her Triton pal in a while. Her thoughts on her own troubles now, she just nodded and stuffed the letters into her bag, alongside her sword.
“Think I’ll take another sip for the road,” said Hermes, going over to dip his cup into the fountain.
“Zeus brought that thing here for the baby,” Ms. Hydra’s grumpy green head turned around briefly to inform them. “It’s in the way, if you ask me, but Hebe likes the sound of its bubbling water. It soothes her to sleep.”
“Yeah, and everything’s got to be about the baby now,” murmured Athena, feeling as grumpy as the green head always acted.
Ms. Hydra’s sympathetic blue head swung her way. “You okay?” But before Athena could reply, the head got distracted and went back to arguing with the other heads about what to draw and what colors to use.
A moment later Hermes departed, so Athena did too. Still in her battle gear, she found a stone bench along the hall wall and sat down. Clank! Her mind was on her troubles, so she wasn’t ready to return to her dorm room. Her roommate, Pandora, was probably there. That curious girl was always full of questions. Normally that was fine, but Athena wasn’t really in the mood to answer them right now.
Her gaze fell on the half dozen letterscrolls Hermes had given her. After setting them in her lap, she picked up the first one, unrolled it, and began to read.
Pallas had written that she was making lots of friends. Doing really well. Having a blast at Triton Junior High and enjoying being part of the Cheer Blades team. Sounded like she hardly missed Athena at all, in fact. Athena’s heart sank. This wasn’t the best time for her to hear about how much fun Pallas was having without her. Not when she was feeling so unneeded already.
She quickly read through the next four letters, feeling a little better when she noticed how Pallas had said something funny or personal in each one. Things such as, “Hope you’re not having trouble keeping up with your studies. Ha-ha, as if.” And, “You’re so brainy, I’m sure you already know this, but . . .”
That was the friend she knew. Back when Athena had been teased at TJH for her growing immortal powers (which no one had understood), Pallas had always stuck up for her and encouraged her too.
Athena ran the tip of her finger over Pallas’s sign-off at the end of the letter. She signed all her letters the same way—Your Pal.
Yes, Pallas was a pal. A good one. And Athena missed her, despite having made new friends.
One of Pallas’s letters had said she’d been babysitting to earn money. Athena sat up straighter. Snap! The letterscroll rolled itself up on her lap. So her old friend must have learned something about babies by now. She tapped the letterscroll against her knee, thinking.
Maybe Pallas would be the perfect friend to offer some helpful advice about this whole new baby business! If only Athena had time to go visit Triton and talk to her. But there was too much to do, with homework and the festival and all that. Instead she would write to Pallas and ask her to come visit MOA. Pallas was easy to talk to and always had good ideas. Maybe she’d even have ideas on how Athena could win back Zeus’s favor!
Athena was just about to read Pallas’s last letter, which appeared to be some kind of invitation, when Hera ran past her toward the office.
“Hi, Hera,” Athena said. “Wow, you look kind of . . . different.” Usually her stepmom’s blond hair was styled high on her head in a sophisticated way that Athena had always admired. Now Hera was wearing it in two scraggly, lopsided ponytails. And there wasn’t any makeup on her face either.
“Thanks!” Hera giggled, waggling her fingers in a girlish hello. “I’m here to see Zeus,” she announced. Without waiting for a reply, she pushed on into the office.
Athena stared after her in surprise. Then something clicked. Ye gods! Aphrodite must’ve already gotten started on those youthful makeovers for teachers that she’d talked about for Beauty-ology class. Only Hera’s makeover wasn’t especially successful, in Athena’s humble opinion!
5
Training
Pallas
IT WAS SUNDAY AFTERNOON, AND Pallas and Eurynome stood on the grassy athletic field next to the chariot track outside Triton Junior High. Each of them held a sports bag. With their free hands they tried to keep their long hair from tangling in the wind being stirred up by a flying chariot that was coming in for a landing. Bearing the IM logo, it was part of the fleet whose magic worked for both mortals and immortals.
When the two-seater touched down, Achilles and Agamemnon jumped out and greeted the girls. This would be their first practice together. If all went well, Pallas hoped to learn some useful tips and strategies that would improve her chances in the Greek Fest competition. And maybe help her wow Athena, too. If her friend had witnessed Pallas’s mess-up at the IM with her dad’s sword, she would quickly realize it had only been a onetime mistake.
Achilles had come up to Eurynome. “So I guess I’ll be your—,” he started to say to her.
“Dibs on Eurynome,” Agamemnon butted in quickly. “Your champion will be her.” He pointed at Pallas.
“No problem,” said Achilles. He smiled over at Pallas. Something about his sweet, almost shy expression made her suddenly wonder if he had anticipated that Agamemnon would steal his first choice of trainee. Did that mean Achilles had just pulled a trick on his friend so that Achilles and Pallas would wind up paired? Her cheeks went pink at the thought.
“C’mon, Eurynome. See ya, Dip,” Agamemnon told Achilles.
Achilles nodded. “Later.” While Agamemnon took Eurynome to find a practice area, Pallas and Achilles walked in the opposite direction, looking for a separate flat open space to train in.
“Why does he call you ‘Dip’?” Pallas asked Achilles as they walked. It seemed like a hurtful nickname to her.
Achilles jerked his head upward, flipping his bangs out of his eyes, before he grinned over at her. “Because my mom dipped me into the River Styx when I was a baby. It made me kind of invincible.”
“Wow! Cool,” said Pallas, impressed. Usually only immortals were invincible. They could never die and had a substance called ichor flowing in their veins instead of blood.
“Comes in handy during swordplay, that’s for sure,” said Achilles. Stopping in a flat practice area, they both dropped their sports bags onto the ground. Promptly Achilles went down on one knee and began pulling equipment out of his bag.
“So how is this festival competition actually going to work? Do you know?” Pallas asked, watching him. “I mean, is everyone in the same arena or what?”
“No, there’ll be separate arenas for each pair. I read the list of rules last night. Each competitor will be assigned a character from a particular battle and then will reenact that battle in a bout.” He pulled out two fancy shields that bore the red-and-black insignia of his school, then went on. “Your skill in the swordfight will be scored and will determine the winner.”
“So if I win a round, I’ll advance to more rounds against other winners?”
