The Mystery of the Tenth

by Chantel Acevedo

  “Where is your eye?” Nia asked.

  “An owl took it,” the three sisters said at once.

  Ari stopped pacing. “An owl?” she asked.

  “Yes,” they said, spit flying out of their mouths.

  “Did you see where it went?” Mela asked.

  The Gray Sisters pointed off to the right. “The Queens Zoo,” the one on the right said.

  “Bring us our eye, and we’ll answer your question,” the sister on the left said.

  “And get us more churros!” the center sister added.

  Chapter 13

  Owl Trouble

  We left the Gray Sisters sitting on the stone bench, muttering to one another. The afternoon sky was still bright as we followed a wooded path to the Queens Zoo, which occupied the same park space as the Botanical Garden and the Hall of Science. With so much green everywhere it didn’t feel like we were in New York at all.

  At the zoo’s gates, we fished around in our pockets for money to get in, but we were short.

  “What’ll we do now?” Ari asked. “Sneak in?”

  “I’d rather not get arrested in a foreign country,” Thalia said.

  “Hello? We are muses. Or have you all forgotten?” Nia asked, pulling her phone out and opening her muse app. “The stars are in a lucky alignment today. Who wants a crack at him?” she asked, gesturing at the man behind the ticket counter.

  Ari scowled, and I could almost imagine what she was thinking—that we had powers we were abusing.

  “Do you want help getting your tapestry back or not?” I asked her.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Ari said with a shrug.

  “No, but you were thinking it.” I turned to Thalia. “Bring the funny.”

  Thalia clapped her hands and bounced over to the ticket counter. Before we knew it, she had the man laughing so hard he was crying and waving us all through the gates. I heard a thump as we passed him and saw that he was laughing so hard he’d fallen off his stool.

  “You overdid it,” I said.

  “No such thing,” Thalia sang back, skipping ahead.

  We followed a winding path past enclosures with alligators, bears, and pumas. We walked by kids and their parents, ice-cream stands, and soda machines. All the while, we searched the trees for signs of an owl with an eyeball.

  We stopped once we got to the massive aviary.

  “If there’s an owl to be found, it’s in there,” I said. There was a huge dome covering the aviary. It was made of wire mesh and steel.

  “It’s a geodesic dome,” Nia said, her eyes wide as she took it in. “First displayed at the World’s Fair in 1964, like the rocket at the Hall of Science was. In fact, World’s Fairs are—”

  “I didn’t realize muses were such nerds,” Ari said with a sigh.

  “Why are we helping her again?” Nia asked.

  “Hush, both of you,” I said. I’d heard a soft hooting amid the squawks that filled the air. We stepped inside the aviary. It was two stories tall, with lots of trees, and all kinds of birds perched here and there.

  “I sort of hate this,” Mela said. The rest of the Muse Squad nodded. Last year, we’d fought birds who were sirens in disguise. Feathers still made me nervous.

  Then I heard it again. A soft woo-hoo, woo-hoo, coming from an oak tree. Slowly, I led our group forward until we were in the tree’s shade. I looked up into the branches, squinting my eyes in the shadows.

  “There!” Mela shouted, but she was too loud. The owl she’d spotted lifted its enormous wings and sailed silently over our heads, but not before we all saw it—in its beak was an eyeball, the pupil dark and darting around.

  “I’m going to puke,” Nia said with a gag.

  “No! No puking. We need to get that eye!” I shouted as we ran after the owl. It stopped on a stand just a few feet away and dropped the eyeball into a bowl full of seeds.

  “I’ll throw something at it,” Thalia was saying, holding her shoe with the smiley face over her head. She paused, waiting for us to tell her not to, which is what we usually did whenever Thalia came up with a plan. (Let’s be honest, they were usually really bonkers ideas.)

  But Mela, Nia, and I just looked at each other, nodded, and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Thalia stopped and stared at us. “Seriously? I mean, this never happens. I’m genuinely chuffed you like my idea,” she went on.

  “Just do it!” Mela shouted, and Thalia chucked her shoe straight at the owl on its perch.

  The bird screeched, spread its wings, and flapped a few times.

  Then it dive-bombed us.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  “The eye!” Nia said, running back to the perch and the seed bowl. She wrapped her hands around the eyeball and shoved it down her shirt. “Gross, gross, gross,” she screamed as she ran.

  I felt a sharp talon scrape my shoulder and felt feathers grazing my face. Beside me, Mela was swinging her shiny, mirrored headphones at the owl, while Thalia was aiming her other shoe at its head. As for Ari, she was far away, watching it all go down with her arms crossed against her chest.

  Suddenly, I heard Ari shout, “Stop it now! You aren’t fooling anyone.”

  Had Ari suddenly lost it, talking to out-of-control birds as if they could understand her?

  The owl flapped its wings and hovered in the air for a moment, leaving off its attack. Then it seemed to spin into itself, becoming a whirl of feathers that grew and grew until it wasn’t an owl anymore.

  “I’d say I did a marvelous job of fooling them, actually.” It was a woman in brown pants and a golden sweater that glimmered in the afternoon light. There were golden sandals on her feet, and her eyes, topped by dark eyebrows, were golden, too. Her skin was the color of the sun, and her hair hung in dark curls all the way down her back.

  My heart hammered in my chest. Beside me, I watched as Mela’s knees buckled, and she grabbed hold of my sleeve to steady herself.

  “I feel funny,” Nia said.

  “Me, too. But not ha-ha funny,” Thalia added.

  The golden woman spoke at last. “It’s good to see you again, Arachne. Though I’ve really been enjoying my retirement from human business the last few ages, and now that’s all been interrupted.” Her voice boomed, and I could swear that all of Queens had heard her. I looked out past the mesh walls of the aviary, but the people I saw here and there seemed to be going about their business.

  “It’s not good to see you again, Athena,” Ari said.

  Now it was my knees’ turn to buckle. Athena? The Athena? Had Thalia just thrown a shoe at Athena? Goddess of wisdom, daughter of Zeus, and all that?

  “Always the lack of respect.” Athena tsked.

  “Fine. It’s still not good to see you again, O Dread Goddess Athena,” Ari said, bowing dramatically.

  “Better. Only marginally so,” Athena said, her nostrils flaring a little. She waited before speaking again. I chanced a look at Nia, who was holding the bottom of her shirt tight against her body, guarding the eyeball inside. Thalia was still holding her shoe, her white socks filthy from the aviary’s floor. Mela held on to my sleeve for dear life.

  But Ari was standing before Athena, her arms still crossed, her chin in the air. I suppose I understood. She’d already spent centuries as a spider. What was the worst Athena could do to her?

  “You’d be surprised what is the worst I can do, Calliope,” Athena said. I was 100 percent sure she’d read my mind. That shook me. I had so many questions. This was Athena, for crying out loud. She mentioned that she’d been dragged out of retirement. Did that mean that all the gods were back to work? Clio had said that they’d mainly stayed out of the human world for centuries, but was that about to change? Before I could ask a question, though, Athena had one for me. “Have you had any interesting dreams lately?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t dreamed much at all, not since coming to New York. But dreaming made me think of Tia Annie—how she used to visit me in dreams and tell me things I needed to know.


  “Pity,” Athena said, her voice still booming. “There are answers in your dreams. Perhaps one will come to you soon.”

  “Answers?” I started to ask, drawn toward her. What did that even mean?

  “I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?” Ari asked, taking a step forward.

  Athena turned her face to Ari. “Go on, Arachne. I’m listening.”

  “I’m challenging you to a do-over. My old tapestry against yours,” Ari said. “But you already knew that.”

  Athena laughed, and though it should have sounded beautiful, it was also the scariest thing I’d ever heard.

  “I did, of course. And you may have your do-over. At the Student Showcase, as you hoped. The terms are fair. And if I win, you go back to being your lovely, spidery self, and never challenge me again.”

  I watched as, for the first time since Athena appeared, Ari shook a little. “Fine,” she said, her voice catching. “And if I win?”

  Athena smiled. She looked at all of us, one by one, before turning her gaze back on Ari. “You get to be human. Permanently. Do what you will with your mortal life.”

  Ari nodded, letting out a long breath. “Deal,” she said.

  When Athena looked at us again, her face had softened a bit. Mainly, she looked disappointed, as if we’d switched teams on her. Maybe we had.

  “Be careful, little sisters. You’ve decided to go on a quest. I love questing heroes. They keep me entertained. But you are poorly matched against me.”

  “What quest?” I asked quietly, afraid to raise my voice.

  Athena smiled, flashing very bright, white teeth in our direction. “You’ll see,” she said, and then, before we knew what had happened, we were once again looking at an owl.

  We all looked at the silent owl, which had started to preen its feathers as if we weren’t there.

  “Do we just . . . go?” Mela asked, her eyes never leaving the owl.

  “Not before I get my shoe back,” Thalia said, picking up the one she’d thrown.

  Ari shooed away the owl, and it flapped off with a screech. “Athena’s not even here anymore. That’s just a regular old owl again.”

  Meanwhile, Nia was fishing the eyeball out from under her shirt. She held it up, and the pupil swiftly faced her. “Gah!” she shouted, dropping the eye onto the ground. It made a splat sound when it fell, and the rest of us screamed when we heard it.

  “Pick it up, pick it up,” Mela was whispering.

  Trembling, I grabbed the gooey eyeball, cringing the whole time. “Let’s go,” I said, and led the others out of the aviary and the zoo, and back to the Gray Sisters.

  Chapter 14

  A Game of Chess

  We found the Gray Sisters on the chess board, pushing around the huge topiaries as they played a game. They huffed as they hauled the potted plants here and there, shouting out things like “Bishop to knight four!”

  “How are they doing that if they can’t see?” Mela whispered.

  “They memorized the board. There are chess champs that can do it—play whole games blindfolded!” Nia said.

  Thalia whistled in awe, and one of the sisters stopped, cocking her head to the side, listening. “You’ve returned, muses and friend. Have you brought us what we lost?” The other sisters stopped pushing topiaries and faced us.

  “Yes,” I said, holding the eyeball in the palm of my hand. “You must have known it was Athena who had your eye. Why didn’t you tell us?” I demanded.

  “You didn’t ask,” the three said at the same time.

  I sighed. “Will you help us now?”

  The Gray Sisters hobbled over, six hands reaching out to the eye. They squabbled a bit as to who would get to wear it first, but the tallest of the sisters won out. She slammed the eyeball into her empty socket, blinked a few times, then looked at me with a watery expression.

  “There you are,” she said, and extended a hand.

  I shook it and introduced myself. “Callie Martinez-Silva. Nice to meet you.”

  “Horror,” the sister said.

  “Pardon?” Thalia asked.

  “Horror. It’s my name. And these are my sisters, Dread and Alarm,” Horror said. Her sisters reached out to shake hands with everyone.

  Mela tried to be polite. “Your names are very, um, they are quite—”

  “Dreadful.”

  “Horrible.”

  “Alarming,” the sisters said in turn.

  “Why do I find this so amusing?” Thalia commented, laughing.

  Now it was Dread’s turn to wear the eye, and they managed the exchange without too much trouble this time. It seemed they had a silent rotation they kept to, and whenever they made the switch I looked away. My stomach just couldn’t take it.

  “So will you help us?” Nia asked.

  “Certainly,” Alarm said. “You may ask one question.”

  “Just one?” I asked.

  “Just one,” the sisters said together.

  One? After all the trouble we’d gone to? We had more than one question!

  “Easy,” Nia said. “We ask about the tenth muse. That’s our mission.”

  Mela shook her head. “Athena said she’s looking forward to our quest. Shouldn’t we focus on that?”

  Thalia laughed. “Sure she is. More like she’s looking forward to turning us all into insects.”

  “Arachnids,” Mela corrected.

  Thalia pointed her finger at Mela’s face. “Listen, I’m not getting permanently transformed into a whatever for her sake,” she said, shifting her finger toward Ari.

  Nia slid over to stand by Thalia, while Mela linked Ari’s arm with hers.

  “Two against two,” Ari said. “You’re the tie-breaker, Callie.”

  “Why me?” I asked. This wasn’t fair. All this time, I’d been the one making all the hard choices. I thought of Clio in her office, calling meetings, figuring out how the muses could be helpful, prioritizing our missions. Is that what this was the beginning of? All that responsibility?

  I looked at the Gray Sisters, who had stopped fussing with their eye to stare at me intently. They knew everything—why I was a muse in the first place, whether Ari would be successful in her quest, who the tenth muse was, what Tia Annie had asked of the gods on Mount Olympus, all of it. Suddenly, I felt like this was a game of chess. If I could make the right move, or better yet, if I could ask the perfect question, it would be a key that answered everything at once. I thought of the rules.

  A muse always trusts her instincts. Rule number one.

  A muse is no better, or worse, than the heroes she inspires. Rule number eight.

  Ari was clutching Mela’s arm tightly, chewing her bottom lip. Her colorful bracelets caught my eye. She had on so many, the designs and patterns so intricate it was hard to believe a person could make such things. Her work was inspired, and I wondered if there had been a muse at her side that day when she faced off against Athena the first time. Athena had thought she was better than Ari, even when everyone else thought differently. If Athena were a muse, she’d be breaking a pretty big rule.

  But she wasn’t a muse. She wasn’t a minor goddess.

  She was Athena. She was a very big, very scary, very powerful deal.

  Nia was calling my name. “Callie. Make a choice.”

  “It’s hard, okay?” I shot back.

  “I know.” Nia took a deep breath. “But I’m on your side, no matter what. We’re a team, right?” The others nodded.

  Closing my eyes tight as though I was making a wish, I blurted out the question that needed to be asked. Maybe it wasn’t the perfect one, but it felt like the right one.

  “Where can we find Ari’s tapestry?”

  Behind me, I heard Nia sigh, and Thalia make a little squeaking sound. But they were soon at my side, along with Mela and Ari.

  Dread was the first to speak. “The tapestry about which you inquire was torn by the goddess into four pieces. You may find the first in Greenwich Village, in a bookshop called Visi
on Books.”

  Ari stepped forward. “You mean here in New York? A piece of my tapestry has been here all along?”

  Horror giggled and adjusted the tooth with her tongue. “No, not all along. That’s merely where it is now. Athena has set you on a quest, after all.”

  “A quest, a quest, I love a quest!” Alarm said, clapping her hands like a little girl. “All the best stories are quest stories. First, you have a problem that needs to be solved. In this case, you seek justice,” she said, winking at Ari. As she did, the goopy eye leaked a bit.

  “Then,” continued Horror, “the quester gets some help.” She pointed a long, gnarled finger at us.

  “The monsters are next! The monsters are next!” Dread sang, skipping around a pawn topiary.

  Alarm handed over the eyeball, swapping it with her sister for the tooth. “If you defeat the monsters, you get what you sought!”

  “Sometimes,” Horror clarified.

  “Yes, only sometimes,” Dread added. “And sometimes . . .” She stopped and dragged her finger across her throat.

  Alarm cackled. “It’s a fun time either way!”

  By that point, Mela had been swaying on her feet, and Thalia caught her before she hit the ground. “Monsters?” she asked weakly.

  “Probably,” the three sisters said at once. “That’s usually how it goes with quests.”

  “It’s a trap,” Thalia said. “A rather unfunny one.”

  “Callie made the call,” Nia said. “Trap or not, we have a new mission.”

  Thank you, I said silently to Nia, who only pressed her lips together in a look that said “You’d better be right.”

  “What about the other three pieces?” I asked.

  Horror lifted a single gnarled finger. “One question. One. And you’ve asked it already.” Then the Gray Sisters gathered their purses, as well as three walking canes they’d stashed behind the stone bench.

  “We should be off,” Alarm said.

  “Our favorite show is on tonight. Zombie Beach!” Dread added.

  “Lovely to meet you, dears!” Horror called back to us as the three of them walked away.