The Petros Chronicles Boxset

by Diana Tyler

  “You’re just making her madder, miss,” whispered Pontus, but the monster’s hearing was keen.

  “Lissssten to the lad,” the heads screamed, as the tentacles flailed up and down, plunging Charis’s bare feet into the water.

  “Why do you want her?” shouted Tycho. “What’s a three-year-old child to the likes of you?”

  The heads rotated three hundred and sixty degrees as they cackled. “I made a little deal with Apollo. I bring him one of the Hodossss, and he givesssss me back my former form. I oncccce rivaled Aphrodite, I did. Thissss runt wassss a mosssst eassssy catch. I’d better be going back to the pit. The Dark Lord hatessss to wait…”

  And with that, the squid-like creature lowered herself into the sea as flame after flame escaped Iris’s hands. Each one fizzled in the waves.

  “That’s it,” said Tycho, removing his cloak and throwing off his sandals.

  “Tycho, don’t!” Iris pleaded. “I can’t lose both of you.”

  “Iris, have faith.”

  Two tears slipped down Iris’s cheeks as fear and faith waged war within her. Neither she nor Tycho noticed that Pontus was no longer standing at the rail.

  “Where’s my son!” shouted the captain, stepping out from his hiding place behind the mast.

  For a minute or more, not a sound was heard, only the mournful cry of gulls that flew above the encroaching wall of clouds. The clouds were so thick and tight around the ship that Iris felt as if they were being entombed, slowly suffocating inside Apollo’s well-set snare. She grasped the side of the ship, searing the wood with fresh fire still hungry for a target.

  “Duna, help us,” she prayed. “Help Pontus now. Greater are you than any weapon or warrior of Apollo.”

  Crimson water appeared and expanded on the surface of the sea. Iris took a deep breath, resolved not to let it go until she saw her daughter alive. A severed black tentacle emerged and bobbed up and down, a dead snake still fearsome to see. Blood flowed from the tendons that had attached it to Scylla’s gut, and it twitched like a fish on the sand.

  Iris gasped at the sight of Charis’s head popping out of the water, spitting and coughing, but very much alive. Pontus had the child by her tiny torso. He began kicking frantically toward the ship.

  “Turn and hold onto me,” Pontus said to Charis. She obeyed and clung to him like a startled monkey as Tycho threw down a rope and began hoisting them up. The crew, dumbfounded by Pontus’s bravery, simply stared.

  Iris hung over the side of the ship and pulled her child into her arms. She snatched Tycho’s cloak from the deck and wrapped it around Charis, making her look like a caterpillar nestled inside its cocoon. Iris kissed her face over and over, and vowed never to board a ship again. If letters needed delivering, she’d gladly let Tycho be the messenger. She doubted she’d ever let Charis out of her arms again.

  “Pontus!” Tycho shouted, then jumped back as the ship quaked, the rope falling from his hands.

  The captain ran full speed to the stern, and peered over it as a blinding ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds. The waves settled, the whole sea returning to immaculate glass containing nothing but a silver school of mackerel.

  “Where is my son!” the captain’s voice boomed.

  “He saved our daughter,” said Iris, her voice shaking from the panic and pain still seizing her.

  “That isn’t an answer!” When he realized that he indeed knew the answer, the captain turned and slid down onto the deck. He stared up hopelessly at Iris, as if waiting for someone to make sense of what had happened, or to undo it altogether.

  He began pounding the sides of his head and cursing under his breath. “What did she want with him?” he bellowed. He staggered to his feet like a drunkard and yelled into the sea, “Take me instead, you reeking wench! I’ll give you all I have.”

  Charis stirred and turned toward her father. “That’s what he said, Papa.”

  The captain neared the child with a half-curious, half-furious sneer on his lips. “What who said, child?”

  “The boy who saved me,” she answered. “He told the monster to take him.” Charis then laid her head on Iris’s shoulder and began sucking her thumb.

  “You raised your son well, sir,” said Tycho. “He sacrificed himself for our daughter, just as you were willing to do for him.”

  “It was too late for me to do anything,” the captain said. “I was a spineless coward hiding like a rat with all the rest of them.” He motioned toward the crew, who were working at a feverish pace, readying the ship to sail away from Scylla as fast as possible.

  “Scylla wouldn’t have accepted your offer anyway, sir,” said Iris. “From what I understand, you’re not a part of the Hodos.”

  “And what in Zeus’s name is that?” he demanded, nearly spitting in Iris’s face.

  She took a breath, praying silently for patience. “Hodos means ‘the Way.’ You don’t follow the Way of Duna. Apollo—or Python, as you call him—doesn’t trouble himself to capture those who are already on his side.”

  “I’m on no one’s side,” the captain snapped.

  “We’re all on someone’s side, Captain,” said Tycho, stepping forward. “Whether we know it or not.”

  “Do you know what your son was doing before we were attacked?” asked Iris. The captain shook his head, his eyes squeezed closed as if bracing himself to hear what was coming next. “He was praying,” she said. “For you.”

  The captain’s eyes opened, pure crystal tears welling in each one.

  “He wanted you to believe, as he believed, that Duna is the true god. Pontus was following that example of selflessness. You can trust that he has an eternal reward, sir. He did a great thing. A rare thing.”

  The captain’s tears fell uncontrollably.

  Iris and Tycho turned aside, letting him have his privacy as the weight of grief fell down on him like an avalanche. Iris knew the feeling too well. And she knew that no amount of pretty words or consoling embraces could lift it.

  A few minutes later, the Captain heaved a final sob, and uttered his son’s name as tenderly as a father can.

  “I was always hard on him,” the captain said, to no one in particular. His eyes were swollen and bloodshot, his hoary beard wet with tears. His clasped hands shook as the lines in his brow deepened. “He never wanted to be a sailor. Didn’t like the water. But I pushed him…I kept pushing him. He’d only just learned how to swim.” He kicked the ship and buried his head in his hands as rage and regret churned inside him.

  Iris’s heart sank at the sight of him. Overcome with empathy so strong that it mimicked nausea, she placed her daughter in Tycho’s arms. She remembered one of the oracles her ancestor, the first Asher, had written centuries ago: Duna comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are afflicted.

  “I know words are useless, Captain,” she said, placing a hand on his back. “Nothing I can say or do can make this easier. Your son is a hero, and I pray that one day you’ll be able to celebrate his life as much as you mourn it now.”

  The captain wiped his face and nose, and then smiled when he saw a dolphin laughing up at them from the ocean. “My boy’s favorite animal,” he said. “The first time he sailed with me it was because I’d promised he’d get his fill of them. He never did see a single one, though. Only heard about them in the myths.”

  “He never saw them, but he knew they existed. Like Duna,” Iris mused, watching the dolphin jump and greet two of its pod mates, all chattering together in their high-pitched language.

  “Do you…” the captain began, his apprehension reminding Iris of Pontus when he’d asked her to pray for his father. “Do you think I could come with you into to Limén? If you read the letter there, I mean. I think I would like to hear it.” Instantly, his countenance brightened with a mixture of surprise and relief at his own words.

  Iris watched the dolphins swim away as quickly as they’d appeared, as though their mission had been completed.


  “I would love nothing more, Captain,” replied Iris.

  She was tempted to fetch the scroll now and read it from start to finish before the captain changed his mind, but something told her to wait. Faith, she reminded herself, is not knowledge to be acquired, or even a life-shaking event to be experienced. Not at first. At first it is a seed that can’t be forced to germinate and grow.

  Iris thought of her beloved brother, Jasper, named after the blood-red rock that always hung around her neck and was now pressed to her lips. He had died a criminal’s death, burned alive on a pyre at sea, yet he had committed no crime.

  That night at Enochos was indelibly etched into Iris’s memory. She could recall the sadness, anger, and fear she felt then as readily as she could summon the flames from her hands. Of course she’d been furious at Acheron, the sadistic guardian who’d ordered her brother’s execution. But she’d also developed an intense hatred toward the god Jasper had worshipped so zealously. How could Duna let one of his most devoted followers perish at the hands of an egomaniacal brute? How could he do nothing as he watched an orphan child lose her brother and then become slave to his murderer before the night was over?

  Now, every time she thought back to the night when Python intended to destroy her life, she could see Duna’s invisible hands weaving each and every thread—the good and the bad—into a dazzling tapestry. She thought of the beautiful smooth pebbles she and Jasper used to collect from the shores near their home. Their father had said that the reason the stones were so perfect was because they’d been trapped in merciless waves. The constant tossing, rolling, and rubbing together had polished them with more skill than the pagans’ revered Hephaestus.

  Iris believed that she was such a pebble. Had she lived a carefree life sheltered in some quiet cove, she would be rough, unpolished, and devoid of compassion.

  She left the scroll alone with Tycho, but couldn’t help but recite her favorite oracle of all to the captain before leaving him in peace and scooping up Charis again.

  “Captain,” she began, her voice confident and clear, “the oracles wrote this on their tablets thousands of years ago, inspired by Duna to do so. It has proven true time and again in my own life, and in Tycho’s. I believe Duna wants you to hear it now: ‘Python intended to harm me, but Duna intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done.’”

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHLOE

  Chloe Zacharias forced herself to try to see the good in everything. It was a habit instilled in her as a little girl when, at no older than four or five, her mother showed her a rainbow for the very first time. A summer thunderstorm had been busy shaking the windows and picture frames on the wall all afternoon, and while her brother and father were content playing games on the floor, Chloe couldn’t stop crying.

  “Shhhhh, sweet girl, don’t hide or you’ll miss the good part,” her mother had whispered to her as Chloe retreated beneath a threadbare baby blanket.

  “It’s all scary,” Chloe said, curling herself up into a ball on her mother’s lap.

  “I bet there’ll be sunshine soon. And maybe even a rainbow. You wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  “What’s a rainbow?”

  “You’ll just have to wait and see,” her mother said, and winked at her.

  Chloe fell asleep a few minutes later, and when she woke up she was in her mother’s arms on the back porch.

  “Look, Chloe,” her mother had said, pulling the blanket off her daughter’s warm head.

  Feeling a drop of rain from the drip-edge above strike her on the nose, Chloe winced and strained to reach the blanket as her mother set it on the porch swing. “No!” Chloe protested, her body going stiff with antagonism toward the outdoors.

  “Just open your eyes and look at the sky.”

  It was then that Chloe first beheld the majesty of a rainbow, its vibrant bands of color a most soothing valediction after the clamor of thunder and rain. From that day on, she always looked forward to storms for the chance to see rare beauty unveiled. Even if she didn’t see a rainbow, the end of a storm always reminded her of her mother. And she was happy.

  Now it was a crisp fall day, with a few white wisps of clouds in the sky but no threat of a storm. But had Chloe, eighteen years old as of eight o’clock that morning, still had her baby blanket, she’d be hiding under it by now.

  Her aunt Maggie and uncle Travis had been trying to keep the birthday party under wraps all week, but like all other parenting-related activities, surprise-birthday planning was not their forte. On Monday Chloe’s brother, Damian, had noticed the yellow phone book open at the catering section, and answered calls from three different cake companies while Maggie and Travis were “grocery shopping.” Except for a large plastic bag, they returned that evening empty-handed.

  Little clues such as those popped up every day, and Damian and Chloe decided it was best to play dumb. “It’s what Mom and Dad would have wanted,” Damian had said.

  For the life of her, Chloe couldn’t figure out why her aunt and uncle were going out of their way to do something nice for their niece and nephew. Since they’d become the twins’ legal guardians, they’d behaved more like bored babysitters than parents. Damian thought their parents must have written something into their wills about mandatory eighteenth birthday parties for their children.

  Eighteen was a monumental year for Petrodians, one that distinguished them as official adults. In just a few months, Chloe and Damian would be graduating high school and leaving home to make something of themselves, either at the university or in Limén, where they could learn a trade and start earning money in under a year.

  Chloe said to Damian, only half jokingly, that Maggie and Travis were probably in a celebratory mood because they would soon have their house to themselves again. They wouldn’t have to help her with homework, or drive her to doctor appointments when her brother was occupied. Ignoring his own previously stated cynicism, Damian told her to lighten up and enjoy their generosity, whatever the reason for it.

  But enjoying a large group of people she hardly knew, who were presumably at her house to celebrate the day she was born, was a Herculean task for Chloe. That afternoon she watched from her treehouse as thirty or forty of her high-school peers stood around in their various cliques, stuffing their faces with the bright blue, fondant-covered kiddie cake and acting a little too chipper after sipping the pomegranate punch—although she couldn’t blame whoever had spiked it with what she guessed was an exorbitant dose of Nirvána, a psychoactive powder meant only for adults whose social anxiety impeded their ability to work.

  The party’s only chaperones, her aunt and uncle, had been M.I.A. since the party had started over an hour ago, their absence practically asking for their guests to break the law by braying and prancing about like inebriated donkeys.

  Chloe sent a text to Maggie, warning her that the police could have them put in the stocks overnight on grounds of parental negligence, but by the time her aunt had made it to the punch bowl, it had already been drained. At least the evidence was gone.

  Chloe watched as Damian waved a group of guys over toward the dinosaur piñata. After they’d demolished it, they stumbled into the castle-shaped bounce house and let the drugs transform them into juvenile chimpanzees. Chloe rolled her eyes. She might’ve actually had fun at this party were she turning eight and not eighteen—and if the punch wasn’t contaminated. She embarrassed her brother enough without the “relaxing” effects of Nirvána.

  Chloe leaned against the wall on which at least a hundred homemade cartoons were nailed, most of them posted there during her first summer as an orphaned ten-year-old. Starving to escape the ordinary, she’d created extraordinary best friends for herself: a young yellow-haired girl named Rhoda, and Farley, her imaginary dragon. Like Chloe, Rhoda was always alone because, like Chloe, her parents were dead, too.

  Whenever Rhoda was feeling bored or sick or sad, Farley would appear in a puff of smoke, and together the girl and dragon would tr
avel to different places around Petros, stir up mischief, snag a few souvenirs, and then return home in time for dinner.

  Chloe thought she was now too old to have imaginary friends, but she still lived vicariously through the old adventures of Rhoda and Farley, preferring their company to real children her own age. She told herself that Damian had enough social interaction for the two of them. He was the quintessential high-school jock whom every girl wanted to date and every boy wanted to be.

  Chloe, on the other hand, was the invisible nerd that people talked to only when they needed help with an algebra problem. But she knew she had no one to blame for her lack of a life but herself.

  No, that wasn’t true. She could—and often did—blame the car accident that claimed her parents’ lives, and the hit-and-run driver who got away. The first ten years of her life had been an endless daydream, filled with the assurance of safety and sunshine that every child deserves. The day her parents died, a part of her soul crept into an early grave, and every birthday buried it farther down.

  Chloe scooted into a soft sunray and closed her eyes, basking like a lizard in the mild warmth it offered. She watched the colorful squiggly lines behind her eyelids dance and squirm, an activity that helped her fall asleep when her mind was fixed on problems she couldn’t solve. Soon, the cacophony from the party below faded away, muted by the sweetness of an impromptu nap.

  “I know how to swim, Pontus, let me go!”

  Those idiots are trying to go swimming in a sixty-degree pool, Chloe thought, her eyes still sealed shut, ready to plunge back into sleep. Then came her second thought: Who in the world names their son Pontus?

  “It’s Scylla!” shouted a group of voices, not a single one familiar to Chloe.

  Scylla? Chloe groaned and peeled open her eyes. What she saw took her breath away.

  There was water all around her, and it definitely was not a swimming pool. She’d never seen the Great Sea in person, but judging by the deep-blue ocean waves, this was it.