“So you use real weapons in War Games?”
“Yes, but they can’t cause killing blows. They do hurt, though.”
“And, the girls fight alongside the guys in the War Games competitions?”
She looked me squarely in the eyes. “Absolutely. Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Funny, I can’t picture Tia fighting.” I stared into her eyes.
“Don’t underestimate Tia, or Meter for that matter. They’re fierce.” She picked up the charm that hung on the end of her leather necklace. The small, roundish, hammered piece of metal sparkled in the sun’s gaze before she placed it between her teeth and pressed her lips against it.
“Tia make that too?”
“Nah,” she chuckled, removing it from her mouth. “This one’s mine. Can’t you tell the difference?” She lifted her bangled wrist to be close to the necklace’s charm for comparison. “I basically found a piece of scrap metal in class, flattened it out, and then hammered this ‘H’ in the middle. Can you see it?” She bent her neck toward me, holding the charm out. The soft, floral fragrance from her hair rushed my senses. I barely saw the charm.
This close, her eyes looked less green and more like the aquamarine of the ocean. She held my gaze for a moment. Warmth pulsed off her skin in subtle waves. Or was that from my own cheeks?
“The charm.” She raised her eyebrows, tilting her head slightly. “Do you see the ‘H’?”
“Oh yeah. That.” I laughed as my gaze dropped to her necklace.
She straightened back up. “We all have one. A charm necklace, I mean. We made them in Metalworking class. Somehow we need to get you one.”
“Maybe you and Tia should work together. Make a little collection of jewelry.”
“We’ve talked about it. But her designs and abilities are out of my league. We each have to stick to our strengths.” We turned down the path toward the Cloudwell. “She makes jewelry. I make jewelry look good.” She flashed a sidelong smile.
Yes, she did. Remembering Tia’s warning, I asked, “What are your thoughts on romance?”
She smiled. “There’s a place for it, I suppose.”
“Explain?”
“I mean, we can’t engage anyone here at school now. But, maybe once I figure out what I want to do, what my life is going to become, perhaps then I could find someone meaningful. A strong, honest relationship would be important, you know? I can’t tolerate liars.”
My mind wandered to Amalthea, my mother. She’d never found a true love, I don’t think. At least not that I’d seen. I wondered whether she’d even wanted one. Wouldn’t anyone? She’d never spoken of it. At one point, I suspected a love connection between her and Aristeaus. There still could be. I hoped she had recovered from the wound. Somehow, I’d have to get back to see or check in on her.
“Hope you didn’t mind what I did back there with Meter,” Hera said.
I shrugged.
“Don’t get me wrong. I like the tree-hugger. But sometimes she’s a bit naïve. I’m a take-charge kind of girl. She meanders a bit.”
We reached the Cloudwell. I tensed, knowing what waited at the bottom.
“You all right?” She half-laughed.
“Sure.” I stared down the descending clouds.
“You’ve been here before, right? You and the boys went to Othrys Hall last night. Oh … that’s right, you got sick or something, didn’t you?”
My cheeks flooded with heat. “I wasn’t sick. Someone threw a dagger at me and it—” And then I remembered. I did get sick on my maiden Hurler voyage.
“A dagger? Really?”
I wasn’t sure I should say, but I had the urge to tell Hera everything. I nodded.
“You’re serious?”
“Something sharp, at any rate. And it lodged into my back, just as I put my hand on the Hurler.”
She inhaled sharply through clenched teeth. “Oh man. You know what that means? That dagger and its metallic composition are part of you now. The Hurler incorporated its properties into your body when you transported. It’s in your blood.”
I tried to wrap my mind around this new information. My arms and legs looked normal enough. My skin prickled with the anxiety of having this foreign substance inside of me.
“If you’re scared we can always—”
“I’m not scared.” I needed to face this Hurler again. At least there was no dagger sticking out of my back this time. I took a deep breath as we approached the post.
“It’s all right to be afraid.” She gazed at me intensely. “Admitting a fear doesn’t make you less than … It makes you self-aware. Acknowledge the fear, and do it anyway.”
Apprehension knotted my stomach. I dabbed my finger on the sweat on my upper lip. I couldn’t be shown up by both the girls and the guys here.
I looked into Hera’s eyes and knew I could trust her. I slammed my hand on top of the Hurler even as fear curled through me.
Hera smiled. “See, this is why Meter had to stay behind. She’d never be able to push you like I can. I have to know what you’re about. That you’re not just another handsome face. That you won’t mind mussing that hair of yours. You’re still a bit scrawny, though. Don’t worry, Calisthenics class will fix that.”
I smiled, unsure if I was mad at her or intrigued. “I’m my own man. I do what I want.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m serious.”
“Then why didn’t you stay back there with Meter and go to midday meal in the Andron? I know you wanted to. You looked so cute together during class.”
I paused.
“That’s what I thought.” She placed her hand on top of mine and we evaporated into the humid air.
Moments later we reconfigured in the middle of a semi-circular, tree-lined clearing. I wobbled for a moment, and then stood straight. Once I got my bearings again, I checked myself over. Nothing strange or out of place.
I shook off the ride and turned to Hera. “Is there anything you’re afraid of?”
“Failure,” she replied without missing a beat.
After several steps, I asked, “What do you fail at?”
“Nothing, if I can help it. And don’t confuse failing with losing. Losing is all right in the short run, as long as you win in the end. Failing means you’ve given up trying. I never want to be in a situation that’s so bleak that giving up is favorable to trying again.”
“Your parents teach you that?” I asked.
“What parents?” she scoffed. “I grew up on Samos until I started lower academy. That’s when I was shipped off to Euboea. No idea who my parents are. If I ever found them, they’d get an earful.”
“Wait.” I stopped walking. My brain connected two important dots. “That’s where Don went to lower school.”
“Seahorse pride. Yes, indeed. Are you writing our life story on a scroll? Let’s keep moving.”
“But back to your parents … or not,” I said. “You don’t know yours? I don’t know mine either.”
She paused and turned. She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment. She turned glances over her shoulders as if she thought someone was listening to our conversation. “Let’s get one thing straight. I do not talk about my parents. Whoever they are, they abandoned me and I have gotten where I am largely on my own power. End of discussion.”
I clamped my lips shut for the remainder of the walk down the colonnaded corridor. But like it or not, we had a definite connection. Not romantic, obviously. But something.
We turned left from the corridor and stepped through a tall arch into a huge courtyard. It was completely enclosed on all sides by buildings of various heights and widths. My mouth fell open. The structures were amazing. I’d never seen anything like it. It was its own miniature community. This entire concept was so impressive.
“First we need to get you a few blank scrolls, a wax tablet, and some styli for Rhetoric and Philosophy.” She led me to a two-story, faded yellowish-brown
building. The carved wooden sign above the door hung on rusted hooks. It read, Stone, Scroll, and Sword.
“Is that what they sell here, stones, scrolls, and swords? Interesting combination.” I chuckled after I said it.
“Not exactly. Kreios sells all sorts of odds and ends. But it does house a collection of rare scrolls on many subjects,” Hera answered. “The store’s actually named after the game. You’ve never played?”
“What?”
She held her right hand out, palm up and raised her left fist in the air. “Do what I do.”
I matched her, my left fist raised to eye level.
“All right, here are the rules,” she said. “Stone crushes sword. Sword cuts scroll. Scroll covers stone. Got it?”
I nodded.
“So now you pound your left fist on your palm twice and then pick one. Stone, make a tight fist, scroll, hold your hand flat, or sword, thrust your hand and arm forward. It’s always the best out of three. You ready?”
I nodded. We pounded our fists to palm twice. I chose sword. She chose scroll.
“Ha! Beginner’s luck. Round two … ” she said.
I beamed. We raised our fists and then pounded them twice again. I chose stone. She chose stone.
“We tied, rascal.” She smiled. “All right, get ready.”
We played again. I chose scroll. She chose stone. I laughed. “I like this game.”
She bumped me with her hip. “Psssht. I let you win. Don’t get too confident. Let’s go inside the shop.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I sneezed as soon as I stepped inside the semi-dark room. Dust particles drifted toward me through the shaft of light that streamed into the front window. My eyes widened as I took in the sights. Paintings of wild beasts hung on the walls. Wooden checker sets piled on a table against a far wall. An iron bucket sitting in the corner with twenty or so blank scrolls sticking out of it.
“Bucket-o-scrollsss is what that is!” a loud booming voice came from behind a stack of wooden tablets. A bearded mass of a man stepped from around the tablets, emerging into the orange haze of candlelight. “‘Ello there, Hera. Pleasant to see ya this Gaimera. Who’ve ya brought with ya?”
She strode over. “Kreios, this is Zeus, new student at MO Prep. Zeus, Kreios.”
“New student, ya say? Sssplendid. Splendid indeed. Well, you’ll be needin’ supplies ‘ere wontcha, boy?” He lumbered his large frame over to the scrolls. “Now, lemme tell ya about these ‘ere scrolls. We’ve got papyrus ones from the Egypt and the Sumeria. This Blue Nile brand is good. It’s the original, ya know? Not that fake stuff ya might see elsewhere. Like this Lion’s Gate brand from Sumeria is just a knock off. It’s all right, but ya gotta watch what ink ya use on it.”
Kreios pointed to a shelf under the window that over looked the courtyard. “Now ‘ere is your inks and styluses.”
Hera whispered in my ear as she passed, “Styli.”
I picked up a stylus and ran my finger along the metal instrument from the pointed tip on one end to the flat edge on the other. Laid out in my hand, it covered the distance from the tip of my middle finger to the heel of my palm. It appeared similar to the ones we used on Crete.
A box hung on the wall next to the window. I approached cautiously and opened the box slowly. “What’s in this? Another stylus?”
“That, boy, isss the Dragon’s Claw Stylusss. We used to award it to the best student at MO Prep. Until the split, that is. Now we award two at the end of the summer term.”
I reached for the stylus. “May I?”
He nodded.
I turned it over in my palm and felt the substantial weight of it. This was definitely not like anything I’d encountered back home. It emitted a dull rumbling vibration. Slightly shorter than my forearm, it was solidly constructed. “Is this a … real dragon’s claw?”
“Yesss, boy. An’ it’s a devil of a time gettin’ ‘em too.”
“A dragon hunter got this for you, didn’t he?”
“Quite right, my boy.” He turned to light a torch on a wall near the door. “Though, we’re in desperate need of the huntersss nowadays. Population control, dontchaknow.”
My arm continued to vibrate slightly as I held the dragon’s claw stylus. Not enough to alarm. I pressed it into my other palm. Same thing. “Is it supposed to do this?” I asked.
“Do what, boy?” Kreios cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not doin’ anything. You want somethin’ to write on?”
“Umm, yeah.” I questioned the vibration I felt. It could’ve been residual weirdness from shapeshifting, or from the Hurler, maybe. That was a lot for one day.
He brought me a roughly torn parchment scroll others had written on before. He anchored the curled edges of it with a small well of ink whose label read, Erebus. “All right, ‘ere we go now.”
I dipped the stylus into the ink, dark as the night sky.
“Only takes a little.” Kreios looked over my shoulder.
A jolt shocked me as I touched the point down. My arm muscles tensed.
“Never seen that before,” he said.
Each stroke I made against the paper drew a bright goldenrod streak before the ink turned black and seeped into the scroll. I blinked rapidly.
“Hmmm,” uttered Kreios. “Lemme see that thing.”
Hera joined us. “What’s going on?”
Kreios kept writing my name over and over. The yellow streak never happened for him. He handed the stylus back to me. “Do it. Make it do what ya did.”
I took the stylus back, dipped it, and wrote my name. Sure enough, the vibration returned. The golden streaks returned. Lingered, but never stayed.
I set the stylus down with a thud and stepped backward. Tiny pricks and tingles radiated through my quivering hands. “I’m all done. Thanks.”
“Well, boy, you’re a special one, aren’tcha?”
Hera smiled. “You should’ve seen him today in Shapeshifting class. A real natural.”
She’d noticed.
“Well, Zeusss, if you’re the best student at MO Prep, so chosen by your Headmaster, you can ‘ave it. Or one like it.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted that thing. “So who’s won it in the past?”
“You’re lookin’ at her,” Kreios smiled, pointing to Hera who beamed as if he’d patted her on the back.
What if I could become the best student and dethrone her? What an achievement that would be. School used to be a nuisance. But MO Prep was amazing at every turn. No more boring classes. I wanted to prove I could be the best. Though, I knew it would be a tall order.
“All right,” Hera said. “Let’s grab you some blank scrolls, a pad, and a few styli and get going.”
Kreois handed me a small woven bag. “Oh, Hera, d’ya hear about the big wrestling showdown? Looks like it’s gonna be Dagda against Poseidon again. Such a classic matchup. Though, I’m a bit miffed that it wasn’t Menoetius.”
My ears perked. “Dagda?”
“Yesss, boy. Dagda from the Celtic Academy of the Emerald Isle. My sonsss told me this morning. He beat Menoetius pretty bad to win the match.”
I froze. Sons? No way. I thought about the knotheads at the wrestling match. Atlas was the only name I remembered.
“Do your sons wrestle?” I asked.
“No, boy. But they love War Games.”
“Pallas, Astraios, and Perses are his sons,” Hera said. “But they’re harmless. It’s Atlas and his brothers you have to worry about.”
“Ya got that right. They’re bad eggsss. My brother Iapetus put those boys on a crooked path, I tell ya. They’re little hellions now. Used to be nice boysss.”
I scribbled on my new wax pad:
Kreios: Pallas, Astraios, Perses
Iapetus: Atlas, Menoetius …
“Whatcha writin’ ‘ere, boy?”
“Just trying to keep all these names straight. Does Atlas have two or three brothers?”
�
�Three. Who do you have so far?” Hera said. She looked over my shoulder. “Oh, you’re missing Epimethius and Prometheus”
Their images flashed before my eyes. I remembered because they were walking behind Atlas. “That’s right. Epic and Promo. Hard to keep them all straight. But you never know when you need info like this.” I wrote the other two names.
“Hmmm,” Kreios mumbled.
“Thank you,” I said as I turned to leave. “Oh wait, is that it? Do I owe you anything?”
Hera spoke up. “Headmistress has an account set up with all the vendors in the Agora. That’s one of the advantages of being an Olympian.”
We exited into the sun-drenched courtyard, where more people milled. I loved the energy of the place. It was such a contrast from boring Crete. Guys played lyres while girls danced in a line around the fountain in the center of the yard. My gaze traced the top edges of the Agora buildings, which were framed by steep mountains on two sides.
At the far end of the rectangular yard, a bold set of columns flanked the entrance to a theatre. As we drew nearer, I recognized it as similar to the sunken, half-moon structure on campus where Shapeshifting class was held. The word ‘Odeon’ had been chiseled above the entrance. The skene behind the stage was twice as large as the one back on campus. Three doorways stood as immense, rectangular black holes against the ornately carved skene. Rolling Thessalian landscape framed the theatre on both sides.
Two of the white and silver-haired Muses from MO Prep looked to be arguing down on the floor of the theatre. I watched the intensely exaggerated gestures.
“They’re practicing for the end of term performance. They’re so good.”
“A play? I remember reading those in language arts.”
“Yeah, you’ll learn about that in Drama class.” She turned to me. “In lower school we read plays, but here we get to act them out.”
As we strode away from the theatre back toward the center of the Agora, Atlas, Money, Epic, and Promo came from the other side, approaching like a pack of wolves, encircling us. They must’ve just recently arrived.
The Sky Throne Page 9
