Wings of Fury

by Emily R. King

  Just when I thought we had navigated through the worst, the current strengthened, propelling us along, reducing our need to row. Theo remained calm, his orders short and direct. Bronte and I heeded his calls without question. My sister’s color had paled, sweat beaded along her upper lip, and her nausea had returned, but she didn’t quit rowing. In fact, she sang at the top of her lungs, an old tune about Gaea and Uranus meeting for the first time. The lyrics were muddled by the splashing, but her voice carried like a battle cry.

  The hull scraped an outcropping of rocks, screeching so loud I winced. Finally, the waters deepened and the current eased. Bronte sang her last note, and I relaxed my death grip on the oar.

  “That was . . . exhilarating,” she huffed.

  “Can we use the sail now?” I asked.

  Theo studied the path ahead, a narrow channel between two island cliffsides. “Not yet.”

  The current picked up again, swifter than before. Theo directed the rudder at the helm and fought to keep the boat from drifting into the limestone cliffs. Big waves kicked water over the rails, soaking our clothes. I blinked salt water out of my eyes. We were too close to the cliff on my side, and I felt sure that we were headed for a collision.

  We flew up to the wall on the crest of a wave. I stuck my oar out and pushed off as hard as I could. Bronte joined with her oar, and together we drove the boat away and back toward the middle of the passage.

  The gap between the isles expanded, and the current loosened its grip on us until finally we flowed into quieter waters.

  With the passage behind us, we released the sail again and set aside the oars. Bronte and I sat back to dry in the sun. The boat slid past more rugged islands, their cliffs high and steep. Birds nested in their overhangs, hovering around them like bees to a lilac bush.

  Bronte pointed up. “What is that?”

  A domed structure with grand columns sat atop the next isle’s cliff line. From the look of the antiquated architecture, it had been there a long time. Domed roofs hadn’t been built in Thessaly in decades.

  “What are you looking at?” Theo asked.

  “There’s a structure up there,” I said, pointing. My string ring began to glow, but as I lowered my hand, it stopped.

  Peculiar.

  Theo looked up. “Where is it?” he asked.

  “There,” I said, pointing again. Once more, my string ring began to glow while my hand was raised. My pulse began beating in double time. I thought my ring was trying to tell me where to go next. “We should go ashore.”

  “Why?” Bronte asked.

  “I have a feeling.” Since Bronte’s seasickness had returned, she didn’t need much persuasion. “Find somewhere to go ashore,” I called to Theo. I anticipated some resistance, but he changed course.

  The current flowed in our favor. Moments later, we sailed up to the rocky shoreline. My ring glowed brighter. I tucked it into the folds of my still-damp chiton while we navigated the coast in search of a quiet cove or inlet.

  “There.” Bronte gestured at a rocky outcropping. “Are those stairs?”

  Indeed, a crude set of stone stairs led from the sea to the beach. Nothing but the structure above suggested that this isle might be inhabited.

  Theo steered the boat alongside the stairway and jumped off onto the top step with the line. He dropped the bow stones and tied up, then helped Bronte and me disembark. The moment I set foot on shore, my ring quit glowing.

  Now what?

  A steep pathway of switchbacks rose all the way up the vertical cliff. I was exhausted from little sleep and really didn’t want to climb. Every movement felt arduous.

  “Shall we?” Bronte asked. Apparently, she had recovered from her nausea.

  I had led them here—or more accurately, the ring had led us all here, I assumed—so I couldn’t very well turn back. “You first,” I sighed.

  Bronte started up the trail, and I followed. Theo took the rear.

  The ascent was painstaking. Bronte stayed away from the edge, practically hugging the wall. Theo plodded along in his usual steadfast and stalwart manner. He was as fast as a lion on the attack, but otherwise, the man had one pace.

  I took the lead up the final switchbacks to the grassy plateau. The stone structure—a temple—was set on a slight incline away from the cliff edge. Detailed arrangements of roses and doves decorated the entablature. The open façade comprised nine tapered columns, and the other three sides were walled.

  My ring glowed again as I mounted the seven steps to the towering columns, but I hid my hand in my cloak to avoid questions from the others.

  “Hello?” I called into the dim temple. “Hello, is anyone here?”

  A gust of wind stirred the silence.

  “It’s deserted,” Bronte said, going inside.

  “Careful,” Theo warned.

  The tile floor had buckled in places, and the ornate stonework along the cornice had crumbled off and fallen around. In the middle of the tile floor, half covered in dust and crushed stone, the crest of Aphrodite was inlaid.

  “This must be Cythera,” I said in a hushed voice, “the isle Aphrodite sailed past on seafoam before making landfall on Cyprus. This is one of her temples.”

  When Cronus castrated Uranus, his drops of blood spattered the earth and sea. From those drops, the Erinyes were born from the earth, and from the sea rose Aphrodite, come ashore as a fully formed female and, some believed, the first woman ever.

  Theo picked up a toy I would have played with as a girl, a doll with a simple clay face on a cotton body stuffed with straw. It was in relatively good condition, but who had left it?

  Bronte tripped over a tile and fell forward. She caught herself with her hands and stood to brush herself off.

  “I told you to be careful,” Theo said.

  “I was careful. My foot caught on that broken tile. Look. It’s hollow beneath.” She pulled aside the pieces, opening up the hole and exposing a wooden box within.

  We hefted the box out of the floor. The exterior was plain, nondescript wood of low quality. I lifted the lid to uncover a folded piece of parchment inside. Bronte took it out and opened it—a map. A path had been drawn from Othrys to several islands, ending far south at Crete. A tiny pair of wings marked each stop along the way.

  “For traders and merchants?” Bronte said.

  Theo read the map over her shoulder. “The course is too remote. I think it’s something else.” He followed the curved line with his finger. “It stops at every temple of Aphrodite between Thessaly and Crete.”

  “What do the wings mean?” Bronte asked.

  Something about the map tugged at my memory. I took it from my sister to examine it closer. At the bottom, in the right-hand corner, a name was written beside the key. My breath caught. “Bronte, is that Papa’s signature?”

  She examined the mark for herself. “It is. But why?”

  Theo wandered the dais with a look of concentration.

  I waited as long as I could before asking, “What are you thinking, Theo?”

  He pivoted toward me. “Starfall.”

  “Pardon?”

  “A few years back, reports came in of women going missing. The Almighty asked Decimus to investigate.” The back of my neck burned at the mention of Decimus’s name, but I stopped myself from scratching it. Theo went on. “I was assigned to his company. We discovered no one was capturing the women, they were running away—and they had help. An underground group was moving them out of Thessaly to an undisclosed location. We tracked their movements to the sea but never caught them.” He ran his finger down the route, from place to place, all the way to Crete. “This route would have been ideal for smuggling. And look here.” He pointed out a small star, like a comet, near our father’s name. “The emblem of the Starfall operation.”

  “Adrasteia did say Mama and Papa moved refugees,” Bronte said.

  Theo held the doll in both hands. “Their operation smuggled dozens of women out of Thessaly, some with children
. Cronus was convinced that a Titan was conspiring against him. His brothers accused him of paranoia, but the operation was successful for so long, it might have been true.”

  “Was a Titan helping our parents?” Bronte asked.

  Theo considered the route on the map again. “I’m not sure they needed a Titan’s help. This route bypasses naval forts along the coastline and takes advantage of the swiftest currents. It’s risky, but under the best conditions, it would be nearly impossible to follow or chase down a vessel on this path. Still, I wouldn’t discount it.”

  My parents’ sacrifices left me speechless. The risks they’d taken, and the struggles they’d gone through to help others, were immeasurable. I wondered exactly how many women and children were free because of them. And I was intrigued by the possibility that they had teamed up with a Titan.

  Theo passed me the toy doll. “Their work became known as Operation Starfall because trying to find the escapees and their supporters was like trailing a shooting star.”

  “Did Cronus discover that our mother was leading the operation?” Bronte asked. “Maybe that’s why he took her?”

  “As far as I know, he didn’t figure that out. We had been searching for a man. The Almighty would never admit that a mortal was outsmarting him, particularly not a woman.” Theo scratched his beard. “Stavra’s plan was brilliant, really. She correctly assumed that Cronus and his liege men would never think the head conspirator was a woman.”

  Brilliant, perhaps, but ultimately lethal.

  I walked out of the temple and crossed the plateau to the seaside cliff. Scanning the view, I imagined my parents leading women and children up the winding, steep incline to hide them in the temple. How brave those women were to run from their homes, knowing that the consequences of getting caught would be dire. Why had my mother chosen Aphrodite’s temples for shelter? Aphrodite’s place among the gods had always seemed frivolous, but perhaps I had dismissed the goddess of love too quickly. After all, love takes many shapes in a woman’s heart.

  Theo came to stand behind me. He said not a word, but his presence felt immense. I sensed his sympathy before the words left his lips.

  “I’m sorry about your parents.”

  “You’re not the reason they’re gone.” He wasn’t responsible for the death of my baby sister either, yet I still hadn’t entirely decided whether he was culpable for not stopping it.

  “That may be so,” he said, “but I may still express my condolences. I don’t know what sort of man I would have become without my mother to raise me.”

  I glanced slantwise at him. “Well, it’s a good thing I don’t have to worry about what sort of man I will become.”

  He chuckled, but it had an undertone of exasperation. “Is everything a debate to you? Even a compliment?”

  “Especially a compliment. Men compliment women because they want something from them, or to flatter themselves. Oh, look how kind I am! Oh, see how generous I am with my praise! I don’t want your praise. What you think of me doesn’t matter in the—”

  Into the sky, a scream went up.

  Both our gazes flew back to the temple.

  “Bronte.” I took off in a run.

  Theo sprinted after me across the plateau. He nearly surpassed me, but I arrived at the temple just ahead of him.

  Bronte sat crouched in the far corner, her face buried in her knees. I kneeled and rubbed her back. Her whole body trembled.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “They, they, they—the Erinyes.”

  Theo drew his sword and swept it in a circle. His sword would do him no good. No mortal weapon could outmatch the Erinyes’ vicious, brass-studded scourges, and no prayers, tears, or begging could move them.

  In the middle of the temple floor, sunny-yellow narcissus sprouted from the cracks. Sacred to the Erinyes, trails of narcissus were found near the souls they hunted. Sometimes their victims also saw white turtledoves, their most revered animal.

  “Where were they?” I asked, my voice raspy.

  Bronte gestured to the back of the temple where the walls cast foreboding shadows into the corners.

  “Did they speak to you?” Theo asked.

  Bronte shook out her trembling hands and pulled away from my touch. “They surrounded me. I couldn’t see the light of day, then one of them trailed her scourge down my cheek and said, ‘The oath breaker will suffer.’”

  Theo sheathed his sword and strode out of the temple, his shoulders rising and falling with each labored breath.

  “Who were they talking about, Althea?” Bronte asked.

  “It must be Theo.”

  She squinted at me. “You swore an oath too. How can you be certain they aren’t after you?”

  I couldn’t be, which was why my hands had gone icy and I couldn’t catch a full breath. Before we left Thessaly, Bronte had seen the Erinyes at the Mother Temple. Neither Theo nor I had been there at the time. Had they been waiting for him or me?

  The map had fallen to the floor. I picked it up and, for the first time, noticed the words written on the back.

  By the hand of faith, destiny is found.

  Written under it in big letters was one word: moira.

  Clotho said fate worked in mysterious ways. I turned the map over and considered the route from Thessaly to Crete again. Why take the refugees to Crete? Had my mother learned about Rhea’s betrayal? Had she known about Zeus?

  My ring began to glow again.

  Perhaps our mother didn’t die because she smuggled women out of Thessaly. Maybe she died to protect Rhea’s secret. To protect Zeus.

  My ring brightened. I shoved my hand into my pocket to smother the light. Could the ring hear my thoughts? I nearly ran outside, took it off, and pitched it over the cliff, but a soft voice rang in my ears: Trust the Boy God.

  I could not say why my mother had chosen Crete as a refuge for women, and whether that choice had ultimately led to her death, or even whether Operation Starfall had assistance from a Titan. But I did know that, for Cleora’s sake, and for the sake of fulfilling my oath, I needed to return to Crete and try once more to gain Zeus’s partnership.

  I helped Bronte to her feet. On the way out, the eerily bright-yellow narcissus blooms seemed to turn toward us. Bronte stopped at the base of the temple, both hands on her necklace. I left her to collect her thoughts and went ahead to join Theo, who was waiting for us at the cliff’s edge.

  “We’re returning to Crete,” I said. “I understand if you don’t want to—”

  “I have a plan.”

  “So do I.”

  Without so much as a glance in my direction, he said, “We’ll follow yours.”

  The nighttime noise of cicadas and frogs in the woodland hid the sounds of Bronte, Theo, and me crouching in the brush. Returning to Crete had taken us the remainder of the day. As it turned out, Theo and I had similar plans—sail back to the island, make landfall on the south side, sneak inland to the tribe’s camp, and while the north wind slept, distract their guard so we could climb Ida Mountain.

  Our plans were the same in every way except for one.

  “Absolutely not,” Theo said.

  “We won’t have time to sneak past unless you cause a distraction.” I elbowed Bronte in the side. “Aren’t I right?”

  “I don’t know if it matters what he’s wearing.” She monitored the torchlit camp from our hiding place. “They’ll probably spear him dead regardless.”

  Theo’s eyebrow ticked.

  “We need to stun the guards,” I said. “What’s more shocking to a group of women who hardly ever see men?”

  “A nude one,” Bronte agreed, slapping Theo on the back companionably. “Try not to get speared.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Theo muttered.

  He slid out of his clothes, leaving his bottom undergarments on, then stepped out of the brush. In the firelight, the bronze skin across his chiseled shoulders appeared too perfect to be real. The patch of hair covering his solid chest looke
d soft to the touch, like his beard.

  I shook the thought out of my head. It had been too long since I’d lain with a man.

  Theo dropped his undergarments.

  “Well, well, well,” Bronte drawled. “He’s built well for an older man.”

  “Old” was not what came to mind. “Statuesque.” “Chiseled.” “Magnificent.” Any of those. All of those.

  “He really does remind me of someone,” Bronte said. “Why can’t I think of it?”

  “Do you think he knows?” I posed.

  “Knows what?”

  “How handsome he is?”

  Theo glanced over his shoulder at us and smiled as though he had heard us.

  Bronte sighed. “He knows.”

  Theo stepped farther out into the field. His buttocks hardened and softened as he walked.

  “Althea, we need to go.” Bronte picked up my spear and sneaked into the woods.

  I crept around the perimeter of the camp. Theo approached the bonfire, his chest out and chin high.

  “You there,” shouted a guard.

  Euboea.

  I groaned. Of all the warriors we could have encountered tonight, fate chose her.

  “Stop,” she called, drawing her sword.

  Theo halted.

  She approached him slowly, her blade forward. Her gaze wandered down the length of him. “Where are your clothes? Your weapons?”

  “Our boat ran aground,” he began, just as we’d planned. “I swam back to land. My clothes were torn away by the rocks and my weapons were lost.”

  Euboea kept glancing down the front of him. She looked up to the moon and then back to him. Just as I hoped, she saw his nakedness as vulnerability. She held her sword out but did not strike. I sneaked past them to the main footpath. With one last glance at Theo’s naked back, I took off up the dark gravel path.

  I ran with one eye on the treetops. The rope for the message trolley was already moving. Bronte had attached our letter to the line, and it would reach the top before me. I ran faster. The message flew ahead of me, out of sight, but I could hear the line moving through the pulleys and used that creaking noise as my guide. When I was almost to the top, the noise stopped.