“She wouldn’t have. The only women who come now are those fortunate few who hear the rumors about the island. Stavra didn’t want to stop helping women escape their homes, even after your father died, but Cronus’s guard was getting close to finding us. She wouldn’t risk our discovery.”
“She said my father died in an accident?” I got the impression that Euboea knew more, but I didn’t want to inquire too much.
“Unfortunately, yes,” she replied. “From what Stavra told me, she and Tassos were loading a supply boat when the pulley snapped. Your father was swept underwater with the rope, pulled away by the current, and never recovered. His loss changed Stavra. She said that when Tassos drowned, she lost the best part of herself.”
I clenched my jaw, my eyes misting. Learning more about my parents was bittersweet. I wanted to hear about them, but at the moment, I needed to understand something else. “Euboea, who gave you your scars? Was it your parents or your husband?”
“Ida did it, soon after I came here. She performs all of the tribe’s ritual purifications.”
“Ida?” My head whirled. “Wait, are the other women scarred? But why? They’re safe from the outside world here.”
“Safe?” Euboea chortled once, humorlessly. “As long as men still think we’re their possessions to buy and sell and trade, we will never be safe.”
My tag on the back of my neck itched. “But why cut yourselves?”
“Aphrodite is the most exquisite female in the world, the goddess of love. Her perfect beauty draws the eyes of men, who are so blinded by her outward appearance they do not see the goodness in her heart or the worth of her soul. Our tribe knows that our worth doesn’t depend upon our looks. Ida suggested we all perform the ritual to emancipate us from our pasts, and to unite us. I’m safer with my scars. Should my husband ever find me, he won’t want me anymore.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Euboea that the women scarring themselves electively in Thessaly had only increased their popularity among men.
Euboea opened the bath sheet and laid it over my shoulders. She looked up at the moon. “It’s spooky, isn’t it? To think that Selene sees everything, and that she’s indifferent to it all?”
I wasn’t certain about the indifference, but Euboea’s remark brought to mind a question I had been circling around. “Do you think my mother and father had help moving refugees, from anyone else, perhaps a Titan?”
Euboea spoke quietly, as though to avoid the goddess of the moon overhearing her. “Your parents never mentioned a godly accomplice, though I doubt they would have told anyone if they had one. That sort of betrayal against Cronus could start a war.”
Gooseflesh scattered up my arms. I told myself it was the night air on my wet skin, but a war between the Titans would devastate the world, and we mortals would be stuck in the middle.
“Bathing alone at night isn’t safe,” Euboea said, straightening. “No one would be here to help you if something went wrong. Take someone with you next time.”
“I will. And, Euboea? Thank you.”
She pursed her lips. “Why thank me? You pulled yourself out of the water. I probably would have let you drown.”
“Probably?”
“I guess we’ll never know.” She turned to go, then paused. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Stay underwater that long?”
My shoulders still ached, a visceral memory of the burning hands on my back. “I must have caught my foot on something at the bottom of the pond.”
“Yes, but how did you hold your breath for so long?”
“How long was I under?”
“I thought you might have left the pond somehow, without me noticing. Then I saw air bubbles and realized you were still down there. Four, perhaps five, minutes.”
Five minutes? She must have been exaggerating. “I suppose I got lucky.”
Euboea eyed me suspiciously, let out a ponderous “harrumph,” and left me at the edge of the wine-dark water.
15
A message from Zeus was delivered to my tent as dawn in her rosy robe awoke the world. A girl handed me the message and ran off. I was so distracted by what Zeus might want that I didn’t notice until after she left that she hadn’t been wearing a velo.
“What does it say?” Bronte asked, brushing her hair.
I skimmed the brief message on parchment. “His Excellency has summoned me.”
“Hmm.” She sent me a wicked smile and went on in a singsong voice. “Zeus fancies you.”
“What?”
“You said he kissed your neck.”
“He must have kissed a hundred girls’ necks.”
Bronte yawned. She had been up late, cleaning up after the play, which was praised by all who attended. “What happened between the two of you in the cave the night of the kidnapping? For a moment, you gazed at each other so intently, it looked as though I was seeing a pair of battle-ready soldiers, as though you two could rival the heavens. Prometheus would say, ‘Where is there a mightier pair than they?’”
I wasn’t certain how to explain the vision the oracles showed me, so I decided it was best not to put it into words, and settled upon a simpler answer. “Zeus decided to trust me.”
Bronte gave a skeptical “hmm,” and then the two of us stepped outside.
The camp bustled with women busily hanging strings of flowers between tents and from trees while others built up the woodpile in the massive communal firepit.
“What’s all this for?” I asked.
“Tonight the tribe will honor Aphrodite with the spring hecatomb,” Bronte said. “It’s all the girls have talked about since we arrived.”
Across the way, two shepherds led six black ewes and six snow-white rams—tonight’s animal sacrifice to the goddess of love—into a temporary pen at the center of camp. Sometimes as many as one hundred cattle or sheep were slaughtered for a hecatomb.
“Do you notice anything different?” I remarked.
None of the women were wearing velos. Last night before we fell asleep, I told Bronte everything Euboea had told me, both about our mother and about the tribe’s practice of cutting themselves.
“Why are you smiling?” Bronte asked, her tone reproachful. “All their faces are scarred.”
“The first day we arrived, Adrasteia said the tribe wouldn’t remove their masks because they didn’t trust us.”
“So they trust us now?”
“At least one of us.” I bumped Bronte with my shoulder, then took off for the path up the mountain.
“It has to be me!” she called at my retreating back.
She was probably right, but I stuck my tongue out at her anyway.
The morning air refreshed my skin and lungs as I ran up the trail. Last night, I had been plagued with nightmares about fiery hands groping my body. I had no explanation for what I’d seen or felt in the pond, and until I did, I wouldn’t tell anyone about it.
Upon reaching the top, I called ahead into the cave. “Hello?”
No one answered.
I stepped inside and drew up short. The walls had been stripped of most of their luxurious silk drapes. What remained of them bore slashes, as though a pride of lions had come through and shredded them.
My gaze fell to Zeus sprawled out on his belly on the floor, unconscious. “Stars above,” I cried, and ran to him.
Kneeling, I turned him over, and he grinned.
“Divine day, Althea.”
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Playing dead.”
“Why?”
“It’s a common offensive ploy.”
“You scared me.”
He sat up. “The colonel doesn’t care for that maneuver either.”
“I imagine not.” I pushed to my feet and looked around again. “What happened here?”
“Theo and I practiced swordplay yesterday,” Zeus said, rising. “I kept retreating out of his range on the beach, so he moved us here to the cave. I
t made for a bit of damage.”
With the draperies gone, I could see the painted pairs of wings on the stone walls. They resembled the ones we’d put on my mother’s gravestone. Wings had many meanings, but to my mother, they’d represented the basic shape of each person’s soul, and its ability to soar beyond this life and into the hereafter.
“Where did these come from?” I asked.
“My mother had them put up, the night I was born, I think. Perhaps just before. She labored a long time to deliver me. Ida painted them at her behest.”
I counted the wings—five pairs in total. “What do they represent?”
“There is one set of wings for each child Cronus swallowed. The Almighty has no qualms about murdering his own children.” Zeus shoved at his messy hair and laughed lightly to dispel his darker mood. “May I offer you something to drink and eat?”
“Yes, thank you. I ran here without stopping for breakfast.” I strolled over to the platters of fruit and sampled berries while he poured us drinks from two different pitchers. He handed me a chalice of wine. “Don’t confuse your drink with mine. Your death would be difficult to explain to Colonel Angelos.”
I asked after the contents of his chalice. “Nectar?”
“You won’t tattle on me, will you?”
“Not a chance. I’m no sycophant.” I sipped my wine and held back a cough. It was strong. I doubted it had been watered down at all. “How is training?”
Zeus swallowed half the contents of his chalice before answering. “Abysmal. Colonel Angelos is a bear.”
“That’s what the other soldiers nicknamed him.”
Zeus nearly spit up his next sip of nectar. “He’s relentless! The only reason I’m not training with him right now is that I said I was nauseated, so he let me sleep in.”
“I thought you said you never lie.”
“At times, when the fib is benign and it behooves me, I will stretch the truth. Last night, after running for hours, I vomited all over his sandals.”
I snorted. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”
“Go ahead. It’s humorous, isn’t it? I’m the only child Rhea managed to save from her dastardly husband, and I’m the worst Titan ever born.”
“Self-pity doesn’t suit you.”
“Oh, but it’s so tempting.” Zeus stretched out on his mound of pillows and considered me over the rim of his chalice. “I heard you and Bronte won over the tribe. They’re a difficult group to appease.”
“They’re just tired of wearing their velos. We’re hardly good company.”
He tipped his head to the side. “Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Minimize your accomplishments? Remind people of your faults?”
“Help me remember who just said he’s the worst Titan ever born?”
Zeus raised his glass. “You’re not wrong.”
“You’re the one who said it.”
“Yes, and I never lie. My performance of late has been less than noteworthy. Every genuine effort I make toward progress ends in failure.” Zeus sank his head back and stared up at the ceiling. “What if I cannot do it?” His voice came out so small, I nearly missed his question.
“Do what?”
“Make my mother proud.”
My shoulders lowered, releasing some of the tension. “Your mother is already proud of you. You’re her son, and the heir to your father’s throne.”
“Those are hardly things I earned.”
“So earn them. Become the god she believes you are.”
His gaze fastened on me. “Was your mother proud of you?”
The question hit me from the back, burning almost as much as those invisible hands in the pond. “I—I think so.”
“Would she be now?”
His concentration rattled me. I paced away to give myself a reprieve from his stare. “Did you summon me here to discuss my mother? Everyone else has things to say about her.”
“I never met Stavra, though I’ve been told she was indomitable,” Zeus said, “until Cronus finally caught up with her.”
“That’s been the fate of many women.”
“I ask because I’ve always wanted a family.” Zeus’s attention swung to the wings on the wall, symbols of his lost siblings. “I would prefer a world where my father doesn’t wish me dead, but evidently, that’s asking too much. Even knowing he would end me without batting an eye, I don’t hate him. He has a vast family, and most of them support him, but he only thinks of himself, his own needs and desires, how to retain his precious throne. I pity him.”
I swung back toward Zeus. “Your compassion must be why fate chose you.”
“Does fate choose us?”
“Sometimes I think so.”
“Why? What comfort comes with turning over control to a cosmic power?”
I stared down at my chalice. “I hope there’s a reason for the pain, for the tragedies and the loss. Believing in fate means trusting that everything will turn out as it should.”
Zeus straightened, and his face lit up. He jumped to his feet, pulled the chalice from my hand, and set it aside. “He’s here.”
“Who’s here?”
“Come along. You’ll see,” Zeus said, dragging me out of the cave.
We stood outside, the Boy God vibrating with excitement. I had never seen him so happy, not even with his horde of giggly maidens, yet the trees were quiet, and nobody came up the pathway.
“What’s going on . . . ?”
He tilted my chin up. “There.”
At first, all I could see was the sun, and I had to shield my eyes. Zeus nudged me to look again. A sunbeam took shape in the sky, turning into a golden chariot drawn by four white-winged steeds with long blond manes and matching gold barding. The driver landed the chariot in the clearing outside the cave. I had to blink several times before he came into focus. I didn’t need anyone to tell me this young man was a Titan.
Everything about him was eye catching. His floor-length dark-burgundy robes with the high collar that framed his face, a simple yet practical style often worn by the desert nomads from the east to protect them from sunlight. His majestic crown was like the shining aureole of the sun. On his left earlobe, he wore a half-sun cuff that spanned the whole length of his ear and spiked out like rays. His hair was cut short on one side and long and shaggy on the other, the color a golden red I had only ever seen in the kitchen fire that Cleora had lovingly tended to in the temple. He was clean-shaven, and gold lined his eyes, tapering out to appear catlike. His eyes themselves were molten, almost luminescent, contrasting with his rich brown skin and intensifying the stunning perfection of his splendor. Even his red lips shone glossy, as though he had just sipped morning dew from a rose.
The driver stepped down, and a tremor shook the crags and forest under his immortal feet.
“Helios!” Zeus said, jumping on him.
“Cousin,” the visitor replied. “You’ve grown since I last saw you.”
“You come too seldomly. I see you fly over every day.”
“Work, work, work. I should visit you in the evenings, but by then, I’ve flown halfway around the world, and I’m exhausted.” He hugged Zeus again. “I brought you something. Metis has been pestering me day and night. I cannot return without a letter for her, so you best write your response quickly.”
Zeus snatched the letter from Helios and went into the cave.
The Titan god of the sun laid eyes on me. “Good day.”
I couldn’t find my tongue. Somehow, it had fallen out of my open mouth.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Helios took my hand in his and raised it to his lips. A warm zap went through my skin, an exquisitely euphoric feeling. “Would you like to meet my horses? They’re friendly.”
Helios was quite simply dazzling. Even when I blinked, I saw his light behind my eyelids. “Ah, all right.”
“They were bred in the east, in my homeland. My father keeps his most prized stallion in his stables at his home
in Coral Mansion. That stallion stud has fathered every horse that has ever flown this chariot.”
I nodded dumbly. The Titan Helios was here, telling me—me—about his father, the first-generation Titan Hyperion, the god of light. The Fourth House, the pillar of the east, was known for two things: horses and cultivators. Many of its people migrated all over the world to plant and harvest crops. They could supposedly grow any plant or tree in any climate or soil. A superstitious lot, the eastern nomads were permitted to pray to Gaea because of their kinship to the earth. They were the only exception Cronus made regarding the worship of his parents, besides the vestals, who were allowed to worship Gaea because he didn’t want to incur any more of his mother’s wrath.
I petted the coat of one of Helios’s steeds. Unlike other horses, they didn’t have hair but short, birdlike feathers that were downy soft. One of them raked the ground with his front hoof and snorted.
“He likes you, Althea,” Helios said.
“How do you know my name?”
“I see and hear all, which is a blessing of being the god of the sun. Or curse, depending on your point of view.” He grinned, showing his radiant teeth. “My cousins say I’m a pragmatist, but don’t worry. I can keep a secret.”
I wasn’t certain what secret he meant, but then it occurred to me that he was reassuring me that he wouldn’t betray Zeus. I wondered how many other gods knew of his location, and what sort of threat that presented to our plan.
Zeus returned with another parchment. He blew across the wet ink to dry it and then rolled up the letter and passed it to his cousin.
“What did Metis say?” Helios asked.
Zeus shrugged nonchalantly. “She asked me to pick a special flower from Ida’s garden and keep it with me at all times.”
“And when you look at it, you’re to think of her.” Helios grinned. “Shall I describe your betrothed’s loveliness for you once again?”
The Boy God blushed. “I’ve heard about it enough, thank you.”
I turned toward him, shocked. “You’re betrothed?”
“To his cousin, an Oceanid,” Helios answered, wagging his eyebrows.
Oceanids, daughters of Oceanus, were notoriously clever and charming beauties. Many a sailor had been beguiled by the tricksters, who delighted in harassing mortal men. “Zeus, have you ever met Metis?” I asked.
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