Wings of Fury

by Emily R. King

  “You’re motivation. Zeus acts quickly when others are under duress.”

  “It’s a good thing I continue to need saving,” I snapped, trying to shove past him.

  Theo cut me off. “Althea, that’s not what I meant. Zeus needs a cause, something that motivates him to think about someone other than himself. Look how he responded when you almost fell out there. He rushed to your aid.”

  “Only, I ruined your plan. I should have let him save me like a good little girl, right?”

  “What do you want from me?” Theo demanded. “I’m doing all I can to make something out of that boy. He has everything—everything—in the palm of his hand, and he squanders his strength away on pints of nectar and pretty maidens. Zeus might become a hero, but it won’t be me who teaches him.”

  “Theo,” I said exasperatedly. “You cannot give up. You don’t give up.”

  “I need time to think.”

  He stalked away.

  Theo was disproportionately upset over what was just a bruised leg. Something else must have been bothering him. Maybe the waiting, the wondering, the worrying, not knowing how his mother was faring. Didn’t I feel similarly impatient and frustrated? Wasn’t I ready to leave?

  The moment Theo disappeared into the woods, Zeus rejoined me.

  “Althea, I’m sorry—”

  “I’m fine. Don’t bring it up again.”

  He shoved his sweaty hair out of his eyes. “Theo doesn’t understand what it’s like. He doesn’t have to stand up to Cronus.”

  “He’s trying to help you.”

  “He’s trying to save his mother,” Zeus said seriously. “And you’re trying to save your sister. Neither of you cares if my father casts me into Tartarus, as long as your families are safe.”

  I jolted. “That isn’t true.”

  “Isn’t it?” Zeus began to turn away, then stopped. “You may have your qualms about the outside world, but at least you’re welcome there. If I leave here, Cronus will discover I’m alive and stop at nothing to destroy me.”

  Every word of my oaths boomed through my mind. “I know what’s at risk. My mother died.”

  “So will we. We might as well stop pretending we have a chance at defeating the God of Gods.”

  My temper flashed, hot and fast. “Fine. Go back to drinking and fornicating and hiding. My first impression of you was right. You are just like your father.”

  Zeus’s face fell, and I immediately regretted my words. I hadn’t really meant it.

  “Zeus, I’m—”

  “You’ve said enough.” He marched off into the woods.

  I didn’t know who to follow, Zeus or Theo. The answer was neither. I should never have listened to the oracles and come to this place. Believing in fate had wasted time and distracted me from fulfilling my oath. I should have known better than to trust a cosmic power. Faith always failed me.

  A tingle coursed down my spine. I turned to see Ida behind me, watching me. The frowning nymph beckoned me with the crook of her finger, then disappeared down the path that led to her cottage. I didn’t care to speak with her, but I still needed a remedy for Bronte’s fever. Favoring my sore leg, I trudged after her.

  18

  Ida had left the front door cracked. I approached it, walking on the stepping stones between the beds of colorful flowers, and pushed inside. The interior was meticulously clean, with a shiny floor and well-crafted wooden furniture engraved with detailed leafy vines. The ivy décor continued in the form of real plants. Their pots were everywhere: on the side tables, chairs, shelves, and in the corners of the room. My nose picked up hints of aloe and basil, but I didn’t recognize many of the herbs and plants. Bronte would have adored this collection. She could probably have identified them all. I followed the sounds of clinking and clanging to the kitchen at the back.

  The blonde nymph placed a kettle over the fire in the wide stone hearth. “I’m preparing a tea for us,” she said. “Take a seat.”

  I sat in a low chair.

  “I sense two great burdens on your soul, Althea Lambros.” Ida turned her bright-green eyes on me. “The Erinyes hunt you, and you’re afflicted by a curse.”

  “How . . . how can you tell I’m cursed?”

  “I saw the blight on your soul the second we met—it’s like a black spot.” She touched her chest to indicate the same spot on my body. A chill emanated through me. I looked down at myself, but I saw nothing there. “Your soul is resisting the curse, but you cannot hold it at bay forever. Symptoms will soon manifest.”

  “What symptoms?” I asked, thinking of the burning sensation of my tag.

  “Hard to say.” Ida set out two cups. “The symptoms will vary depending on the syntax of the curse.”

  “How do you know so much about curses?”

  Her lips spread into a cutting smile. “I’ve seen much pain in my long life.”

  “Can the curse be broken?”

  “The only way to break it is for the benefactor to revoke it,” she said. “In doing so, the curse would claim the benefactor’s life as compensation. If he perishes before it’s revoked, the curse will drive you mad until eventually you also perish.”

  My stomach sank. Decimus would never release me from his curse, especially not at the expense of his own life.

  Ida poured tea. “Drink it all. It will ease your headache.” I stared at the steaming cup. “Drink,” she pressed. “I’ve nothing to gain from poisoning you.”

  I sipped a little. The astringent taste dried out my mouth but wasn’t entirely off-putting. “Do you have anything for fevers? My sister Bronte is unwell.”

  Ida dropped a small bag of herbs on the table. “This will help.” She then set a damp cloth and bandages beside me. “For your hands.”

  I cleaned my blisters and wrapped the bandages around my palms. “How did you know the Erinyes are pursuing me?” I asked.

  “Their prey reek.” She sniffed the air and made a face. “Like a rotting wound. The Erinyes will continue to hunt you, either until you fulfill your oath or they catch you.”

  “They won’t catch me,” I whispered. When I became a prisoner of Cronus, and Cleora and Bronte were safe, my oath would be honored, and the Erinyes would no longer hunt me.

  Ida raised a single pointer finger. “There is another way,” she said as though she had read my thoughts. “You could ask them for an atoning task.”

  “A what?”

  “Think of it as a back door.”

  My breath caught momentarily. A way out?

  “Be careful, though,” Ida warned. “The Erinyes are tricksters. They would just as soon torture you to death as offer you a break. Their mercy is fickle.”

  An atoning task didn’t sound like a solution after all.

  Ida picked up her belt of knives and spread them out on the table. “They will come for you very soon. I can help you if you wish.” She pulled an old, sharp-looking scythe from its sheath. “We have a ritual on the island. Every girl of age has undergone it.”

  “You mean the ritual cuttings,” I stated.

  “With this rite, your fear, sorrow, and pain will hurt you no longer. You will be more focused, more resolute, more capable of fulfilling your oaths.” Ida lifted the scythe between us. “What pain would you remove?”

  I knew instantly—my memory of the night my mother died.

  Ida ran her finger down the curved blade. “This scythe was forged from a shaving of the adamant sickle that Cronus used to castrate Uranus. When Rhea gave it to my sister and me in exchange for guarding her son, I remembered my apprenticeship with Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, before she became a councilor to the Almighty, and I found a greater purpose for this great tool. The scythe’s godly power can wash away the bindings of the mortal world. Emancipation means cutting ourselves loose of the bindings that tie us down. Elevation requires separation.”

  “If the ritual is so great, why haven’t you done it?”

  “Adamant works differently on nymphs and immortals.”
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  I thought of how Cronus’s sickle castrated Uranus when no other weapon could. “Why faces? Why not cut the women somewhere less visible?”

  “Every time they look at themselves, they see a courageous woman who took destiny into her own hands.” Ida ran her fingers up and down her arm, over her tattoos of roses. “Each flower represents a woman who has gone through the renewal of self, letting go of her past and growing into her potential. The power of the adamant bestowed these markings on me as the wielder of the blade. The women wear their scars with pride, and I wear these, their hopes.”

  The night my mother died replayed in my head. I was haunted by every detail, straight down to the musty smell of the birthing room. I couldn’t undo my oaths or the curse, but I could unburden myself of my guilt and sorrow. The shameful truth was that if I had not feared Cronus, I would have immediately traded myself for Cleora. My own greatest fear—that I would perish like my mother—had kept me from fulfilling my oath.

  Ida walked over to a chair fitted with adjustable bindings for wrists, ankles, chest, and neck. I realized this was how she bound her victims before slicing their faces.

  “Uncomplicate your life,” she said. “A moment of pain for a lifetime of joy. It’s more than most people could ever hope for.”

  Indeed, many women would agree. Cleora had been willing to burn her face, with no guarantee of forgetting her pain. So were countless others. The thought of unburdening myself was tempting. Too tempting.

  Ida approached me with the scythe, a sort of wildness in her eyes. “You see something inside yourself that you want gone,” she said. “Free yourself from the bonds that tie you to the past so that you may move forward and fulfill your oaths without fear.”

  Staring at the blade, I imagined the relief of not carrying all this grief, all this anger. I could face Cronus without fear. But my mother had suffered too much for me to forget all that she had sacrificed. Her example, sealed with her death, pushed me to do better. As imperfect as I was, I wouldn’t wish that away.

  “I’ll take my chances with the Erinyes.”

  Ida’s lip curled. “The Erinyes will not be merciful.”

  “No, but they will be fair.”

  As I turned to go, Ida slashed out at me. I caught her wrist and twisted it back, aiming the scythe at her throat. Terror froze her face.

  “You may have forced your ideas on others,” I hissed, “but not me.”

  “I set the tribe free,” she snarled. “They live without putting a man first. They can do what they want, become who they want.”

  “As long as they stay on the island,” I countered. “What of the rest of the women in the world? We cannot continue to harm ourselves in an effort to meet men’s expectations. We must stop shrinking ourselves to accommodate them.”

  “The world doesn’t care what happens to women and children. You cannot change men, and you cannot change the gods.”

  I wrenched the scythe from her grasp. “I can rise despite them, despite what you and they would have me believe about myself. I used to think the world didn’t belong to women. We were spectators, disciples, slaves. But this world is ours.”

  I dropped the scythe on the table and strode out of the house.

  My hands shook. Thanks to the tea, my head hurt less, but that merely amplified my aching heart. For all my assertions of bravery, I had never felt more cowardly. Leaving the island wasn’t running away. It was righting a wrong. Bronte would be safe with the tribe, and I could send Cleora here to join her. My obligation, my oath, would be satisfied. So why did I feel like I was abandoning Zeus and Theo?

  I twisted my ring. I was wary to trust its authority, but I needed reassurance that I could face Cronus on my own. Whatever cosmic force powered my ring, I wanted to know that I had worth beyond the fulfillment of my oath. Beyond fate’s use for me.

  What makes a soul precious? Is it what we do for the gods, or what we achieve in spite of them?

  A few paces beyond the porch, I halted. The front of the cottage looked different. Narcissus had taken over the flower beds, choking the other flowers with so many yellow-starred blooms that I could scarcely count them all.

  A hissing came from above. I glanced up at three winged women perched on the roof watching me with burning red eyes. A shiver crossed my scalp.

  The Erinyes.

  I retreated a step, then two. Another step, and one of them slithered her brass-studded scourge across the roof threateningly.

  “You’re almost out of time,” she hissed.

  “I’m going to fulfill my oaths,” I said, my head held high. “I figured out a way to see that both Bronte and Cleora are safe.”

  “Not enough.”

  Her words drove through me, as swift as a blade. “What else can I do?”

  The three harbingers of justice stood and shook out their wiry wings. The same one spoke. “You’ve three days.”

  “Three days? Three days until what?”

  They stretched their wings—their spans more than twice their height—and dropped off the back of the roof.

  I ran around the cottage, searching for them. “Three days until what?” I pleaded.

  But they had vanished.

  19

  Bronte wasn’t in our tent. I found her sitting under a tree in the schoolyard teaching a song to a group of girls. After meeting with Ida, seeing the young girls’ scarred faces was too much. What past had Ida freed them from? None. The girls had paid for the fears of others.

  Bronte spotted me and frowned. “Girls, we need to take a break. Why don’t you go play? I’ll join you in a little while.”

  The girls groaned in complaint but ran off to the clearing to play ephedrismos, a piggyback racing game.

  “What happened to you, Althea?” Bronte asked. “You look like death.”

  “I’m not the one who had a fever this morning,” I replied. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  “Euboea said I had too much opium. She gave me a seaweed tea that helped.”

  I had forgotten the remedy from Ida in the cottage, so this news was a relief.

  “Where did you last see Euboea?” I asked.

  “After she gave me the tea, she left to fish. What’s wrong?”

  “Not here.” I tugged Bronte inside the schoolhouse and checked to see that it was empty. “The Erinyes visited me.”

  My sister bit her lip. “What did they want?”

  “They gave me three days to fulfill my oaths.”

  Bronte rested both hands on a desk and hunched forward, her expression grim. “What are we going to do?”

  I appreciated her taking on this dilemma with me, but this was not her problem to solve. I had to return to Thessaly. Traveling there would take two days, leaving me just one day after I arrived to figure out how to convince Cronus to take me instead of Cleora before the Erinyes dragged me down to Tartarus.

  Shouts came from outside the schoolhouse. We ran out to see women grabbing shields and spears and darting off into the trees.

  “Sea dragon!” one woman cried. She was drenched and covered in sand. I recognized her as one of the women who fished with Euboea.

  Bronte and I dashed for our tent to collect our weapons—her bow and arrows, my spear and shield. As we ran toward the sea, some warriors began returning from the beach. They were retreating. With them was Euboea, who was bleeding from a slash on her arm and another on her head. She stumbled forward with blood dripping down her forehead and between her eyes.

  Bronte slipped her arm around her waist to steady her. “What happened?”

  “A sea dragon attacked the boat,” Euboea replied. “Smashed it to pieces. My crew and I swam to shore. It followed us. The colonel held it off so I could get away.”

  A gut-shaking roar sounded in the distance.

  “Is Theo still there?” I asked.

  Euboea nodded.

  “Take her back to camp,” I told Bronte, then I took off for the beach.

  I ran out past the tree line and s
tumbled to a halt. A sea dragon, half beached on the rocky shoreline, bent its long neck downward and nipped at Theo’s sword.

  The beast was massive, with sleek scales in every shade of the sea; large, pearly teeth; and big round golden eyes. Tapered horns protruded from her head, accented by spiky whiskers that extended away from her bony cheeks like a groomed mane. Tall spines rose from her vertebrae, connected by skin that formed a sail. Her squat, serpentine body—built for maneuvering gracefully in the water—was lodged in the sand. Her short hind legs strained under her weight, and her front claws, with talons for gripping and slashing, had limited reach.

  Theo swung at her. The dragon grabbed him with her teeth by the back of his shirt and lifted him off the ground. He dangled as she shook her head. His weapon fell to the sand, and she tossed him, soaring, into the water.

  I ran at her with my spear and shield. She batted me aside with her front claws. I flew down the beach and landed in a heap, my weapon and shield beside me. She smashed my shield and my spear under her weight, then arched her head down to peer at me, her eyes luminous. Her snout was longer than my whole body. She peeled back her teeth, her nostrils flaring.

  “You smell like a—”

  “Ahhhh!” Zeus barreled out of the trees, sword in hand, and slashed at her.

  The dragon reared back her head, blood dripping down her cheek.

  I scrambled to my feet and retrieved Theo’s fallen sword. Zeus stood between the dragon and me. I scanned the shore and sea for Theo, but I didn’t see him.

  The dragon lowered her head and used it as a battering ram to knock Zeus to the ground. She began to snap at him, then jolted upright.

  “You’re a Titan,” she growled.

  Zeus rose to his feet. His sword had fallen out of reach.

  She sniffed the air over and over. “Your blood . . . It cannot be.”

  Zeus eyed his sword.

  “It’s true,” the dragon continued. “My snout does not lie. A child of Cronus lives . . . but not for long.”

  She peeled back her lips, her pearly teeth shiny with saliva, and lunged. He dodged her, leaping to the side. His sword was almost within range. Zeus ran to it, and the dragon pursued, but she maneuvered too far inland and couldn’t wriggle any farther up the beach. Just before Zeus got to his sword, she tossed a wall of sand, showering him and burying his weapon.