Iris the Colorful

by Joan Holub

  “Wow! The wind’s picking up,” Pheme noted. All around the sports fields, trees were swaying, and leaves on the ground were whirling in small tornados.

  “Godsamighty! You’re not kidding,” said Artemis when a sudden gust knocked her into Antheia.

  “I wonder what’s causing it,” mused Iris. She pushed back strands of her hair that had blown into her face, and looked at the sky, half-expecting to see Hermes in his delivery service chariot dipping lower. Sure enough, she spotted his chariot. But it was leaving MOA, a speck disappearing into the distance, and was too far away to have created such a strong breeze.

  “Drat,” said Apollo. He’d paused in his chase to look up as well. He was obviously disappointed to see that he’d missed Hermes’ daily pickup and delivery already.

  “Whoa!” squealed Aphrodite. Iris looked over to the far end of the bleachers to see that an unusually strong gust had tangled the girl’s long golden hair. Now another rush of wind whisked Apollo’s letter-scroll toward Iris’s group. When it landed by their feet, Artemis picked it up.

  Apollo loped down the bleachers, taking them two at a time again, till he stood before Artemis. “I missed Hermes. And Zeus asked me to catalog some poetry in the library today, so I can’t take the scroll to the IM myself,” he said. He held out a hand toward her, motioning for her to give him the scroll.

  Shooting him a mischievous grin, Artemis held it away. “What about our archery practice?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Sorry, Sis. Okay if we skip it? I already promised Zeus to do that library stuff.” He made a grab for the scroll, but she was too fast and held on. But then, seeming to take pity on him, she nodded and handed it over.

  Apollo tapped one end of the scroll in his opposite palm. “I really wanted to get this to Cassandra this morning. It’s—” Noticing that Pheme was there, he clammed up.

  “Why not call up a magic wind to take it to her?” suggested Artemis. Magic winds were random breezes or small gusts of wind that came when summoned and delivered letterscrolls here and there. However, truly important documents and messages, and heavy packages, were usually entrusted to Hermes.

  Before Apollo could reply, Antheia blurted, “Iris and I are going to the IM. We can take your letterscroll for you.”

  Apollo brightened. “Really? That’d be great. Thanks!” He handed the scroll to Iris, who stood closest to him.

  Startled, Iris took it, glancing at Antheia in surprise as Apollo took off for the library. The girls had made no plans to visit the IM. After a morning on the sports fields, they’d talked about getting lunch in the MOA cafeteria, then hanging out in the dorm room they shared on the fourth floor of the Academy. So why had Antheia said that?

  Iris could sense that Pheme’s nosy-o-meter was on high alert. So far the spiky-haired girl hadn’t seemed to guess what was up with Antheia’s one-sided crush. And feeling protective of her BFF, Iris did not want Pheme to figure it out.

  Iris was good at keeping secrets, so she’d never understood Pheme’s complete inability to safeguard them for even two seconds. But the gossipy girl couldn’t help it she supposed. Any more than the other girls could help their talents, like Persephone’s ability to make things grow or Athena’s gift for figuring out difficult math problems.

  Hoping to distract Pheme, Iris shoved Apollo’s scroll into her bag and then drew her arm back. She sent a new ball of magic hurtling high into the air. Brrrng! In mere seconds a traditional arched rainbow arced across the sky. It stretched so far that it was impossible to see where it ended!

  Gasps sounded across the fields. And whoops of surprise and delight. It was the first time Iris had managed such a huge rainbow, so she was kind of delighted herself.

  “Wow! I think that one almost made it to Earth,” said Pheme, excitedly taking notes for her gossip column.

  “Yeah, cool,” Artemis agreed.

  Antheia leaned close and whispered encouragingly to Iris, “With Pheme around to spread the word, Principal You-Know-Who is bound to hear about it and be impressed.”

  Iris nodded, feeling excited about her chances. “And when the moment is right, I’ll spring the big question on him!” She changed her voice slightly, pretending she was asking him right then: “How about making me Goddess of Rainbows, Principal Zeus?”

  She and Antheia giggled.

  “What did you just say about ‘sensible juice’?” Pheme interrupted, having misunderstood Iris’s last two words.

  With a wink at Iris, Antheia corrected Pheme. “No, she said, ‘bendable spruce.’ ” She pointed at the trees that were still whooshing in the wind. Then she went on chatting with Pheme, trying to throw her off the gossip track.

  But Iris barely heard. She reached out to touch the fantastic rainbow she’d made. Was this one solid enough? she wondered. Did she dare try . . . riding it?

  “WHO DID THAT!” boomed a thunderous voice.

  Iris jumped in surprise. So did everyone else on the fields. Then, like all the other students, she looked up to see the one, the only—Principal Zeus! He was flying high overhead, his wild red hair blowing in the wind as he rode his white-winged thunderbolt-carrying horse, Pegasus, across the sky. Returning from duties down on Earth no doubt. Zeus was a busy and powerful guy. Not only was he the principal of the Academy. He was also King of the Gods and Ruler of the Heavens!

  “I said, WHO DID THAT!” Zeus repeated, sounding even crankier now. He was pointing at her rainbow. Everyone turned to stare at Iris. A hush settled over the sports fields.

  Oops! Iris’s eyes widened as she realized what she’d almost done. Or rather, what her huge rainbow had almost done. On its way through the clouds, apparently, it had nearly beaned Zeus!

  His bushy red eyebrows bunched into a V-shape and he frowned more deeply now. At her! The muscles in his arms bulged as he held the reins of mighty Pegasus, and sunlight flashed off the wide gold bands he wore around his wrists. Sparks of electricity prickled around him, a sure sign he was angry.

  “You dare try to strike me with your rainbow!” Zeus roared at her.

  “Strike you? No . . . Uh, I,” mumbled Iris, too scared to form a sensible reply loud enough for him to hear.

  “My office! Twenty minutes!” he commanded.

  Gulp! So much for this being a happy day! thought Iris.

  2

  The Four Winds

  AS ZEUS RODE ON TOWARD the Academy’s main building, Antheia and Iris stared at each other with big, worried eyes. “Want me to go with you?” Antheia offered generously.

  Iris took a deep breath, still feeling rather stunned. She’d never, ever, ever been called to the principal’s office for doing something wrong before. “That’s okay,” she said. “I don’t want to get you in trouble too.”

  “Don’t worry. His boom is worse than his bite,” Athena assured Iris. She’d come over to Artemis and was tossing her pom-poms down onto the bottom bleacher.

  “Thanks,” said Iris, taking heart. “I guess you ought to know, since he’s your dad.”

  Athena, who’d begun attending MOA only that year, grinned. “Mm-hm, but I can imagine how you feel,” she admitted. “Even I was scared to death the first time I walked into his office.”

  “We’ve all been there and come out alive, though,” Persephone reassured Iris. She and Aphrodite had drifted over as well, pom-poms in hand. All four goddessgirls on the Cheer Squad wore matching GG charm necklaces that gleamed and sparkled in the sunlight.

  “Eek!” Aphrodite let out a shriek as the wind began to whoosh again. Her beautiful, long hair lifted out behind her in a golden fan. There were more shrieks across the fields as the sudden strong breeze whipped up chitons and tunics, and students struggled to tug them down.

  “Look! Up in the heavens!” someone shouted.

  Everyone looked up to see four winged godboys overhead, each riding on the separate forceful wind he controlled as they headed toward the sports fields.

  “The four winds? No wonder it’s so cra
zy windy out here all of a sudden!” said Antheia.

  Iris swung around to gaze at her rainbows, worried at what she’d see. Sure enough, all the designs she’d made were now wobbling in the sky. Rainbows should not wobble. That was one of the things she was trying to learn to control. Until she could make her rainbows stronger and sturdier, she’d never dare try to ride them. Traveling via rainbow would surely be a useful thing and prove her talent. But if a rainbow wobbled in the middle of a ride, she’d come crashing down.

  The four godboys and their swirling winds were rapidly moving closer. Although they were as high as the clouds, the effects of their approach were growing ever stronger down below. Eros’s target fell over, and Apollo ran to help him right it. The gusts had grown so forceful by now that some students were sent tumbling head over heels. And these were not students who’d been practicing gymnastics!

  “Back off, blowhards!” yelled Poseidon, shaking his trident at the windy godboys.

  By now they had practically destroyed Iris’s big, amazing rainbow. And all of her other cleverly shaped rainbows too.

  Suddenly one of the wind-boys winged lower, sending a chill over the entire field. Iris shivered. She, Antheia, Pheme, and the four Cheer Squad goddessgirls huddled together near the bleachers for warmth. This had to be Boreas. In Science-ology class they’d all learned that he controlled the cold wind of winter. Now the white-haired boy’s frosty breath blew away the last bit of color from Iris’s fading rainbows. On purpose!

  “I huffed and puffed and blew your rainbows away,” he called out to her. Then he laughed.

  Hmph! She felt like huffing herself. And she never huffed. “Poseidon is right. Those boys really are blowhards!” she grumbled to herself. Boreas had turned the air so freezing cold that she could see her own breath as she spoke.

  Just then one of the windy godboys—this one had brown hair—called to Boreas. With a final whoosh of frigid breath, the white-haired godboy rose and rejoined his brothers. Iris had learned about them in Science-ology too. Zephyr controlled the warm west wind of spring, Notus ruled the hot south wind of summer, and Eurus was in charge of the cool east wind of autumn.

  “Ye gods! Why are they here?” Persephone wondered aloud, holding her hair and the hem of her chiton so they didn’t whip up. Most of the others girls were doing the same.

  “Yeah, I thought it was against the rules for those godboys to travel together,” Iris said, raising her voice. By now everyone was practically yelling to be heard over the strong, loud swirl of the tumultuous winds.

  Aphrodite nodded. “Me too. Because having them all here, blowing winds of different temperatures, could cause a weather incident.”

  Iris and Antheia shared a grin. Aphrodite called even the most important events “incidents.” When the beautiful goddessgirl had caused Paris and Helen to fall in love, thereby accidentally causing the Trojan War, she’d called that an incident too.

  “Something’s up,” Pheme said. “And I’m going to find out what it is,” Her nosy-o-meter was obviously spinning as wildly as those winds! Flapping her wings hard so as not to be blown away, she followed the winds toward the Academy.

  Others began leaving the fields to do the same, including Iris and Antheia. “Pheme’s right,” said Antheia. “Something is definitely up.”

  “Mm-hm,” Iris agreed as they and the Cheer Squad hurried toward the Academy. She had a feeling things were about to turn stormy at MOA.

  However, she was almost glad of the distraction. Because it was taking her mind off her upcoming meeting with Zeus. As she and everyone else dashed for the school courtyard to see what was going on, there were more shrieks from the group as the winds continued to make trouble. Along the way, gusts lifted Iris off her feet now and then.

  “I don’t suppose they could be bringing Lonely Hearts letterscrolls to you,” Persephone called to Aphrodite. The wind snatched her words and blew them back to Iris’s ears.

  “All four of them? Just to bring me a few letters? I don’t think so,” Aphrodite replied. She regularly received letters about crush troubles from both mortals and immortals who joined her Lonely Hearts Club.

  “For sure,” Athena agreed. “Those boys have bigger things to do with their winds. Like whooshing them around to change the seasons.”

  It was true, Iris knew. The winds were busy around the world throughout winter, spring, summer, and fall, which was the reason they always sent the smaller magic breezes to carry mail and simple messages to and from immortals.

  Iris and the others soon reached the marble-tiled courtyard in front of the majestic Mount Olympus Academy. Built of polished white stone and standing atop the highest mountain in Greece, the Academy was five stories tall and surrounded on all sides by dozens of Ionic columns. Low-relief friezes had been sculpted just below the building’s peaked rooftop. Normally the MOA gleamed in the sunlight. But the skies were gloomy now, lending its marble walls a gray cast.

  Iris, Antheia, Pheme, and the four Cheer Squad goddessgirls came to a halt in the courtyard and stared in amazement at everything being tossed topsy-turvy. Scrolls were ripped from students’ hands. Hair whipped and tangled. Potted plants and statues crashed over onto their sides. It was all the girls could do to keep from getting blown over themselves as the four windy godboys touched down!

  Some of the teachers had come outside the Academy to check things out, including Hera, who was Zeus’s wife and Athena’s stepmom. Occasionally she taught a class at MOA, but mainly she kept busy running Hera’s Happy Endings, a wedding store in the Immortal Marketplace.

  Boreas, Zephyr, Notus, and Eurus, whooshed up the Academy’s granite steps. The big bronze front doors opened, and Mr. Cyclops, the one-eyed Hero-ology teacher, stepped out. He greeted the four windy boys in a harsh, reprimanding tone. He was obviously as annoyed as Iris and her friends about the havoc they were wreaking.

  However, after listening to whatever the windy brothers had to say, his expression changed. Now he looked grim and sort of stunned too. He held the enormous front doors wide and stepped aside. “Hurry!” he told them, quickly waving them past. He also said something else that Iris couldn’t hear, then finished with, “He’ll want to hear your news.”

  The four windy gods whooshed past the teacher and inside MOA. Once the door slammed shut behind them, all was calm again. Immediately Aphrodite whipped out a white alabaster comb and began running it through her tangled golden hair.

  As Mr. Cyclops continued to stand at the top of the stairs, the single big eyeball in the middle of his forehead scanned the crowd of students assembled in the courtyard below. “Excitement’s over! Go back to whatever you were doing,” he instructed. Then, along with the other teachers, he turned and went inside.

  “Did anybody hear what the winds told Mr. Cyclops?” Pheme asked everyone, darting among the crowd in the courtyard. But no one had. For a moment her wings drooped with disappointment, but then they sprang back up. She’d probably remembered she could still spread the word about Iris’s nearly bonking Zeus with a rainbow!

  Iris glanced at the courtyard sundial. Her twenty minutes were nearly up. “I guess I’d better go inside too,” she said to Antheia and the other four goddessgirls. “And head for Zeus’s—Zzzt!–office—Zzzt!” With each Zzzt! sound she made, she pressed her index finger to her opposite arm and gave a shocked little jump, pretending Zeus was zapping her with electricity for her wrongdoing out on the fields.

  “I’m sure it’ll be okay,” Athena assured her again as she and her friends moved back out toward the sports fields.

  “Good luck,” Aphrodite called in her bright beautiful voice. By now she’d almost tamed her hair.

  Persephone sent Iris a smile of encouragement, and Artemis gave her a thumbs-up. Even though they were mega-popular, these four goddessgirls weren’t at all stuck-up.

  “What about Apollo’s letterscroll? Want me to deliver it to the IM for you?” asked Antheia.

  Iris glanced down at the bag she still clut
ched in one hand. In all the excitement, she’d momentarily forgotten about the scroll. “Since Apollo entrusted his message to me, I’d better do it. If I’m still alive after seeing Principal Zeus, we can go to the IM together.” She gave a nervous little laugh, though she didn’t think the part about Zeus was funny one bit.

  “Did I just hear you say you’re going to the IM?” asked a woman’s voice.

  Both girls turned to see Hera standing there. Apparently, she hadn’t gone back inside with the other teachers. As usual, her thick blond hair was styled high upon her head. Iris had always thought she was a good match for Zeus, with her regal bearing. Although she wasn’t unusually tall, something about her made her seem statuesque. Probably her confidence.

  When both girls nodded, Hera stepped closer. She was holding a scroll, Iris noticed. “Then would you deliver this letterscroll to the IM for me? I’m too busy to go myself. Zeus and I are visiting, um . . . That is, we have an appointment that will take us away from Mount Olympus today. And it’s important that this message gets delivered this morning.” She sounded anxious.

  “Okay,” said Iris.

  “Thank you. And please, don’t tell Zeu— um, anyone about this,” Hera added in a quiet voice. Then she stuck the scroll into Iris’s free hand, rushed up the granite steps, and pushed in through MOA’s bronze front doors to enter the Academy.

  Iris and Antheia looked at each other in surprise. “Did she almost say ‘don’t tell Zeus’?” Iris asked.

  “That’s what I thought too,” said Antheia. “I wonder what’s in that letterscroll that she doesn’t want him to know? And why didn’t she give the scroll to Hermes earlier when he was here?”

  “She must’ve accidentally missed him like Apollo did,” Iris said. This whole message delivery system wasn’t working, she decided right then and there. Having Hermes come to MOA only once a day (except for the occasional special delivery) obviously wasn’t often enough. Not with all these urgent messages to be sent. If she had the nerve, she’d speak to the principal about it. Ha! Not likely.