by Joan Holub
“You found Thanatos!” Artemis noted gleefully.
“No, he found me!” said Nyx, her heart lifting at the sight of her birds. Erebus had spotted the parakeets too, and gave a joyful whinny. Hearing him, the two birds circled down to land on his head, clinging to his fluffy mane.
Spotting her hounds down below, Artemis swooped to pick them up too. “Just in case Echidna decides to come after them,” she commented. Once on board, Suez and Nectar settled at Artemis’s feet, while Amby sat in Persephone’s lap. As the chariot rose again and the wind whistled past it, the beagle’s long floppy ears streamed behind him. Soon Nyx’s parakeets fluttered over to land on her shoulder. Fortunately, the tired dogs ignored them.
While Artemis guided the chariot back to MOA, Nyx told the four goddessgirls the story of how she’d come to be holed up in Echidna’s cave and how she’d finally managed to escape when her birds’ singing caused the monster to fall deeply asleep . . . for a short time, anyway. She also explained her theory about Thanatos finding her because he’d spotted her chariot. “Too bad I had to leave it behind. But I’m glad Erebus escaped, or you might never have known something was wrong.”
Artemis cleared her throat. “Speaking of something wrong,” she said, shooting Nyx a strange look over her shoulder. “It’s been a crazy few days since you left. Remember those shadows I thought I saw flitting from your bag that first day you arrived?”
“The Oneiroi!” Nyx exclaimed. She pulled Eos’s notescroll from her pocket and read it aloud to the other girls. “I feel so stupid for not realizing they’d followed me to MOA,” she admitted to Artemis. “And for thinking you’d only imagined you’d seen something.”
“S’okay,” said Artemis, sounding oddly relieved. “We all make mistakes.”
“Not me,” quipped Aphrodite. “I’m perfect.” Which made them all laugh.
Puzzling over the note of relief she’d heard in Artemis’s voice, Nyx hoped these girls hadn’t suspected her of deliberately bringing the Oneiroi to MOA!
“When we left this morning to come find you, Zeus and Hades and a bunch of other students and teachers at MOA were out searching for the Oneiroi,” Persephone informed Nyx. Then she explained how she and Hades had gone looking for Nyx in the Underworld when night failed to come and how the real Hypnos and Thanatos had told them that the Oneiroi were missing. “Hades says they’re not going to be easy to capture.”
“Especially with everyone being so cranky and not thinking clearly due to lack of sleep lately,” Aphrodite remarked. She had coaxed Hypnos to fly to her palm and was stroking the bird’s feathers. “The combination of continual daylight and all the Oneiroi-inspired dreams and nightmares has done everyone in.”
“Dad and Hera are more tired than ever,” Athena added with a sigh. “Hebe seems to sense there’s no night and stays awake even if the curtains are closed against the sun. Everyone’s been making blackout curtains to hang over their windows, which helps some people sleep at least.”
“Yeah, but MOA is starting to feel as closed in and dark as a tomb,” Artemis said.
Nyx felt her chest tighten with worry. “I guess Zeus is even madder at me now than he was before.”
There was an uncertain silence. Then Athena hastened to reassure her. “He’ll calm down when we explain what happened.”
But having seen Zeus lose his temper, Nyx was not comforted.
Their chariot was about halfway up Mount Olympus, passing above the Immortal Marketplace, when Nyx’s two parakeets suddenly flew off! The girls craned their necks to follow their path. “They’re making a beeline for the IM!” said Athena.
The birds sailed over the glass-ceilinged marketplace till they came to an open skylight. Then they dove through it. “That skylight leads into the Ship Shape pet shop!” Persephone exclaimed.
“We have to follow them. I’m so sorry!” Nyx apologized. “They probably heard other birds chirping in there and wanted to join them for a while.”
“So we’ll take a little detour. It’s fine,” Artemis assured her. After circling the skylight, she landed the MOA chariot at the marketplace entrance closest to the shop. Nyx slung her sparkly black bag over one shoulder.
As she and the others got down from the chariot, she wondered what she should do about Erebus. Normally, she’d snap him away until her return. However, when he’d bolted from beside Echidna’s cave he might have damaged the magical link between him and the chariot that allowed her to move them as a pair. Who knew where her snap might send him now? She definitely didn’t want to chance sending him back to the chariot and into that monster’s clutches again!
She was relieved when she turned to find Artemis still seated aboard the MOA chariot. “I’ll wait here and keep my dogs and your horse company,” she announced.
Nyx smiled in appreciation. “Thanks.”
She and the other three goddessgirls headed into the marketplace. Once inside, Aphrodite suggested, “Why don’t you go with Nyx to the pet store, Athena? Persephone and I will go to Hermes’ Delivery kiosk and send a message ahead to MOA about finding Nyx and to explain where she’s been.”
“Good idea,” said Athena. “Let’s meet back at the chariot as soon as we’re all done.”
The girls split up outside a shop called Magical Wagical, which was right next to a blue door that marked the entrance to Ship Shape. As the other two girls headed for Hermes’ Delivery kiosk, Nyx and Athena pushed through the blue door. Then they made their way up a gangplank that rested on pontoons atop a lake. The whole inside of the shop was a big freshwater pool! All kinds of fish frolicked around in the lake, and birds flew in and out of the shop through the open skylight in the ceiling.
“Look, there they are!” Nyx exclaimed to Athena, pointing. Her parakeets were at the far end of the gangplank where it joined up with the wooden sailing ship where things were for sale. Both were perched together on one of the thick rope handrails that ran along either side of the gangplank.
Seeing Nyx, Hypnos let out a chirp and both birds fluttered over to land on one of her shoulders. “Good boys,” Nyx cooed to them, since they hadn’t really meant to cause trouble.
Nyx looked at Athena. “I know we’re in a hurry, but do you think I could go in the ship and buy a new cage and more seed for my parakeets?”
“Sure,” said Athena.
The girls had to stoop to duck through the small open hatch door that led into the ship. The walls inside it were lined with shelves stocked with bags of birdseed, boxes of fish food, and various other things for birds and fish, including cages and aquariums.
A man wearing an orange-feathered tunic came toward the two girls. He had blue-green hair that stood up in a straight ruff from his forehead to the back of his neck like a Mohawk haircut. A name tag pinned to his tunic read, CEYX KINGFISHER, CO-OWNER. Tilting his head sideways in a curiously birdlike fashion, he angled one of his eyes to look first at Nyx and then at Athena. “May I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, please. I need a bag of seed for my two parakeets, and a new cage, too,” said Nyx.
“Would you like to try some of our new no-mess seed?” the man asked her. “It’s had a spell cast over it so that birds can’t toss it out of their food dish all over the bottom of the cage or onto the floor. Makes clean-up a breeze.”
“Yes, thanks,” said Nyx. “Sounds great!”
As the man was getting the seed from a shelf, a woman appeared from a back room. She was also dressed in an orange-feathered tunic and had a blue-green Mohawk haircut. “Did I hear you say you needed a new birdcage?” she asked, tilting her head to look at Nyx in the same birdlike way the man had. Her name tag read ALCYONE KINGFISHER, CO-OWNER.
Nyx guessed the pair were probably husband and wife. “That’s right,” she said. “Their old one got, um, lost.”
Athena had already begun to examine the various cages on a shelf against one of the walls. “How about this one, Nyx?” she said, holding up a beautiful cylindrical gold cage with a peaked top and long vertical ba
rs spaced about a half inch apart. A design of metallic copper poppies was melded to the bars on the lower third of the cage.
As Nyx gave her a thumbs-up, Alcyone made another birdlike turn of her head. Regarding Nyx through her opposite eye, she said in surprise, “You’re Nyx? Goddess of the night?”
Nyx nodded.
“Ceyx!” Alcyone exclaimed to the man as he came up to them with the seed. “It’s her! The missing goddessgirl we read about in the Greekly Weekly.” Both birds tilted their heads and eyed Nyx again.
“Where have you been?” demanded Ceyx.
“We heard you fell in love with that actor, Orion,” Alcyone went on. “And then turned yourself into a star so you could hang out with him, not realizing he wasn’t actually a star in the sky, but the other kind of star instead.”
Nyx blushed. Did people think she was too dumb to know the difference between a star in the sky and the actor kind of star? Besides, she’d never even met Orion. And what little she knew about him from articles in Teen Scrollazine made him sound pretty full of himself, not at all the kind of boy she would like. “Um . . . it’s a long story,” she replied.
“One we don’t have time for right now,” Athena added as she lifted down the gold birdcage. Alcyone hurried to take it from her, then rang up both the cage and the bag of birdseed at the store’s sales counter.
Suddenly glad she hadn’t thought to leave her travel bag with Artemis, Nyx pulled her coin purse from it and handed Alcyone enough drachmas to pay for her purchases. Good thing she’d packed some money to bring after all! “The rumor you heard isn’t true, by the way,” she told Alcyone. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around, but I promise I’ll be back at work tonight as usual.”
“That’s a relief,” said Ceyx, coming to stand behind the counter too. “This endless daylight is for the birds.”
“But even we . . . I mean they don’t care for it,” Alcyone chirped. Nyx smiled at her slip of the tongue. Judging from the appearance and mannerisms of the shop owners, she guessed they must be shape-shifters. Which meant that they could switch back and forth between their human and bird forms.
“Would you like a cover, too?” asked Ceyx. “Comes with the cage,” he added as Nyx peered into her nearly empty coin purse.
“Sure, thanks.” The cover for her old birdcage was somewhere in her bag, but it wouldn’t have fit this new cage in any case. The new one was taller than the other cage had been.
Nyx put the seed and the new cage cover into her black bag and looped the bag’s handles over her arm. Then, as Ceyx held the cage’s gate open for her, she gently moved her birds from her shoulder into their new home. “What are their names?” the shopkeeper asked as the parakeets fluttered around inside their cage, checking it out.
Athena shifted from one foot to the other. Nyx could tell that the goddessgirl was impatient to be off. Nyx was, too, but she didn’t want to be impolite. Besides, she liked talking about her pets with other pet lovers.
“Hypnos is the blue-and-white bird,” Nyx said. “The other is Thanatos. I got them as a gift from a shade. He couldn’t keep them because shades aren’t allowed any live pets in the Underworld. But I’m immortal, of course. I named them after two brothers that are friends of mine.” With that, she lifted the cage down from the counter and turned to go.
“Two brothers?” Ceyx repeated. Hearing the sharp surprise in his voice, Nyx stopped in her tracks and turned back. The pair of shopkeepers tilted their heads and exchanged a look.
“Actually, the green-and-yellow bird, the one you call Thanatos, is a female,” Ceyx informed Nyx. “The clue is the band of raised skin across the top of her beak where her nostrils are,” he said, pointing. “That’s called the cere. Girl parakeets normally have pinkish-brown ceres, and boy parakeets usually have blue ones.”
“And judging from the look of your girl, she’s going to lay eggs soon,” Alcyone added.
“Ye gods, how cool!” exclaimed Athena.
Nyx’s eyes widened in astonishment. Grinning at Athena, she said, “Guess I should’ve known. I did notice that Thanatos was looking fatter!” The happy and unexpected news that he . . . er . . . she . . . was about to have some babies helped to lessen the embarrassment Nyx felt for not having realized that her parakeets were male and female. “Thanks for everything!” she told the shopkeepers. Then the two girls dashed off.
14
Caught !
WHEN NYX AND ATHENA GOT back to the chariot, they found Artemis, Aphrodite, and Persephone waiting for them. Erebus had been grazing nearby and the dogs were frolicking in the grass, but now Artemis harnessed the horse and herded her dogs into the chariot. Hypnos and Thanatos fluttered around inside their new birdcage as Nyx handed it up to Aphrodite before climbing in to sit in back with her and Athena again.
“Pretty cage,” Aphrodite commented as Erebus quickly whisked the chariot skyward. “I like the poppy design.”
When the other goddessgirls laughed, Nyx wasn’t sure what to think. “Did I miss a joke?” she asked.
Aphrodite grinned. “They’re laughing because they remember a bag I once had. It had a poppy design on it too. But it wasn’t a tasteful design like these copper poppies. No, my purse poppies were big, floppy, and yellow. Buying that bag was a fashion mistake,” she admitted cheerfully.
“A mistake we’re determined you’ll never live down,” Persephone teased fondly.
It was good to know that even the goddessgirl of love and beauty could make the occasional fashion error. Aphrodite’s easygoing confession led to Nyx’s own. She gave Athena a smile and then said to the other three girls, “Guess what? Thanatos is a girl, not a boy! Not only that, she’s going to be a mama bird soon!”
After the girls expressed their surprise and delight at the news, Nyx explained what she’d learned at Ship Shape about the different color ceres for male and female parakeets. “Come to think of it,” she added, “I probably missed a clue that my birds were nesting.” She explained about the papyrus sheets she always stacked at the bottom of the cage to catch spilled seed and droppings. “When I was cleaning their old cage last Monday, I saw that some of the papyrus had been torn and chewed into a little pile.”
Persephone grinned. “I bet you’re right. They were probably starting to build a nest of papyrus shavings!”
Holding Erebus’s reins in a slack grip, Artemis glanced over her shoulder. “Think maybe Thanatos discovered the loose bar in their cage when he, um, she was building her nest?”
“Yeah, could be,” Nyx agreed. But soon she grew quiet, having spotted a hint of Mount Olympus Academy up ahead.
The chariot had barely touched down at the far side of MOA’s courtyard when Hades came running up. He flipped a lock of curly dark hair out of his eyes and grinned at Nyx. “Hey! Glad you’re back!”
“Thanks,” she replied. She hoped others here would feel the same.
Artemis’s dogs leaped down from the chariot and the girls followed suit. As the dogs raced ahead to the Academy, Nyx kissed Erebus on the nose. “You helped save me today, buddy,” she told him softly. “Thank you.” Then she admitted her concerns to the others about what might happen if she tried to snap Erebus away now that the connection between him and the magical chariot was likely damaged.
“The chariot might disappear too, and then rejoin with Erebus the next time I snapped him into being,” Nyx said. “But I can’t count on that. What if the magic pulls Erebus back to where the chariot is standing next to Echidna’s cave, instead?” She shuddered.
“Best to leave him be for now, then,” said Artemis. “Why don’t I take him to the stable while you go on ahead with the others.”
Nyx gratefully took her up on her offer. She needed to find out what was happening with the Oneiroi! Aphrodite passed Nyx her birdcage, but Athena carried her bag as the girls and Hades began to walk toward the Academy. “Zeus told me about the message you all sent from the IM while we were chasing after the Oneiroi,” he informed the girls.
Had he and Zeus caught the Oneiroi, then? Before Nyx could ask, Hades glanced over at her and said, “Being trapped in a cave with Echidna was probably no picnic.”
“Too true,” Nyx agreed. Then she grinned. “As a matter of fact, I almost was the picnic!” She could joke about her terror now that the true danger had passed!
The others laughed. Nyx was pleased with herself. After only days here at MOA, she’d gotten pretty good at joking around. It definitely helped that these goddessgirls had been so nice to her. It seemed that her friendly side had been asleep and had only needed awakening through use.
Persephone joined hands with her crush. Then she asked Hades the same question Nyx had been planning to ask. “Did you catch any of those Oneiroi?”
“I didn’t know it at the time,” Nyx explained to him hastily, “but they hitched a ride in my chariot when I first came here.”
Hades nodded. “I figured as much.” Then he frowned. “Zeus and I almost had those ornery Oneiroi cornered a few minutes ago, but they gave us the slip. They’d be easier to corral if they weren’t so foglike and didn’t zip around so fast. Not to mention the fact that they can squeeze through openings as small as an inch wide.”
“Any idea where they are now?” Nyx asked as they crossed the marble courtyard. She noticed Apollo had gathered Artemis’s dogs and was taking them off for a walk, probably so they wouldn’t get in the way of efforts to capture the Oneiroi.
“Somewhere in there,” Hades replied, gesturing up at the Academy building. A half-dozen students stood outside its front doors holding nets at the ready. “We closed all the windows so the Oneiroi couldn’t escape, and a bunch of us have been watching the front doors as people go in and out. If the Oneiroi do manage to escape, we’re hoping those nets will capture them.”
Hades opened the doors and the group darted inside the Academy. The students on guard quickly closed the doors behind them. There were dozens more students inside the entryway and nearby halls, searching nooks and crannies for the troublemaking trio of brothers.
