by Melody Rose
“Why do you think she’s doing it?” I wondered, changing the subject. While I had the General like this, I was going to ask the questions I wanted to ask. Even if he didn’t give me an answer or a direct one, I still had to try. Maybe I would find out the answers in my time as an Olympic Official during those secret meetings, but I wanted to know now.
“Do you mean Eris?” the General clarified, his face softening ever so slightly.
“Yes,” I confirmed with a sharp nod. “Why do you think she’s set up this whole war?”
“I know exactly why,” the General said, surprising me enough so that my guard lowered, and my eyebrows shot upwards. When the General didn’t follow up on his statement with an explanation, I prompted him.
“Care to share with the class?” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest and then gestured outwards as if there were a bunch of children sitting on the floor.
“She wasn’t invited to an Academy graduation several years ago,” the General said as his grey eyes flitted to the corner, as though he were watching a laser bounce about on the wall.
“I’m sorry, what?” I gaped. I put my hands on the arms of my chair and leaned forward. “You’re telling me that the goddess of chaos has had us at war for decades because of a missing party invitation?”
“There was no missing invitation,” the General said, missing the point entirely. “She didn’t have one to begin with.”
“This is some serious Maleficent shit here,” I commented offhandedly before I took a deep breath in. “Why wasn’t she invited?”
“Your brother forgot to invite her,” the General said plainly, as though he were reading from the phonebook, not dropping some Hephaestus family shame on me.
“My brother?” I tried to act surprised at this news since the General had no idea that I had actually met my brother, though he had been a ghost.
“Erich Thompson,” the General said, his breath coming out as if in a puff of smoke. He leaned back in his chair, relaxing his shoulders. “He was the Olympic Official responsible for inviting the gods and goddesses to the graduation that year. It was his first year as an Official, and he forgot some of the key players, like Eris.”
“So… what?” I prompted, waving my hands in circles to indicate I wanted more information. “The goddess just threw a hissy fit and cursed the Academy or something?”
“Not something, exactly that,” the General confirmed. He licked his lips and looked down at his hands. It was the first time I’d ever seen him unsure like that. Shameful might have been another word for it. “We didn’t take her threat seriously at first, but then the monster attacks started coming more frequently and closer to home. We weren’t prepared for that kind of volume.”
“Wait, we?” I said, holding out my hand like a stopping guard. “How old are you?”
The way he included himself baffled me because I knew for a fact that Erich lived in the 1920s, and considering it was something around one hundred years later, why would the General include himself?
As if he was a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, the General’s eyes shifted around the room, and he coughed nervously into his fist. “I meant the general ‘we.’ It’s used often.” Then he blazed past my question, which only made the seeds of suspicion in my stomach grow more.
“While Erich insisted he invited everyone he was supposed to, we could find no evidence to support his claims,” the General said with a sigh. “He died in one of the first battles, stubborn enough to fight it himself because we made him believe the war was his fault.”
My head whirled with the onslaught of information. When I met Erich, he said he made a grave mistake. So grave that Hephaestus punished him by not letting him pass into the Underworld until he helped another child of Hephaestus, a.k.a. me. Erich never told me what that mistake was, and I’d never asked. But now that I realized it was this one, one so small but with such dire consequences, I realized why the gods might have overreacted in such a way.
“I just can’t believe we’re fighting a war over a missing or undelivered party invitation,” I said with a scoff. “I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The last time Eris wasn’t invited to a party, she created the Golden Apple, which eventually led to the Trojan War, so…” I trailed off, realizing that the General probably knew the story and that I didn’t need to retell it to him.
The General’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s right, but not a lot of people know that. They think the fight over Helen of Troy caused the Trojan war.”
“Well, it did,” I agreed, “but the only reason she was taken in the first place was that Aphrodite agreed to give Paris the most beautiful maiden if he granted her the Golden Apple, which would make Aphrodite the most desirable of the goddesses. But why Zeus just didn’t pick the goddess himself or throw the apple away, we’ll never know.” I rolled my eyes at the thought, knowing that I shouldn’t ever expect more from the gods, since the stories always followed their incompetence and how the mortals had to pay the price.
However, the General’s face turned a violent shade of red again. His beard twitched in anger, and I sat back in my chair again, wary of the sudden change.
“Zeus did the best he could at the time,” the demigod said, defending his father. “I’m sure he recognized his mistake.”
“Did he?” I wondered, a playful lilt to my voice. “He is Zeus after all.”
I meant it as a joke, but it was clear from the audible exhale, quite like a bull ready to charge, that the General didn’t take the statement as a joke.
“I would advise, daughter of Hephaestus, that you don’t insult the leader of the gods in that way,” the General said through gritted teeth.
“Right,” I said, drawing the word out into two syllables. “I’ll make a note of that. Are you okay? Do you need some water or something?”
The man looked ready to explode. If he was a cartoon character, I’m sure there would be steam coming out of his ears. I didn’t know he was so sensitive to insults about his dad. So I stood up and sidestepped out of my chair.
“Is there anything else you need to tell me, or can I…?” I thumbed the door behind me, asking if I could go.
“We will get you your new class schedule and the dates and times for the Olympic Official meetings,” the General grumbled. It seemed as though he were talking at me rather than to me. I didn’t really mind. I just nodded once and gave the General a thumbs up.
“Cool, great, well… thanks for the chat,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say.
Then I booked it out of the door before he had a chance to respond. Once I was out of the administrative building completely, I finally slowed my speed enough to wrap my head around all of the new information I just gathered. But everything still seemed to be running a mile a minute.
“That… was weird,” I said out loud to no one.
The more I thought about it, the more I decided that talking was the thing I needed to do. I just had to tell someone about Eris’s motives and the General’s weird sensitivities. I knew the perfect people to talk to, and chances were they were squatting at my house that very minute.
I couldn’t wait to tell my friends about this craziness.
9
“Thanks for coming with me,” I said to Benji as the two of us walked up one of the pathways towards the trees around the perimeter of campus.
“Thanks for letting me use your jacuzzi bathtub later today,” Benji said as he rubbed his hands together like a maniacal villain.
I scoffed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who knew that jets were the way to your heart?”
“What can I say?” Benji replied with an exaggerated shrug. “I’m easy to please.” Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially. “But you know I would have come anyway, with or without the jacuzzi.”
“I know, but I thought I would make it worth your while,” I said with a smile and a light shove.
“You have to remember that I don’t hate Oliver as much as you do,” Benji said
with a pointed finger in my direction.
“I don’t hate him,” I protested. “He and I just have very different ways of doing things.”
“Uh-huh,” Benji said skeptically. “I, for one, have found his drama classes rather interesting. If you had room in your busy ass schedule, I would definitely suggest you take one.”
“No thanks,” I said with a dramatic wave of my hands. “With all that the General has me doing in order to be an Olympic Official while trying to double my class schedule, and still work in the forge, I don’t think I can add another thing on my plate.”
“Well, if all goes well, you will have to make room for learning how to weave and wood carve,” Benji said with a smile.
“Don’t remind me,” I replied while trying not to gag over the thought of all the things I had to do.
It gave me a headache just thinking about it. The next semester was going to be a true test in time management if I ever had one. It seemed impossible to get done, but I knew I had the support from my friends.
When I told them at dinner about all of my new tasks, they instantly pledged their help.
“I’m available for tutoring,” Esme offered. “I mean, I am the only one in this group who has actually graduated.”
“I’m a really great test taker,” Darren said as he pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’ll show you how to make the best flashcards so you can study for that Olympic Officials test.”
“And while I’m not good at any of those things,” Violet said with a click of her tongue, “I will keep you well-fed and will be your running buddy in the mornings.”
I didn’t know how to thank them all for the support. It was seriously going to take a village to get me through this semester, and that was just the school stuff. I hadn’t even considered all of the “saving the world from a war of chaos” that I would have to add.
When I thought about it that way, the Academy stuff seemed small and insignificant. As much as I wanted to do my best with all of it, the Fates and Eris seemed like much bigger problems than graduating from the Academy. I wanted to respect the traditions of the Military, but couldn’t they understand that these were extraneous circumstances? I wanted to know how many of the current Olympic Officials managed to pass the test with a world-altering prophecy hanging over their heads.
I kept all of this to myself as we walked, however. I knew that Benji would have happily listened to my venting, but I knew I was already leaning on my friends so much. They deserved a break from all of this as much as I did.
So we walked in a comfortable silence through the trees. The sun had already set on this winter evening, but I came prepared with a bit of the Eternal Flame to light our way. Benji also had the added ability to see in the dark. Perks of being the son of a nature goddess. So while he didn’t need the light, I did, and the soft blue glow it gave off brought me comfort I couldn’t explain.
Suddenly, the shadows of the trees and the whisper of the winter wind sent a chill up my spine. I froze in place.
“You know, we can probably do this in the morning,” I said as I spun on my heel. “It’s been a long day, and I don’t want to bother him--”
“Oh no, you don’t,” Benji said as he reached out and took me by the shoulders. He promptly spun me back around, so that I was facing the right direction. “You’re not chickening out of this. You need the nymphs' help, and to get that, you have to talk to Oliver.”
“Remind me why I brought you with again?” I grunted as I begrudgingly put one foot in front of the other.
“Because I’m one of Oliver’s favorite students and so that you don’t try to run away again,” Benji reasoned. “You need to start on the tools as soon as possible. If you get them to agree, then you can start tomorrow.”
“I know, I know,” I grumbled as we ventured further into the woods.
Eventually, we came to a clear path lined with tea lights. It looked like an enchanted forest, with multicolored lights in the tree branches and a smooth isle leading the way. Before we crossed the threshold into the fairy-like land, Benji and I shared a glance.
“Well, he’s certainly spruced up the place since I last came here,” I said with a shrug.
“Why do I feel like we just stepped into a storybook?” Benji said with more awe in his voice than I expected.
“Well, lead the way, Prince Charming,” I said jokingly, holding out my hand for him to continue.
“Not a chance, Cinderella,” Benji countered as he looped an arm through mine. “I’m not letting you run off anywhere.”
I pursed my lips and followed my friend, knowing that I was doing the right thing even though I had no desire to keep walking.
We made our way along the path and came to a wide clearing. At the center, there was a dancing bonfire, though it didn’t give off any smoke. It crackled and burned wood like a normal fire, but there was no smell or heat coming from it. Assorted stumps and logs served as benches. They were scattered under canopies of lush trees, which had green leaves in the middle of January.
I cocked my head to the side in wonder at the magic at use here. It seemed contradictory to the nymphs. While the females had an affinity for nature, they also respected the seasons and the natural flow of the universe. So the fact that they were disrupting it bothered me.
But it didn’t seem to bother Oliver. His round form slouched in a wooden throne at the far end of the clearing. He had four nymphs surrounding him, treating him like the king he thought he was. One nymph with orange skin rubbed his shoulders while another one fed him almonds, though she was bright blue. The other two rubbed his feet, which were large and hairy. I did my best not to stare at the chubby things as the beautiful women squished and squeezed them like they were wringing a sponge.
Oliver noticed us right away. He opened up his arms wide, nearly smacking the blue nymph who was feeding him in the face.
“What a pleasant surprise!” his theatrical voice boomed through the clearing. “Ladies, look! We have guests.”
The dozen or so nymphs that weren’t tending to Oliver rushed over to us. They split Benji and me up, immediately taking us around the fire and asking us a million questions about what we wanted to drink or eat. What would make us comfortable? What could they do to serve us?
I shook my hands and backed away from them. “I’m fine. We’re fine.”
“Speak for yourself!” Benji called out as the nymphs led him to his own stump, where one offered him a tray of freshly cut fruit.
Annoyance swept through my body as I glared at my friend for essentially abandoning me for an acai bowl. But Benji didn’t notice. He simply plucked the foreign fruit off the tray and popped them into his mouth one by one.
I ignored my friend and cleared my throat. “Good evening, Oliver.”
“Hello, Cheyenne,” the drama teacher said as he took a sip of his wine. “It’s been too long. How have you been? How was Italy?”
“Fine,” I said, not really wanting to participate in small talk.
“Did you get to sample any of the cuisine there?” Oliver asked as he smacked his lips together. “Or any of the wine?” He toasted his glass to indicate what he was drinking. Though, being a son of Dionysus, I didn’t even have to guess.
“Not really,” I said with a sigh. “I was mostly there to study.”
“How boring,” Oliver said as he rolled his eyes. Suddenly, he perked up and leaned forward in his seat. “Unless it was to study theatre? The Italians have such amazing shows.”
“Nope,” I said with a slow shake of my head. “Just blacksmithing.”
“Pity,” Oliver said as he flopped back into his chair. “You have such raw talent, my dear. I could see it from the moment I met you. And then when you did that scene at the dance, gah!” Oliver put a beefy hand to his chest and added a dramatic gasp. “You were wonderful, so passionate. Wasn’t she wonderful, darlings?”
The nymphs cooed their agreement and nodded vigorously.
“It was one of the best p
erformances,” Oliver said after taking another sip of from his goblet. “Simply divine.” Then he kissed the tips of his fingers as if he were Italian and complimenting a dish of food. The corner of my lips twitched at his exaggerated praise, not liking the comparison of me to an entrée.
“So,” the son of Dionysis said, his demeanor completely shifting in one hundred eighty degrees. His eyes narrowed, and his lips pursed. He looked me up and down with one sweeping movement. “I take it you’re not here to sign up for one of my drama classes.”
“Not if you paid me, Oliver,” I said as politely as I could muster, wanting this conversation to be over. “I have come to ask for your help, though. Or rather, help from the nymphs.”
When I mentioned them, the nature spirits tittered like a bunch of school girls. Some of them leaned over to whisper in each other's ear while one held her hand up to her mouth to hold back a giggle.
“You want help from the nymphs?” Oliver asked as he crossed one leg over the other. He leaned back, nestling his back between the arm of the chair and the back of it. He took another sip, but this time, he smacked his lips together and added an “Aw” sound, like he was in a Pepsi commercial. “You’re not planning another dance, I hope?”
“Not this semester,” I said dully. “I need to learn how to weave yarn or thread of some kind and wood carve. I’ve heard that they are well-versed in those skills.”
“Is the blacksmith venturing out into new crafts?” Oliver said in a mocking tone. “Bully for you, dear.”
“Thanks?” I said, turning the work into a question because I wasn’t quite sure how to answer him.
The drama teacher swirled his goblet in one hand, staring into it as though he were admiring the way the liquid spun round and round. “Weaving and wood carving are definitely skills the nymphs could teach you.”
