by Melody Rose
I didn’t even want to think about what he meant by that. So I just clamped down on the butterflies and the blushes. I kept it as professional as possible, though that forced me to act like a robot more than once in the scenes, which would, in turn, result in yelling from Oliver.
“You’re so stiff, Cheyenne!” he would holler from across the room. “Loosen up, girl! Where is that fire you’re always going on about? I want to see it on stage.”
Oh, I wanted to give him fire, alright. I wanted to hurl a fireball or the knife in my boot right at his head. But since we had to act without our shoes on, I didn’t have said knife and felt naked without it pressed into the side of my leg.
“Let’s start with Cheyenne and Horace,” Oliver suggested.
Because, of course, that’s where he would want to start.
“I’m a little nervous,” I confessed, trying to exaggerate my anxiety. “Could maybe one of the other pairs go first?”
“Are you not an Olympic Official?” Oliver bellowed. “Are you not a leader of our soldiers? Where is that leadership now? Go first and lead the way!”
Oliver thrust out his arm as though he were leading a charge into battle. I grimaced but got to my feet, making my way to the side of the room with the storage alongside it. It was to act as our backdrop for the scene.
The other students gathered around Oliver’s chair like kids ready for story time. In a way, they were about to get it.
I exhaled so hard that my lips fluttered into a raspberry. I was trying to shake off the nerves but passing it as one of Oliver’s warm-ups. He had us work our lips and faces all the time, so maybe I could conceal some of my anxiety and stall the inevitable.
“Alright, you two,” Oliver said as he rested on his box. He wrapped his fingers around his knee and braced himself, his straight back stiff as a board. “Your scene is from Alcestis by Euripedes. Do either of you know it?”
As though he triggered something in my brain, the words spilled from my mouth uninhibited. The information simply flowed from me. “It’s about the queen Alcestis who is to be wed to any man who can complete her father’s challenges. Apollo helps Admetus complete the task to win her hand. But Artemis is pissed that Apollo cheated and curses Admetus to death.”
I took a deep breath in and continued as if on autopilot. “Admetus can escape death if he finds someone to replace him in the Underworld, but he’s a royal asshole, so no one wants to do it but his future wife, Alcestis. So she sacrifices herself as long as he promises never to marry again. But he does because again, royal asshole.”
When I finally stopped, the classroom looked at me with open mouths and wide eyes. I should have been used to that reaction by now when my Oracle of Delphi powers went into effect, but it still unnerved me. I did my best to smile after my speech, which only Oliver seemed to find impressive. He offered me a slow bout of applause, and something told me that was the only compliment I was going to get from him after this performance.
“Well done, Cheyenne,” Oliver said jovially. “That is all correct. You two will be acting out the scene where Alcestis is dying and forces Admetus to promise his celibacy.”
I looked down at the script in my hand, which shook slightly. There were a lot of Alcestis lines on the page, and I tried not to let them intimidate me.
“Now,” Oliver said as he clapped his hands once. “Action!”
I stared at Horace, who stood across from me. We both waited, an awkward tension passing between the pair of us. Someone coughed in the audience.
“It’s your line,” Horace whispered, leaning in slightly.
“Oh,” I replied, and my eyes darted to the paper. “Sun, and you, light of day, Vast whirlings of swift cloud!”
“Hold the paper away from your face, Cheyenne,” Oliver coached from the sidelines. “And make sure to project your voice so we can hear you. Now continue.”
I lowered the paper slightly and looked at Horace to keep the scene going. He straightened his shoulders and suddenly looked more regal with his lifted chin and saddened gaze. It was as though he put on a new outfit and suddenly became the king.
“The sun looks upon you and me, both of us miserable, who have wrought nothing against the Gods to deserve death,” Horace pleaded as he reached forward and touched my forearm.
Another jolt ran up and down my arm. Automatically, I jerked away from him.
“No, Cheyenne,” Oliver scolded as he waved his hands at us. “That was a good moment. Go back and let him touch you. He is your betrothed, after all.”
Fuck me, I thought as stepped back into place. I tried to steady my breathing as Horace took up his resumed position and put his hand on my arm. I pushed through to my next line.
“O Earth, O roof-tree of my home, Bridal-bed of my country, Iolcus!” I said, trying to put some other emotion than pure nervousness into my voice.
“Rouse up, O unhappy one, and do not leave me! Call upon the mighty Gods to pity!” Horace then reached out with his other hand, the one with the script in it, and grabbed my other arm. He shook me slightly, desperation shining in his eyes.
Slightly frightened by his sudden wave of emotion, I went stiff in his grip, my shoulders rising up to my ears. I struggled to get the paper between the two of us, so I could read the words.
“I see the two-oared boat, I see the boat on the lake! And Charon, the Ferryman of the Dead, Calls to me, his hand on the oar: ‘Why linger? Hasten! You delay me!’ Angrily he urges me,” I recited, feeling like a first-grader trying to learn to read for the first time.
“Cheyenne,” Oliver said with a large sigh. “Do you understand what’s happening in the scene?”
“She’s dying?” I said, my voice turning the sentence into a question.
“Yes,” Oliver said slowly as though he were walking someone through the math problem two plus two. “And she’s terrified. Charon is coming to get her! Imagine how horrifying that would be!”
I didn’t have to imagine it. I had met Charon and even contested the god in a battle of wills over his boat. I’d seen the horrors of Tartarus with my own eyes.
Something clicked in my brain as I thought back to those memories. I had real-life experience with what this was like. I had even died before. I knew what that felt like. Couldn’t I just remember what that felt like and put it into the words I had to read?
“Try it again,” Oliver commanded. “From your line, Cheyenne.”
I cleared my throat and pictured Charon with his gargoyle-like head in my mind's eye. I thought about the silent black river and the looming shadows along the rock walls of Tartarus. Then I spoke the words again.
“I see the two-oared boat, I see the boat on the lake! And Charon, the Ferryman of the Dead, Calls to me, his hand on the oar: ‘Why linger? Hasten! You delay me!’ Angrily he urges me,” I choked out the words.
“Yes, Cheyenne!” Oliver cheered. “Just like that. Give me that raw emotion. Keep going. Don’t lose it.”
So we continued. The pair of us pushed and pulled against each other as Admetus perished before her future husband’s very eyes. She pleaded her love to remain celibate in her memory. I was on my knees as I gave the impassioned speech, reaching out to Admetus, demanding his promise.
Horace met me line for line. He bowed down on the floor with me and held my weakening body. He recited his own monologue, claiming the promise to be true. The king vowed to the kingdom before him that he would love no other in honor of the sacrifice of his wife.
Even though I knew in the back of my head that this whole speech was hogwash and Admetus would bang the first woman he got his hands on, Alcestis didn’t know that. She had to die, believing that her husband would be true to his word. So I lamented in his arms.
“I should have lived my life out, and I go to the Underworld,” I said, my heart aching at the thought of a life lost.
Horace reached down and touched my cheek with his hand, the cold an unexpected comfort. “Alas! What shall I do, left alone by you?”
“Take me with you, by the Gods! Take me to the Underworld!” Horace cried out, his voice echoing in the room as he folded himself forward, crying into my breast. I stroked his head like the dutiful wife I was.
“It is enough that I should die for you,” I cooed softly.
Horace’s voice continued to cry, but this time he lifted his face to the sky as if cursing the gods. “O Fate, what a wife you steal from me!”
I let my eyes flutter as the stage directions told me to do so. Alcestis was close to death, and I even forced my body to lose energy, going limp in his arms.
“I am nothing,” I said, breathless and weak.
Horace’s head snapped down to me. His grip around my body tightened. “What are you doing? Are you leaving me?”
In a moment of dramatic inspiration, I reached up and tried to touch Horace’s face one last time. I planned to let it fall once the queen perished. It was the end of the scene. I had almost made it all the way through without any injury. And if I was honest with myself, it was kind of fun to pretend to be someone else and escape my own problems for a while. Even if it was a misogynistic play that harped on the value of women’s sacrifice, belittling their lives.
There was a pause as I realized that I still had one more lie before Alcestis died in her husband’s arms. I flicked my eyes to the script, which I conveniently placed on the floor.
I saw my one-word line, ready and waiting for me to end the scene. However, before I opened my mouth to speak the line, another sentence caught my eye. I hadn’t noticed it before because it was handwritten, scrawled with an arrow that led to the margin, indicating that this should be inserted before my character died. It wasn’t in the original script, and when I followed the arrow to see the added section, I gasped.
My body went stiff as a board in Horace’s arms, completely breaking character. The note shocked me senseless as I read the words over and over again.
(They kiss.)
“Wait! What?!” I barked, sitting up slightly and staring incredulously at Oliver. “What do you mean, ‘They kiss’? You can’t just add shit like--”
Suddenly, Horace’s lips were on mine, swallowing my words. Warmth surged through my body, running like hot gold through my veins. His fingers stroked my arm, encouraging the final kiss between two lovers.
Panic surged through my body like a lightning bolt. I raised my arms and found Horace’s solid chest. I shoved as hard as I could to get him off and away from me. But the soldier held me close, pressing me against the ground so I couldn’t get away.
My mind immediately shifted into combat mode. It had been so ingrained in me over the last three years that I barely noticed it. There was no way I was going to let this soldier assault me in this way.
So I kicked my knee up and slammed it right into Horace’s groin.
His entire body went limp, and a groan emanated from him like a car horn. The second his mouth was off mine, I put my palm right in his face and shoved him off me.
I scrambled to my feet as a small commotion started from the onlooking students. I could hear Oliver’s voice shouting something at me, but my panic took over. It sounded as though I was underwater, unable to register everything around me.
As reality filtered in, I wanted to jump out of my own skin. I felt disgusting and full of betrayal. I had to get out of there. I had to get away from Horace, detach myself from the scene. Even the room was too much. I needed fresh air, something to clear the liquid filling up my lungs.
I dashed out of the classroom, flying down the stairs two at a time. I even jumped over the last four, bursting out of the door as if I were a criminal on the run. My legs just kept going, and I wasn’t even sure where I was going.
My thoughts flew like ribbons behind me. I knew there was no way I was going back to that class. Not with Horace. Not with Oliver. Not with the scenes and the assault. None of it. I refused to let anyone violate me in that way, even if it was only “pretend.”
I knew that meant I wasn’t going to be able to work with the nymphs. I would just have to figure out a way to make the tools without them, using the limited skills they had taught me.
Waves of emotion crashed over me, threatening to take me out right then and there. The February cold wasn’t even enough to knock me out of my panic. But I realized that it wasn’t ever cold that calmed me down. It was fire and heat and the sound of pounding metal.
Calming down became an immediate need. I couldn’t focus on what I was supposed to do next, what class or meeting I was supposed to be at. All I could think about was getting myself into a more stable state of mind.
So I picked up the pace and darted in the direction of my home away from home, a place where I knew I would always be safe. The forge was just beyond the hill, and I knew that there, I would be able to find a sense of self again.
14
Ansel
“Well, that was quite an entrance, son,” the god Apollo said through bursts of laughter.
It was an obnoxious laugh, like how a seal would sound. Hiccups mixed with snorts came out of the sun god.
I glared at him. While I knew that most considered my father one of the most attractive of the gods, with his golden skin, blond hair, and sculpted body, the historical depictions were nearly all accurate, and while I could see the appeal, I also knew that if he laughed openly like he was now, his potential lovers would have hightailed it out of there. It was one of the most embarrassing things about him, but certainly not the only one.
For one, he liked to look my age. It was like looking into a mirror. Well, a more perfected mirror. I don’t know how I got so unlucky as to resemble him more than my mother. Even Annika had gotten her mother’s freckles, which broke up the chiseled jawlines and high cheekbones we’d both inherited from Apollo.
But when he looked this young, it was hard for me to take him seriously, much less think of him as my father. While I knew that the laws of physics didn’t always apply to the gods, it was hard for me to picture this young guy who could have been my peer as the god who helped create me.
“I thought you were better on your feet than that,” Apollo said as his annoying laughter died down. He held out a hand for me to help me up. I rejected his offer and got to a standing position all of my own.
I brushed some of the snow off my pants and back while Apollo stuck his hand up and through his straw-colored hair as if he had meant to do that all along.
“What do you want?” I asked, wanting to get to the point of this clandestine meeting.
“Wow,” Apollo said as he whistled low and long. “Getting down to it, huh? No, ‘Hi Dad, how are you doing?’”
“I did say hi,” I growled through gritted teeth. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Or did you not hear me through your maniacal laughter?”
“Well, hello to you too,” the god said with a nod. Then he mimicked my posture, which instantly made me want to change how I was standing. I hated staring back at a version of myself in this way. It was spooky and something that belonged in a science fiction film, not in real life.
“What do you want?” I repeated, hoping to stop any of his stalling.
“I thought we could go for a walk,” Apollo suggested as he opened up his hand and gesture to a path that I hadn’t noticed before.
“A walk?” I balked. “You wrote to me because you wanted to go on a walk?”
“Can’t a dad take his son for a walk?” Apollo asked innocently.
I didn’t buy this act for a single second. “Sure, Dad,” I emphasized the word in an obvious way so that he couldn’t miss my sarcasm. “I love it when you pop into my life so we can just go for a walk. That’s not random or suspicious at all.”
“Do you want to go or not?” the god said as he rolled his eyes.
“I’m not even supposed to be down here,” I said, exasperated from the games. “I’m stationed up
at the base. Can’t you just tell me what you have to tell me and be on your way?”
“That’s why we have to take a walk,” Apollo said, the words pushing through his perfectly straight, pristinely white teeth.
I paused as I looked into his green eyes. There was something off about his gaze, like he was trying to tell me something that he couldn’t say aloud. The shape of his eyes was as wide as dinner plates, suggestive and telling.
“Fine,” I relented, though my voice stayed gruff because I still couldn’t shake my frustration. “Let’s take a walk.”
I stepped in line with my biological father, and the two of us walked in tandem with one another. We didn’t say anything for a while, simply listening to the crunch of our feet in the snow.
I let Apollo take the lead, not sure how far away he wanted to get from the Military’s base. To say this piqued my curiosity was an understatement. The need to know Apollo’s secret pulled at my chest. It was the fire that kept me warm as I moved through the chilly forest trees.
We moved around the mountainside, weaving around trees and ducking under branches. Finally, Apollo seemed to think we were far enough away to start talking. But his opening line wasn’t one I had been expecting.
“So, how are you doing?” he asked casually, as if we were sitting across from one another at a cafe rather than delving deeper into a foreign forest.
His question caused me to stop in my tracks. “I don’t want to do this, Apollo. You called me here for a reason, and I know it wasn’t to simply catch up. So what the hell is going on?”
The god stopped as well, about six feet from me. He turned around, and for the first time, he looked somewhat human. The expression on his face confused me. It was a mix of sadness, annoyance, and… fear? Was that really what I was getting from the god of truth, justice, light, etc.?
What was powerful enough to scare a god?
“I’m not supposed to be doing this,” he said with a shake of his head. Apollo put his fingers up to his forehead and scratched nervously, as though he had a mosquito bite on his temple.
