by Melody Rose
“Please,” Atropos said as she crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “Just because you mentioned the idea one hundred and thirty years ago when we didn’t go with that theme, doesn’t mean that you had the idea first, okay?”
“Why you little--” Lachesis threatened as she threw her glass on the ground, where it shattered instantly. The glass shot around the room, like ripples in a lake, some pieces even reaching my feet on the other end of the dance floor.
While the setting and the tools might have changed, I realized right then that the sisters never would. It was like putting a cover over a couch. It might hide the spaghetti stains, but it wouldn’t ever really get rid of them.
“Sisters!” Clotho called out from her corner. The older goddess huddled near the windows, sitting on the floor, looking as though she was meditating. Her black eyes snapped open, and she glared at her companions. “Could you handle yourself for two minutes while the daughter of Hephaestus presents her gifts to us?”
“Ooh!” Atropos said delightedly, her irritation disappearing so fast I thought the change would give me whiplash. “Our tools are ready. Let me see! Let me see!” The goddess reached for the box, but I jerked out of the way so that she couldn’t snatch it. Atropos stuck out her bottom lip, frowning.
“I just wanted to warn you that they might be a bit different from what you were expecting,” I said, keeping my voice even.
“How different?” Clotho asked as she rose to her feet and crossed over to us.
“You asked for an upgrade, so that’s what I gave you,” I said as I held out the box. I opened the lid and revealed the new tools.
This was the moment of truth.
I let my eyes peek over the top of the box to try to gauge their reactions, but it was useless. The goddesses’ faces never changed when I revealed my creations. They stared at the tools with narrow and judgemental eyes.
It took a whole minute before someone spoke.
“What are those supposed to be?” Clotho asked as she pointed with a single finger. Her mouth curled in disgust, as if she were looking at a two-headed slug she had to eat.
“Your tools,” I answered calmly.
“Mine looks great,” Atropos said, her voice full of glee as she took the scissors out of the box. The weight shifted suddenly for me, so I teetered a little bit to regain my balance and make sure that I didn’t drop the other tools. The youngest sister held up the scissors and snapped them in the air. The click echoed throughout the ballroom. Then she reached across with her free hand and threatened to cut off some of Lachesis’s hair. The middle sister smacked her hand away as she reached in to grab the rod.
Lachesis held it between two fingers, one of each end, balancing it in front of her. She held it up to her nose, her eyes crossing as she examined it from end to end.
“I know the kind of tools you’ve had in the past,” I started the explanation I crafted in my head. “But I wanted to make you ones that would last awhile. They all have metal bases, which might take some getting used to, but it could be a whole millennium before you have to replace these.”
“It’s…” Lachesis said through gritted teeth. “Certainly different.”
I winced at her tone of voice, but the goddess still wasn’t looking at me. She continued to examine and critique the rod. She transferred it to one hand and bounced it up and down as if weighing it. Then she twirled it over her fingers like a baton. In a sudden and unexpected move, the middle goddess whirled around and hurled the rod directly at Atropos’s head. The younger sister ducked just in time before the rod hurtled over her and then clattered to the floor.
I gasped at the expected abuse of my creation. I worried that there was a crack or that it had suddenly broken in two. I couldn’t quite see the results of the damaging throw because the rod skidded off into the shadows.
Lachesis went to fetch her new toy, skipping like a dog. When she held it back up in the light, she stretched her arm over her head like a sports player holding a trophy.
“It held up,” she declared, and I released a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. “And it’s exactly eleven and three-quarters of an inch. Well done, daughter of Hephaestus.” The goddess nodded at me, and I nodded back, unprepared for the level of relief that flooded through me.
However, I knew the judgment wasn’t over yet. There was still one more goddess that I needed to impress. If I was honest with myself, Clotho was the Fate I was most worried about with regard to me changing her tool. Yarn was much softer than steel wool, even though I wove it down to the finest, strongest fibers I could.
“This is steel wool,” I presented the box to Clotho, though she didn’t pick up the tool. “It is stronger than yarn but still moves in the same manner and has similar properties. Atropos can still use her scissors to cut it in one chop, and I made it soft enough so that it wouldn’t harm your hands when you played Cat’s Cradle with it.”
Clotho’s eyebrows rose at that last comment, as though the fact that I noticed surprised her. I waited with bated breath for her assessment. The older goddess looked down her nose as the spindle of yarn I offered. Even her sisters seemed to be holding their breath as they huddled together several yards away, awaiting Clotho’s reaction.
“Give it a try,” I beckoned, pushing the box a little closer to her in an encouraging manner. “I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
She sniffed as though she already was, but the goddess still picked up the steel wool. She held the spindle aloft and unraveled a small section of the new string. Her fingers rotated around it, creating temporary rings around her knuckles. After playing with the strands for a bit, Clotho spun the spindle so that all the steel wool was back in its place. She tapped the strings against the palm of her hand.
“It’ll do,” she said quietly before turning on her heel and walking back to her corner.
“Really?” I balked, not quite believing it right away.
“Do you wish for me to change my mind?” the older goddess asked as she looked over her shoulder at me.
I gulped. “Absolutely not. I’m glad you like them. All of you.” I closed the box and tucked it under my arm. I straightened my back and waited for them to hold up their end of the bargain.
But, unexpectedly, the three goddesses seemed distracted by their new tools, like kids with new toys on Christmas morning. Their black eyes focused wholly on the tools. Atropos snapped the scissors open and closed at various rates. Clotho already began a game of Cat’s Cradle, and Lachesis threw her rod up in the air over and over, like a baton twirler.
“Uh, excuse me?” I asked the group.
As one, their heads creaked to look in my direction. That creeped me out, so much so that I automatically took a step backward.
“I was just wondering about my dad?” I prompted, hoping that it would jog their memories. When no one said anything, I added, “You said you were going to tell me where he is.”
There was a crackle from a nearby candle, and I jumped at the pop that went off like a firecracker. Suddenly, a small piece of paper appeared out of nowhere, right above the tip of the flame.
“Get it before it burns into oblivion,” Lachesis warned.
Panicking, I quickly reached up and plucked the paper out of the air. The minute that my fingers grabbed the folded letter, the fire wrapped around my wrist. It snapped around me like handcuffs and yanked me up into its flame.
I didn’t even get to say goodbye to the goddesses, who apparently wanted nothing more to do with me. In the space of a blink, I tumbled out of my fireplace and onto my living room floor.
My friends gathered around me with worried expressions. Even my dogs popped their heads into my line of sight, each cocking their head in the opposite direction, a sign of their worry.
The group of humans, however, all started talking at once, asking me what the Fates thought of the tools and what I learned about my father. I simply held up my arm, straight in the air. Violet grabbed the piece of paper, faster than b
oth Esme and Benji.
I listened as my former roommate read the note aloud.
“Poplar, Moly, Cypress, Violets, Parsley, and Willow
Smell these when we picture your lost parent
Before graduation make the Weapon or Chaos will overthrow
Hidden pages will make his location apparent.”
I propped myself up on my elbows and stared agape at the four of them. “Seriously? That’s it? That’s all they gave me? Another fuckin’ riddle. Holy Hermes.”
I muttered the last curse to myself as I flopped back down on the carpet, letting my disappointment sink into the floor.
17
“I don’t why I expected anything else,” I groaned from my spot on the floor. I hadn’t moved in the last hour, all the while Violet had made dinner. The others all gathered around the dining room table, eating something that definitely had soy sauce in it.
I couldn’t bring myself to get up and join them. I was so frustrated by the whole situation with the Fates. My stomach was in knots just thinking about what an idiot I’d been.
“I was such an idiot!” I lamented to the room, not bothering to conceal the whine in my voice.
Khryseos and Argyreos clearly heard it, because they rushed to my side and leaned their weight into me, trying to give me comfort through osmosis. I patted them each on the head but soon returned to my complaining.
“You’re not an idiot,” my friends chorused from the other room, except that Benji spoke with his mouth full of food, so his response sounded more like “Ver nof an a bit dot.”
I could hear him swallow all the way in the living room.
Suddenly, Esme appeared in my line of sight. She had a juicy piece of salmon on the end of a fork, and she waved it over my nose teasingly.
“Come on, Cheyenne,” she beckoned in a slow and seductive voice as if she were trying to get a lover to come to bed. “You know you want a bite.”
Half joking, half serious, I opened my mouth, expecting her to feed it to me. But instead, the daughter of Prometheus shook her finger at me like a scolding mother. “Nah ah ah,” she said. “You have to get up to get it.”
“This is not a horse and carrot situation,” I snapped back at her.
She dropped the whole teasing demeanor and put her hands on her hips, a fed-up look coming over her face. The fork and salmon poked out awkwardly from her side.
“If you would get up off the floor and join us so that we could figure this out, then I wouldn’t have to treat you like the ass you are,” she said with a surprising amount of directness. Then, instead of holding the fork back over my head, she stuck out her free hand, offering to help me up.
I groaned, but I took her hand, anyway. She got me to my feet, and then I trudged my way over to the rest of the group as if I were walking through mud. I plopped down in one of the empty chairs, right as Violet popped up to make me a rice bowl.
“I just can’t believe they did this,” I moaned as I put my face in my hands.
“Really?” Esme asked as she took her seat next to mine. “You didn’t see this coming? At all?”
“Esme’s right, Shy,” Darren said as he pushed his glasses up his nose. “The gods are never straightforward with anything.”
“I know that, but I thought they would be because they mentioned Hades and Hades liked how I was honorable or some shit,” I complained, still keeping my fingers over my eyes but parting my palms slightly so they could hear me clearly.
“I’m with Shy,” Benji said with a one-shoulder shrug as he stirred around his remaining rice, salmon, and veggies. “It would have been nice if they had just given us the answer for once instead of ‘Here’s another riddle you need to figure out. Okay, bye!’”
“Right?” I flung my hand out to Benji, indicating that I agreed with him. “Thank you.”
Benji raised his fork in salute before he took another bite.
“Well, right now, it doesn’t matter how frustrated you are or what you think of those bitches,” Violet said from the kitchen. She brought my bowl of food over and set it in front of me, along with a napkin and fork. “We needed to figure out this damn thing and find your dad.”
“Read it again,” Esme suggested as she pushed the paper to Violet.
I picked at my food as the daughter of Hebe read aloud the clue that would supposedly lead to my father’s location. Violet cleared her throat and straightened her back as if she were preparing to belt out an opera ballad rather than read a four-line poem.
“Poplar, Moly, Cypress, Violets, Parsley, and Willow
Smell these when we picture your lost parent
Before graduation make the Weapon or Chaos will overthrow
Hidden pages will make his location apparent.”
“Well, one thing is abundantly clear,” Esme said as she looked at each one of us in turn, as though she was trying to emphasize the seriousness of the situation.
“The part about needing to find him before graduation?” I asked. “Yeah, I think we all got that part down. Graduation’s just eight weeks away. No pressure or anything.”
“Thanks for that, smartass,” Esme said as she shot a sideways glance in my direction. She changed the subject and addressed her next question to the other three sitting across the table from us. “What about the items in the first line? Do those things mean anything to anyone?”
“I know they are all flowers, trees, or planets,” Benji added.
“Which ones?” Esme instructed. She took the paper from Violet and slid it down the table to Benji. “Mark which ones are which.”
Benji held out his hand to ask for a pen that Darren promptly provided. The son of Demeter had nature abilities and belonged to the Gi branch. It would make sense that Benji would know the difference right off the bat.
When he finished, he declared, “Three trees, two herbs, and one flower.”
“Great,” Esme said, assuming the leader role. “What do those things have in common other than that?”
“I thought they might be ingredients in a dish or something like that, but I couldn’t think of a recipe,” Violet said with a shrug. She slumped her head in her hand and tapped her temple with one finger.
“I thought about the same thing for healing potions or alchemy remedies, but nothing includes all seven of those,” Darren said as he scooted his bowl away from him, indicating that he was done.
“And you don’t have any weird Oracle knowledge about those?” Esme asked, turning to me.
I stretched out and reached for the paper. Having the seven words in front of me helped significantly. But even as I studied all of them, nothing flashed in my mind’s eye with any sort of potential.
“I mean,” I started even though I knew that what I had to offer wasn’t going to be helpful. “They all mean something in Greek mythology. Each of them are connected to some sort of story, but not all seven of them together.”
Esme leaned in closer to me so that she could read the poem at the same time. “And it clearly indicated that wherever Hephaestus is has all seven of those items.”
“I was thinking about that too,” Darren said as he stole the paper out from under our noses. He held it up close to his face as if he needed a different prescription from the one he already had in order to read the note. “Those seven things may be the key to finding the god, but the last two lines interest me more.”
“How so?” Esme prompted.
“Why would the Moriai include them if they weren’t important?” Darren questioned. “The hidden pages part is what’s bugging me the most. What could they mean by that?”
“It sounds like a book to me,” Benji said offhandedly as he took his final bite of food.
“Could the answer be in a book?” Esme picked up on the idea and ran with it, even though I was sure that Benji’s comment had been flippant.
There was a pause as the five of us considered Esme’s question. I stuffed my face with a couple of more bites before the idea hit me.
“
We have a library on campus, right?” I asked, my mouth full of food like Benji’s had been, but I was able to speak coherently despite my rude manners.
“Of course we do,” Esme said, her tone a mix between incredulous and disappointed. “How the hell do you not know that?”
“She’s never had to use it,” Darren said by way of explanation. He tapped his own head. “She’s got an encyclopedia up there.”
“It’s not an encyclopedia,” I protested, my cheeks flushing red at the thought of never even having stepped foot in the campus library. “I just happen to have a lot of random Greek mythology knowledge. It’s not my fault.”
“But it is mighty convenient,” Benji said, pointing his fork in my direction.
“Well, it’s not convenient now,” I argued. “And there’s a first time for everything, right? What time does it close? Can we head over there now?”
“We don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Violet reminded us. “Where are we supposed to start?”
“With the librarian, I suppose,” I guessed as I got to my feet, my bowl only half-finished. Even though I could have easily devoured more of Violet’s delicious rice bowl, my eagerness to find my father pulsed through me. It pushed to the forefront of my mind, and now that we had some kind of lead, I wanted to get going.
The other four looked at one another, unsure. It wasn’t until Esme joined me by standing on her feet did I feel reassured about my declaration. “Let’s go and see if we can’t find out more information. Darren, will you bring the paper? Benji, help Violet put the dishes in the sink, and then we can head out.”
Like the soldiers they were, my friends did as they were told. I looked over at Esme and shot her a smile full of gratitude. I liked how she managed to take over the situation. Her willingness to be the leader in this situation didn’t go unnoticed, especially since I still needed to process my disappointment with the Fates.
