The Blood of Athens (4 page)

Zeus,
the hero of the Titanomachy
was made to choose first and drew the
longest straw.
For his dominion he claimed the golden throne
on
Mount Olympus.

For
the rest, Poseidon drew the second straw.
Zeus had claimed the
heavens, so Poseidon chose
to hold dominion over all the
oceans.
Hades had no choice.

So
it fell to him-- against his will-- to claim
the dark realm that
winded deep beneath the earth:
to guard the souls of the dead
after they had
met mortal judgement.

“
Probable
impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.”

-Aristotle

V.

Penelope Davis
stood on the west side of the Acropolis in Athens, on the steps of
the Propylaea. It was mid afternoon, but to the group from Olympia
Heights, who were currently suffering eight hours of jet-lag, it felt
like bed time. She looked down the slopes, over crumbling marble
hidden between thriving olive trees, cut out against a cloudless,
cyan sky. Her classmates compared trinkets from the gift shop at
their last stop, but Penny was present in her setting, trying to take
it all in at once.

The sound of
crinkling paper snapped her out of her reverie. Minnie Rutherford,
The Pantheon's very own Athena, was unfolding a map that she had
picked up at information. The tour guide was busy explaining to the
distracted students that
Propylaea
was
plural for the Ancient Greek “porch.”

“
We're on
the west side,” Minnie said. “This is like the front step for the
whole place.” She folded her map carefully and handed it to Penny.
“Want a map? I've memorized it.”

Penny shrugged
and took the map, sliding it into her black messenger bag. She set
the bag on the ground and set to work on her shirt. Everyone with the
school was required to wear a lime green shirt identifying them as
students from Olympia Heights. It was shapeless and too large and
Penny hadn't had time to hack it up in her hotel room to make
adjustments. She grabbed the bottom hem, twisted, and tied a knot in
the front of the shirt. “That's better.”

“
What are
you most excited to see?” Minnie asked.

Penny
shrugged. “Everything?”

Minnie smiled.
“Yeah, I can see that. It's kind of like coming home, right? I
can't wait to get inside the Parthenon, personally. Though this place
has special significance for me, too. Did you know that in myth,
Athena and Poseidon fought over this city. Guess who won?”

Penny
shrugged. “You?”

“
That's
right.”

Minnie didn't
have time to recite any more history to Penny. Something, or someone,
collided with her back and sent her down the last two steps of the
Propylaea. She landed hard on her backside and let out a loud “Son
of a--!”

It was Peter.
He was scrambling to get up and help Penny up all at the same time. A
group of seniors just up the steps from them were laughing and
covering their mouths with the backs of their hands. One of them
bumped fists with his friend.

Minnie glared
daggers at them. They continued to laugh, unthreatened by the nerdy
little goddess. There were four of them, one a short, freckly
redhead, another a tall, skinny Hispanic boy, and two who were blonde
and shaped like Abercrombie models. They looked like twins, but they
were not.

Minnie walked
toward them. The group of boys, all players on the soccer team,
exchanged glances and smirks.

“
You Goth
Boy’s personal protector?” the short one asked. “What are you,
five nothing?”

“
Five four,”
she said, barely looking up to meet his gaze.

“
I’m so
scared,” the skinny one said with a falsetto whimper.

“
And I play
roller derby.”

“
What’s
that?” Blondie number one asked.

Minnie laughed
and glanced back at Peter and Penny. Peter just looked at the ground.

“
You ever
seen that Drew Barrymore movie where the girls knock each other
around on skates?”

“
Uh, yeah.
Bunch-a dykes.” The blondes high-fived.

Minnie ignored
them. “I knock down girls twice your size and keep skating. Peter’s
my friend, leave him alone.”

“
Yeah, okay,
whatever.” The skinny one turned his back to Minnie.

Minnie turned
around, ready to rejoin Penny and Peter. She muttered something that
her friends couldn’t hear.

Then something
changed. Their grins vanished and they tensed.

Minnie rolled
her eyes and bent down to offer Peter a hand. He had succeeded in
picking Penny up, but had not made it to his feet, yet.

“
What did
you tell them?” Peter asked. He grit his teeth as he took her hand
and pulled himself to his feet.

Minnie smiled.
“That we were both friends with Frank the Tank.”

“
Everything
alright?” Lewis asked, coming down the steps to meet them. Astin,
Evan, Nick, and Teddy followed. The poor tour guide, standing above
the class, knew she was being ignored.

“
Just some
jerks,” Penny said.

Diana noticed
that her brother had left his spot and met up with The Pantheon at
the base of the steps. The tour guide stopped talking and Candice
Matthews started taking roll... again.

“
You want me
to knock them around?” Nick asked, winking at Penny.

Minnie shook
her head. “Bad idea, Nick. Though not the worst you've ever had, by
far.”

The group fell
to whispers at the back of the crowd. “Have you remembered anything
yet?” “Where do you think Olympus is? Literally on top of
Olympus?” “Yeah, because mountain climbers over the last three
thousand years never have found it.” “Is anyone else cold?”

The class
began to move. Minnie prodded Lewis with her finger and he started to
climb the steps. The tour guide was back to chatting away in her
sweet southern accent. She was blonde and perky, but not so fake that
she couldn't shoot a death glare at an overzealous teenager when she
heard their inappropriate comment. Minnie listened closely,
memorizing everything she said.

“
This
particular structure was built at the conclusion of the Persian war
in the 430's, BCE. It was commissioned by Pericles, who you all may
remember from your World History books... No?”

Penny looked
at the scaffolding that held the crumbling structure together. It
wasn't bad, she thought, for a marble and limestone structure to look
this recognizable after more than two thousand years.

They reached
the top of the steps and the class passed through a row of six Doric
columns. They were simple in design, but monumental in scale. Penny
looked up as she passed under them, and when she looked down, she
received quite a shock.

Everyone was
gone.

Well, not
everyone. Peter and Minnie stood beside her.

“
Where are
we?” Minnie asked.

“
I don’t
know,” Peter said.

Everyone else,
the tourists, their classmates, the tour guide, were gone. The room
they stood in did not look like the crumbling ruin they had been
approaching, and when Penny look back through the arches, she saw
nothing but billowing clouds and bright sunny sky below.
The Acropolis was gone
.

“
Woah,
shit!” Lewis appeared through the arch, nearly walking into Peter.
He walked backwards on his heels, turning quickly to take in his
surroundings. “We're
not
in
Kansas anymore.”

“
Like you've
ever been to Kansas, Lewis,” Minnie said, shaking her head. “But
allusions aside, we're clearly not at the Acropolis, either.”

The others
followed shortly. Soon they were all spinning around on the marble
floor, taking in their surroundings and shouting profanity.

“
Where is
this?” Nick asked.

“
Dunno,”
Peter said.

Nick looked at
the archway, biting his lip as he thought about it. He took a deep
breath and stepped back through the columns. He vanished. Diana
shouted and ran to the edge, looking down, expecting to see Nick
plummeting to his death. Nick stepped back in and collided with her,
knocking them both to the ground.

“
Where did
you go?” Astin ran forward to pull Nick off of his sister. Nick
seemed to be enjoying the view a little too much.

“
Back to the
Proppy-whatever place. It's like a portal!”

It was Astin's
turn to look back over the edge. “It looks like clouds to me.
Clouds and a death drop.”

“
Naw,”
Nick dusted off his shoulders. “It's like a wormhole or something,
it just brings you back to the steps.”

“
So why did
we go through it, and no one else?” Peter asked.

“
Well, it's
likely because of who we are, wouldn't you say?” Minnie shrugged.

They all
turned to examine the place where they had arrived. Wherever the
portal had brought them, it was clearly nothing any archaeologists
had ever uncovered on Nat Geo. The floors were made of flawless white
marble and the ceiling, also marble, was at least fifty feet high,
held up with columns covered in pure gold. The room they stood in was
long, and at the far end, at least a hundred yards away, sat a gold
basin on a marble pedestal. The sides of the pedestal were painted in
red and black with scenes of a man drinking from the basin and others
of him neck-deep in water and reaching with his teeth to bite an
apple just out of reach.

Around the
pedestal, on three sides, was another level six inches higher than
the floor. To the left and right were five thrones each with
elaborate metalwork and straight ahead were two more.

Lewis dashed
ahead of the group and immediately found the throne that belonged to
him. The high back of the chair was made of gold and shaped like a
lyre and the seat was ivory, carved to look like the underbelly of a
tortoise. The arm rests were wrapped with a golden serpent. The sides
of the back, at the ends of the arms of the lyre, had wings mounted
on them, straight and angled for high-speed flight. Lewis sprawled
across the thrones as if it were an old arm chair and spread his
arms.

“
Boys and
girls,” he said, “I think we're home.

The rest of
The Pantheon jogged to catch up.

Behind the
thrones was a balcony. Minnie passed right by her throne-- decorated
with shields and spears, with an owl's wings sheltering the head and
a olive tree made of bronze forming the back-- and looked down over
the balcony. Below the throne room stretched a city made of bronze.
It was empty and silent.

“
This is
totally Olympus,” Penny said. “I've seen it in a dream. This is
our throne room. That's Zach's chair, and June...” Penny knew that
she had no seat here. Her own throne was in the underworld where
Peter-- Hades had taken her.

Nick was
standing over the basin, looking down. “What is this stuff?” he
asked, pointing at the liquid it contained. The basin was filled with
an opalescent liquid with a green tint.

Minnie turned
back from the balcony and walked around the pedestal. She took her
time examining the images painted there before nodding. “Nectar.”

“
What?”
asked Peter.

“
It's
Nectar. See, this painting tells the story of Tantalus, who stole the
sacred Nectar from Olympus and how he was punished for it. These are
warnings, like a curse on an Egyptian tomb. Don’t drink this if
you’re not a god or we’ll punish you.”

“
What is
Nectar?” Lewis asked. “Like from flowers?”

“
Well, as
usual, I'm going from myth here, so it could be wrong.”

“
What does
the myth tell you?” Astin asked.

Minnie reached
into the basin and dipped her finger in the liquid. “It's a drink
that gives you eternal life.” She touched the tip of her finger to
her tongue and tasted the Nectar. Her eyes closed and she sighed.

“
What does
it taste like?” Diana asked.