It’ll fill in, he always said. And she supposed he was right. But since they wouldn’t be able to scam freshmen for cash forever, they’d better have a backup plan. Like college.
Cassandra listened to Aidan’s heartbeat, the hot rushing of blood so strong beneath her cheek. When she’d first told him she knew her gift would disappear, she’d asked if it would make her less. If it would make her boring, or ordinary. He said no, but sometimes when she made a prediction the look in his eyes was so intense. Almost proud.
“Do you think I’ll feel stupid?” Cassandra asked.
“Stupid?”
“After I can’t see anymore. Will it be like a blank? Like words on the tip of my tongue that I can’t quite remember?”
“No.” He kissed the top of her head. “I don’t think it’ll be like that.”
“What do you think it’ll be like?”
“I think it’ll be like … life,” he said after a few seconds. “Like other people lead. I think you’ll go to college, and I’ll go to college, and we’ll get a place together. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
It was. Despite a few misgivings, most of her couldn’t wait. It might be nice to not know for a change. More of an adventure. Aidan said that some people would kill to have her ability, but she didn’t know why. It never came in any particular use.
“Yes, that’s what I want. That’s why I study.”
“Not a good enough excuse. I’m the richest orphan in the tri-state area. We don’t need scholarships.”
“You don’t need scholarships,” she corrected. “Not all of us get to live out a reversal of the musical Annie.” She remembered how curious she’d been three years ago, when she’d heard that Ernie and Gloria Baxter, neighbors for as long as she could remember, had adopted a teenage son. A trust-fund-rich teenage son.
Aidan grinned. “I guess it was a pretty hard-knock life. Living in all those group homes.”
Cassandra lay quiet. He joked, but it was probably more true than not. Part of her still didn’t understand why he’d chosen to live in state-run facilities and group homes instead of with whatever remained of his family. A family as wealthy as his had to have surviving members. A drunk uncle, at least. But she knew better than to ask. He shut down whenever she brought it up. “You worry too much.” He sounded drowsy. She’d have to rouse him soon, or they’d wake to a vision of her dad’s extremely annoyed face. “You and I will be together, Cassandra. You don’t have to be psychic to see that.”
2
THE MOTHER OF THE EARTH
They walked for two more hours before he stepped on it. Or rather, before he stepped on her. Demeter. The one who used to be called the Mother of the Earth. It was much like stepping on the edge of a long-collapsed tent. Pebbles skittered across the leathery surface, making soft, echoless thumps. When they knelt to inspect the edge, they couldn’t find one. She simply disappeared into the dirt.
Athena ran her hand gently across the skin, because that’s what it was. Skin. Stretched as taut as a drum, dried out and tanned.
“Hermes,” she whispered. “I didn’t expect her to be like this.” She didn’t know what she had expected. Part of her had hoped that Demeter had escaped the fate of the rest of them, that her link to the fertile earth had kept her well. Instead she seemed to be suffering worse.
“Maybe you shouldn’t touch her,” Hermes whispered. When she looked at him quizzically, he shrugged. “It seems indecent, doesn’t it? We don’t know what part of her this is, and—well, honestly, what if she’s already dead?”
“She’s not.” Athena bit her lip on the question of why he couldn’t tell. Every god had different talents. Maybe Hermes couldn’t detect any of them. But the slight vibration that had been in Athena’s bones since they made it to the desert had grown to a dull yet soothing hum. Using her fingers, she traced the line of the skin a few steps to her right. Reluctantly, Hermes did the same to their left. When they were twenty paces away from each other, she stood and put her hands on her hips. Then she lifted her boot-clad foot and stepped down, pressing her weight onto the layer of skin. It didn’t move, but Hermes was at her side in an instant, dragging her back.
“What are you doing?”
“What we came here to do,” she hissed, and jerked away. “We have to speak to her, if she can even still speak. And the only way to do that is to find her mouth, which is obviously nowhere near here.” She looked around bleakly. The skin could stretch for miles. And even street- and century-hardened as she was, she didn’t relish the idea of tramping around on it for what could be hours or days.
“Demeter!” Hermes shouted. They waited in the stillness. It was difficult to believe that the stretched skin at their feet was actually her, the summer goddess, lush and full of bounty. People had once made offerings of grain and grapes. They had danced in her honor.
“You don’t have to come,” Athena said finally. “I’ll understand if you don’t.”
“This is stupid.” He put a hand on her arm. “You should call an owl.”
“We’re in the middle of the desert.”
“Don’t play dumb.” When she continued to, he gestured to a patch of tall saguaros, their arms raised. To Athena, the cactuses seemed to be waving stupidly, traitorously. “There are owls here.”
Of course there were. She could see them. And hear them. There were close to a dozen tiny elf owls within calling distance, and every one would do her bidding. She rubbed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and felt the hardness of a new quill growing beneath the surface.
It isn’t their fault. We all go our own way. Hermes eats his own flesh, Demeter gets stretched to the point of tearing, and I choke to death on the inside of a bird cage.
Athena looked at her companion. They were both haggard and dirty. Hermes’ vibrant skin was caked with dust, and rings of armpit sweat grew larger on his gray t-shirt. She glanced down and brushed at dirt marks on the belly of her black tank top. Her hair hung down her back in dark, rough tangles.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I just got the idea that when we saw her, we shouldn’t look like … such punks.”
He laughed and flicked a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “Then you should’ve dyed over those purple streaks before we got here. It’s too late now. We look how we look.” Despite his words, he brushed at his jeans. “We’re really going to see her. Aunt Demeter. After so long.” He smiled. “And much sooner if you’d just call a damned owl.” His breathing was slightly labored, but hope lit up his eyes for the first time since they’d started their search for answers.
God of thieves, she thought fondly. Always looking for the easy way out. But this is only the beginning.
Still, he had a point about the owls.
“You win.” She lifted her hand toward the nearest group of saguaros.
It was like pulling a string. A tiny, yellow-eyed bird dove out of the cactus and made a beeline for them. Athena lowered her hand and it flew around and around her in a tight circle, clicking its small beak. It would have liked to land on her. She could feel that. The owls were still her servants, and the fact that it was their feathers that were killing her would probably have saddened them more than it did her, if they had been able to know.
It isn’t the feathers that are killing me. The feathers are being used to kill me by something else. Some force. This damned Twilight.
In a flash of eyes, she told the elf owl what she wanted, and it zipped off across the expanse of skin. It would search for days until it found Demeter’s mouth. It would search until it died of exhaustion.
“Was that so hard?” Hermes asked, and plunked himself down in the dirt to wait. He squinted up at the sky, blazing so brightly it appeared white. “About five more hours of daylight, you think?”
Athena snorted. “I could do with less. The sun is making my nose ring so hot I might accidentally brand my face.” She lowered down to the sand and propped her elbows on her knees.
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Hermes, always one step ahead when it came to relaxation, stretched out, arms crossed behind his head. “If Apollo was here, we could ask him to turn it down.” He turned to her. “Where do you think he is, anyway? Off in the jungle with Artemis, maybe. Twins of the sun and moon, hanging out in some Mayan temple.”
Athena smiled and said nothing. It was nice to imagine. But the truth was probably far uglier.
Hermes reached into his pack for some beef jerky. He wanted to ask a million questions; Athena could see that. But they’d been over most of them before, and she didn’t have new answers.
But Demeter might. She’s always given me wise counsel. She has to have heard something that we haven’t.
“Have you thought about what comes next?” he asked.
“One thing at a time, brother.” It was a stupid question anyway. She thought about it every minute. Where they were going, and what must be done. The thousand what-ifs and maybes, and finally what might be at the end. The ultimate end. Dying was a strange, almost invigorating feeling. She couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so desperate before.
* * *
The owl returned in the dark. Its yellow reflector eyes floated toward them, sinking slowly, and disappearing when it blinked. Hours had passed while the sun sank below the sand, and she and Hermes talked of idle things that had nothing to do with the task that literally lay before them.
As the bird dipped lower, she could feel the whisper of its exhausted wings. She gave it permission with a tilt of her head, and it landed on her shoulder in a soft, grateful clump. Hermes jerked. Cold came on quickly in the nighttime desert, and the two had taken to resting back to back, staving off the chill. He turned and regarded the drowsy owl.
There was no moon. The scene in the sand, two gods speaking to a bird at the edge of an expanse of stretched skin, was invisible to anyone else. But Athena could see into the owl’s eyes clearly.
“Where is she?” Hermes asked. “Er, where is her … mouth?” He didn’t ask whether the owl had found it or not. It wouldn’t have returned if it hadn’t.
“A few hours’ walk,” Athena replied. “That way.” She stretched her arm out and pointed southeast.
Hermes sighed. “A few hours. Everything used to be so much easier. Do you remember when I could fly?”
She laughed. “Of course I remember. It isn’t easy to forget someone running all over the place like the damned Flash. It was pretty geeky, frankly.”
He snorted. “Even when you’re dying, you’re still a bitch.”
“What are you complaining about anyway? You can still catch a bullet.”
Athena heaved to her feet; the owl on her shoulder gave a shudder. She glanced sidelong at it and whispered, “Rest now, little one. And be well.” It blinked and ruffled itself, then flew off into the black to disappear into its cactus. She held her hand out. Hermes took it, and she pulled him up.
We should be at the mouth by morning. The strangeness of the idea made her pause, but after a few seconds, her boot found its way back onto the skin. It sank down like the surface of a trampoline. She couldn’t feel the dirt or gravel beneath it, but couldn’t help imagining the grinding that had to be going on beneath her heel. Maybe Hermes’ idea of flying wasn’t so ridiculous after all.
She looked back. He lingered on the edge, looking guilty or anxious, she couldn’t tell which. Then he shrugged and carefully put his feet down until he was by her side.
“At least she’ll know we’re coming,” he said.
* * *
“We should be getting there soon. The sun’s coming up. What do you think she’ll say? Do you think she can hear us? Where are her ears?”
Athena walked on in silence. After six hours of traveling on the skin, it didn’t feel any less unnatural beneath her boot heels. She wished Hermes would shut up. But he was nervous, and when he was nervous, his tongue moved as quickly as his wings used to.
“You’re lucky I’m stretched flat.” Demeter’s voice was a rasp, thin as the wind that raced across her leathered body. “If I had any decent lung left, I would’ve sucked in your bird and you’d never have found me.”
Athena scanned the skin beneath them. Hermes had zipped to her side and was doing the same.
“We’d have found you eventually, Mother of the Earth,” she said. “We would have just had to put more boot prints into your hide first.”
Demeter laughed, and when she did there was more air to it, more force. Athena wondered briefly if the goddess wasn’t sandbagging, and the pun almost made her snort. But the idea that Demeter was stronger than she seemed, that the skin could snap over the top of them at any moment, trapping them like a great bat’s wing, kept her quiet. She and Hermes both carried small pocketknives, but she didn’t want to think about what it would take to slice their way out should Demeter decide to try and keep them.
“Sit, children,” Demeter said.
Hermes did so immediately. The walk had been long, and his gray t-shirt was black with sweat. But after only a few seconds, he stood back up and looked at Athena with an odd expression.
She paid him no mind. She was still looking for the mouth, an eye, anything. Had all of Demeter’s features been spread out as she was stretched?
“How did you come to be this way?” Athena asked, stepping slowly toward the sound of shallow breathing.
“I am used as the earth is used,” Demeter replied. “Pulled thin across the land and consumed. Sucked dry, bleached white. And so I have been laid thin for decades. For centuries.”
“Why didn’t you seek us out for help?” Athena asked. She saw what looked like a ragged wrinkle in the skin, like an elephant’s kneecap. And then it opened, revealing a glassy, dark eye, which swiveled sickly toward her and fixed her with a sharpened pupil.
“We are not all like you, Gray Eyes,” Demeter whispered. “Goddess of battle, fighting through the millennium. Unable even now to lie down and accept your fate.”
Hermes walked to the eye and peered down at it. “We’re immortals,” he said loudly. “Why should we have to accept this?”
“Immortal doesn’t mean forever, Messenger.”
Hermes scoffed. “We shouldn’t have even come here. She’s as useless as that old turtle from The Neverending Story. Nothing but riddles and double-talk.”
Beneath their feet the skin quickened, tightening like the muscles of a snake before a strike. They were lifted three inches, and Athena cast him a sharp look. He was always impatient, always twitchy. Someday it would get them into trouble they couldn’t get out of.
“You say I am the goddess of battle, and so I am,” Athena said, careful, unlike Hermes, to keep the modernity out of her voice. “But wisdom was also my charge. And I can’t understand this. That is why I come to you. To learn what you know.”
“I know many things with my ears pinned to the dirt. They walk across me and spill their secrets into the sand. But you cannot escape this. You shouldn’t.” Demeter’s voice was low, spoken through tense lips and teeth. Her eye swiveled up and down the length of Athena’s body. “Look at you. Ink marks your skin. You bear a whore’s jewelry in your nose. Why should you escape when my daughter is already gone?”
“Persephone,” Athena whispered. The queen of the underworld and Demeter’s daughter, stolen from the summer lands and dragged below to be the bride of Hades. It made sense that she had died faster than the rest. She was half-dead already, one side of her an ageless, golden-haired maiden, and the other a rotted, sagging corpse. When Athena closed her eyes, she could see Persephone’s demise: the black skin slowly consuming the peach, the blue eye becoming cloudy, then milky, and finally falling into her skull. She swallowed and frowned, unsure whether the vision was true or just the product of her imagination.
“I’m sorry,” Athena whispered. “I was sorry the first time she was taken from you. You know that. I wanted to get her back.”
Demeter sighed, and the skin moved them with an uneven rattle. “What do you want,
Athena? Why have you come, dressed like a harlot, asking stupid questions?”
“It’s high noon in the desert,” Hermes snapped, blowing sweat off of his upper lip. “Was she supposed to come wearing a high-collared robe?”
Athena placed a hand on his arm. Demeter’s words didn’t bother her. They didn’t feel insulting so much as grandmotherly, and she regretted not covering her tattoos and taking out her nose ring. It was lucky that the purple streaks in her mahogany hair had mostly grown out.
“If you seek to stop this, then leave me out of it,” Demeter said. “I want to lie here until I tear. I want to rip into leathery ribbons and be carried away by birds.” She laughed another low, papery laugh. “If you want answers, go to the Oracle. She will guide you.”
“The oracle? The oracle at Delphi?” Hermes scoffed. He looked at Athena. “There’s nothing there but a half-ruined temple and mushroom-induced hallucinations. There never has been.”
“She didn’t say anything about Delphi,” Athena muttered. Of course she’d never considered going to the oracle. There was nothing mystical about that temple in Greece. The only thing that had once made it wise was the fact that Apollo had deigned to imbue it with knowledge. But he hadn’t hung around there for centuries. He hadn’t hung around anywhere that she knew of. They had all scattered across the globe, becoming hermits and nomads, and maybe it was that as much as anything that had spelled their doom. They had lost one another. She hadn’t seen any of them, save Hermes, for over a hundred years, unless you counted the dreams and flashes. And now she was looking for them all, scrambling around to save them, when she hadn’t really cared for most of a millennium.
“Please,” she said. “Just tell me what you know.”