“You can’t stop it, Athena,” Demeter said. “I see the feathers blooming under your skin. You’ll be weak. You’ll be too late.”
“But there is a way to stop it.”
“I don’t know. Not without great cost. There are tools that might help.”
“What kind of tools?” Hermes interjected, impatient as usual.
“Those that you have known before,” Demeter said. “Some of them walking are nearly as old as you are. They are threads that were cut, and then rewoven.”
Hermes turned to Athena. “What is she blathering on about?”
“Reincarnation,” Athena said thoughtfully.
“Oh,” Hermes snorted. “So we’re Buddhists now, are we?”
“What would they be good for?” Athena asked, ignoring him.
“What they were always good for,” Demeter answered. “They still are, fundamentally, what they were.”
Hermes stepped closer to the eye. He seemed to hesitate to speak to it, but in the absence of a mouth, there were few other options. “I still don’t understand,” he said awkwardly. “How will humans, even reincarnated ones, help us to stop … whatever this is?”
“You still don’t know what this is,” Demeter said.
“This is the twilight of the gods.”
The skin shook as the goddess laughed. Pebbles bounced on her surface at the vibrations. Athena and Hermes shifted their weight uncomfortably. It was like standing on a drum.
“The twilight of the gods,” Demeter said when the rumbling had stopped. “But not all of the gods. Some of us are the bitches of fate and will persevere.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re not fighting our deaths. You’re fighting a war. A war against your own. And you will lose.”
“A war against our own?” Hermes asked. “Why would we fight each other? We’re dying.”
Athena swallowed. Some of them would fight for exactly that reason. Dying wasn’t something gods understood. It certainly wasn’t something many would do well.
“You’ll kill each other now, because you can. What was impossible is now possible. And if that wasn’t reason enough to try, you are the Titan’s children. You’ll kill each other. Consume each other, to survive.”
The skin shifted softly from side to side. It took Athena a moment to realize that it was Demeter settling into the dirt, ruffling her skin like she was pleased with herself and ready to drift back to whatever sleep she had, stretched across the desert.
“Go and find the Oracle,” the tired voice of Demeter said, drifting off. “If you can, and if she’ll help you, after what you did to her. You three. But maybe you’ll be lucky, and she’ll hate the others more than she still hates you.”
“Enough riddles. Who is the Oracle? What can she do?” Hermes stomped his foot and Demeter gave an “Oof!” Athena gave Hermes a stern look. It was rude to stomp your aunt, no matter how dire the situation.
“The Oracle is a prophetess. Find her. Make her remember, and she’ll be much more than that.” The eye fluttered shut.
“You won’t help,” Athena whispered.
“Do I look like I’m in any position to help?” Demeter snapped, and the skin coiled back to attention. “And you, with your whore’s jewelry and pathetic knife. Are you in any position to fight?”
Athena walked to the eye and knelt. Gently, she placed her palm above the lid, and the tired eye drifted shut. “Perhaps not yet. But I will be soon.”
3
THE CALM BREAKS
Abbott Park sat in the middle of the Spirit River Nature Preserve, an oblong strip of green land slowly yellowing its way to autumn brown. It was mid-October, and Kincade, New York, had already had a few hard freezes, just enough to make everything feel brittle and solid. Cassandra, Aidan, and Andie huddled on the outer edge of the fire circle, atop the remains of the low stone wall that seemed to begin and end at random, dotting the border of the park like an uneven stitch.
“You spread the word well,” Cassandra said, watching forty to fifty of their classmates mill around the three fire pits in the park. “Almost as well as if the word was ‘legs’.” She blinked and laughed, breath leaving her throat in a thin cloud. After a surprised pause, Andie and Aidan laughed back.
“Are you drunk?” Andie asked.
“No.” She looked down into her half-empty red plastic cup. The beer inside had gone sad and flat a half hour ago. “Sorry. I’m just tired.” Tired, and working on a headache. Some people had managed to get a few cars down the Jeep trail the DNR used and were blaring music out the windows. Not everyone agreed on the choice, and Muse competed with Florence + the Machine. The result was just a whole lot of shrill.
“It’s probably all the studying.” Andie bent her knee up and dug her boot into the edge of the wall, her arms folded over it. There was more than a little disdain in her voice. “I don’t know what your effing hurry is. College is two years away, and all it means is the end of us.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Shut up.” Andie pulled down on her tan corduroy jockey cap like it could obscure her reluctant grin. “I’m not even drinking. The greenhouse is closing up for winter. They want me to go in early tomorrow to help out.”
“Cheers to your last day of work.” Aidan raised his cup.
“Cheers to the end of paychecks, trust-fund boy.” Andie smiled. Cassandra smiled too. She’d always thought it was strange that a girl who never noticed pretty flowers would want to spend all summer potting and pruning in a greenhouse. Until Andie explained that she got to move saplings and haul around dirt.
“You know, you could always go to college near us,” Aidan said. “Or with us.”
Andie huffed, and tugged her red wool coat tighter around herself.
“With my grades, the only way I’m going to college is with a hockey scholarship. So I’ll probably wind up in one of the Dakotas.”
Cassandra and Aidan looked at each other and suppressed smiles. The night was getting colder. Around them the party was tightening up. Groups increased in number and clustered closer together. Cassandra watched moving lips, flashes of white teeth, and cheeks made gaunt by the firelight. She caught the eye of one of the freshmen from lunch, the one with the mop of brown hair. He smiled and nodded; she nodded back. Even in the orange glow she could see that the tips of his nose and cheeks were rosy. She leaned back into Aidan. With his arms wrapped around her, she was nowhere near cold.
“The Dakotas would be cool,” said Cassandra.
“Cool? Check a map,” Andie snapped. “They’re square states. Square states are boring.”
Aidan laughed. “People go on vacation to the Dakotas all the time. My parents went there for one of their anniversaries or something.”
Cassandra prodded him in the ribs. “You’re not helping.”
The fire in the pit nearest them started to flicker and Cassandra checked her watch. Eleven. Not that late, but late enough. They probably wouldn’t put any more logs on and just let the flames weaken down to embers. After that, someone would haul a bucket down to the creek and wash out the pits, leaving a sizzling charcoal soup to soak into the ground by morning.
“You asshole!”
Twenty heads lifted and twisted toward the sudden shout. Someone yelled back. It took less than a minute for whatever it was to escalate from words into roars and squeals. Cassandra, Aidan, and Andie rose to their feet to try to rubberneck. As the scene came into view the music seemed suddenly quieter, the acoustic equivalent of tunnel vision, or maybe someone had actually turned it down to hear the fight better. Only the tops of heads were visible, and the view worsened as a crowd gathered. Andie bobbed and weaved; at one point she jumped.
“It’s Casey,” she announced. “And Matt.” Casey was a friend of theirs, a forward on Andie’s hockey team. Matt was a junior, the backup goalie for varsity. They’d been dating about a month. A few choice swear words hit the air, and a flurry of mingled, screeched accusations. There was more than one girl involv
ed, by the sound of it.
“You don’t seem surprised,” Cassandra said. Andie shrugged.
“Misty Walker has been sniffing around Matt since that weirdo from Buffalo dumped her. Someone’s trying to break it up.” She craned her neck. “I think it’s your brother.”
“Henry?” Cassandra peered toward the fight. There he was, in the middle of it, about a head taller than everyone else. “I didn’t even know he was here.”
“Well, there he is. Playing team manager, as usual.” Andie squared her shoulders. “I suppose I should help. Captains have to set an example, and all that crap.” She twisted her way through the people and joined the fray, her hands on Casey’s shoulders to push her back. A few friends of Misty Walker’s snarled at their heels, but a raised index finger from Andie put their tails well between their legs.
“You about ready to go?” Aidan asked.
“As soon as Andie’s done playing captain.”
The fight looked to be over as quickly as it began. No one was shouting anymore and Matt was clearly trying to explain the situation to Henry; he looked embarrassed and ashamed, head low, feet scuffing the dirt. Casey’s face was red with fury and firelight, and Cassandra frowned. When the anger faded, all Casey’s toughness would fade with it. She’d spend the rest of the weekend thinking about Misty and Matt and what she would have to say at school on Monday.
“Is it weird that this never happens to us?” Cassandra asked, still leaning back on Aidan’s chest.
“That we never pull each other’s hair out at campfires?”
“No.” She smiled. He knew what she meant. No girl had ever “come sniffing” around Aidan. No one had ever tried to entice him away. Even though he was far better-looking than Matt Bauer. “You know what I mean. No one even flirts with you.”
“Yes, they do.”
“Well, they don’t flirt with feeling.” She turned and saw his face, amused and blinking, feigning innocence. It was probably the one expression his features couldn’t hold.
“They must know it’d be a waste,” he said. “We’ve got some very smart girls in Kincade.” He smiled and she pushed her fingers into his hair. “Hang on, is this your way of hinting that some guy is flirting with you?” He slid his hands underneath her jacket, warm fingers pressed around her waist to the curve of her back. “Because I guess that would mean … I’d have to flay him. It’d be pretty grisly. I’d probably go to prison.”
“Probably?”
He grinned. Blood coated his teeth.
“Aidan? I think you bit your lip.”
“What?”
“I—” Cassandra stopped. It wasn’t just his lip. Blood seeped up into his eyes. Glimpses of his tongue as he spoke words she couldn’t hear looked cracked, split open, wet and red. Pinpricks stood out on his cheeks and forehead, tearing the skin as she watched. Something pressed through as she looked closer, frozen in horror as his face degraded right in front of her. Feathers. White, and speckled brown. After they wriggled free they fluttered to the ground, leaving bleeding gashes behind, all over his body. He was a monster, holding her shoulders, his sliced-open lips mouthing her name.
4
BEWARE OF BARS BEARING JACKALOPES
The first building they saw as they left the desert was a bar. A bar aptly named the Watering Hole. It stood alone, a dusty clapboard one-story structure ten miles from the middle of nowhere. Long rectangular shafts of yellow light cut across the dirt from the windows. Athena and Hermes hadn’t seen the bar on their way in, because they hadn’t passed it. After their encounter with Demeter, they hadn’t turned around the way they had come, but kept on walking and crossed over the top of her. It had taken four hours to get off the skin, and another six before they came across anything but cactus and sagebrush. Dusk had come and gone, and Hermes had wrung their water skin dry five miles ago. As they approached the building, Athena stopped short, and Hermes drew up alongside her. A light breeze kicked up from the west and chilled them, making the hairs on the back of their necks stiffen.
“Tell me you have money,” he said.
“Of course I do,” she replied. “But if I didn’t, I’d drink that place dry and burn it down.”
Hermes laughed. “Now you sound like me.”
Inside the bar, they were surprised to find a handful of patrons and much less dust. The floorboards still squeaked under their feet, and on one wall there was a mounted head of some rabbit/deer monstrosity labeled a “jackalope,” but the bar was polished hardwood, and a stone chimney held a small fire. To Athena it felt like coming home. It was primitive and firelit, and even the ridiculous jackalope felt familiar, a lame contemporary of the old creatures: the Chimera, the Minotaur, the Sphinx.
When they sat upon the swiveling stools, exhausted and confused, only the last remnants of their gods’ pride kept them from resting their foreheads on the bar. Not that anyone would have noticed. The patrons, all men, ignored them completely, immersed in their beers and in the baseball game playing on the surprisingly nice flat-screen TV. Behind the bar, the bartender absently dried glasses with a white terry towel, his eyes trained on the game while he rolled a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.
“Yo,” Hermes called out irritably. “Can we get two waters?”
“There’s a two-drink minimum,” the bartender replied without looking over.
“That wasn’t posted anywhere,” Hermes grumbled, but Athena set her pack up on the bar.
“Two waters and two Bud Lights then,” she said.
Hermes’ eyes widened. “Bud Light? I’d rather dehydrate. How about a Rolling Rock?”
“Bottle okay?”
“Fine.”
“I’m going to need to see some IDs.”
They flipped their wallets open and tapped sand out onto the floor. The bartender checked them, but it was just for show; he didn’t seem to care if they were fake as long as they were IDs.
“Let me see that.” Hermes snatched Athena’s license out of her hand. “Twenty-one. Mine too. You should change yours so people don’t think we’re twins.”
“Why should I change mine? I don’t look twenty-two. You change yours.”
“You barely look nineteen. That’s not what I meant. But with the way you are…”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
There was a sharp hiss and a pop as the cap was taken off of a beer. A few seconds later, the bartender set the Rolling Rock and a frosty mug of Bud down in front of them. Athena tossed a ten onto the counter and he spared her a wink. She didn’t think he’d bring back change, and she didn’t have the energy to argue. In days gone by she might have smote him, turned him into a tree or a statue or something. Glory days.
She took a long drink of her beer. He’d forgotten to bring the waters, but it didn’t matter. The Bud was ice cold, the carbonation a satisfying burn in her throat. Behind them, a meager cheer went up from two or three patrons as apparently something good happened to whatever baseball team was being rooted for.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Hermes asked after half of his Rolling Rock was sitting comfortably in his stomach.
She nudged the roof of her mouth with her tongue. The quill of the owl feather was more defined, but still several days from poking through the skin. When it did, she wouldn’t be able to help herself from yanking it free, drawing blood and leaving a ragged, stringy wound. Then it would probably turn into a canker sore because she wouldn’t be able to stop sucking at it.
She shook her head, but said, “I guess we have to.” Their voices were low, cloaked in that way that they still knew how to do, so that people could hear that they were talking but if pressed would never be able to remember just what it was they had been saying.
“It wasn’t exactly what you wanted her to say, was it.” Hermes sighed.
“I never expected it to be easy.” She shot him a look. “I just thought maybe we’d band together this time instead of tearing each other apart. How stupid of me.”
“So
me of us will band together. Only … to eat the other band. Still a team effort, depending on how you look at it.”
Athena snorted. “And these reincarnated tools? I never figured on dealing with humans again.” Even though she had lived among them, blended into their population almost since the day they tossed her and her brethren off of Olympus and sent it crashing into the sea.
“So much bitterness. I thought the humans were your friends. That they came even before us.”
“They did. Once.” Before they forgot me. When I was a true god.
Hermes took a long drink of Rolling Rock. “So what happened? Some hideous mortal break your heart?”
She laughed, genuinely and ruefully. “Shut up, Hermes.”
He shrugged. “Guess not. Still the virgin goddess then, eh? I don’t know why. You have no idea what you’re missing out on.”
“It’s a choice,” she said. And more than that. It’s what I am. What I’ve always been. “But you’re getting off point. You heard Demeter. We need to find the tools. The oracle. Whom she seemed to think is a ‘she.’”
He sighed. “An oracle. In this century you can find one on every block. Neon palm with a blinking eye in the center. You can call them on the phone. How are we supposed to find the one she’s talking about? And why would this human even help us?”
Athena clenched her jaw. Find her. Make her remember, and she’ll be more than a prophetess. It sounded like another of Demeter’s riddles. But Demeter wanted them to survive, no matter what she said. She’d been a curmudgeon as long as Athena had known her. The kind of aunt who slapped your hand off the table but gave you a dozen cookies if you just asked properly.
“The prophet will help us. We’ll convince her. We’ll make her remember.”
“Right. Somehow.”
“Will you shut up? We have to find her first.”
Hermes shrugged. “Maybe if we tell her we can prevent the war. A war between the gods means a dirty, bloody mess, and not just for us.”
“So we should lie.”
He shrugged again. “Maybe not. If we have to go down, I wouldn’t mind if the mortals went down with us. It sort of eases the blow. Is that wrong?” He took another long swallow of beer. “To tell the truth, I sort of thought that it was the humans who were doing this to us, somehow.”