Chapter 11
WHERE A PEP TALK IS GIVEN AND A CHORUS OF BEARS IS INTRODUCED (THEY ARE A FEATURE NOT A BUG)
“ W hat have you done to my little sister, Muse?”
Hera’s words echoed in Erato’s mind as she was almost dragged to some dingy bar on a side street that had miraculously materialized right next to the convention center.
Dark, sticky and smelling suspiciously like something died there ages ago, the place made Erato’s insides roil.
“Of all the places to conjure, Hera…”
The Goddess lifted her fingers, and a drink was immediately placed in front of her, the scruffy-looking bartender not blinking an eye at her pristine ivory attire. Erato narrowed her eyes at the man who knew the exact order without saying a word.
“Unless you didn’t have to conjure anything at all, and this is your regular haunt.”
Hera threw back the vodka and set the glass carefully down, the move so smooth Erato thought she might have imagined it.
“The places I frequent, my drinking preferences and the company I keep are none of your business, Muse. My sister, however…” Hera trailed off, her long slim fingers latching onto the discarded golden thread and tugging none too gently on Erato’s wrist. “What have you done?”
Erato shrugged, biding her time. For what exact purpose, she couldn’t say.
Surely, if Hera intended to dispose of her, she wouldn’t do it before so many witnesses.
When the second shot of vodka appeared in front of the Goddess of Matrimony without her signaling for it, Erato reconsidered her opinion about the people surrounding them.
These were not witnesses. These would be accomplices.
“I don’t know?—”
Hera simply tugged harder and Erato nearly tumbled off the bar stool.
She could swear the pool game next to them stopped for a second, the bikers on alert, their cues like baseball bats in their beefy hands.
Hera waved them away and several sets of muscular shoulders relaxed.
The sound of pool balls being racked up overtook the low rock on the jukebox yet again.
Erato rolled her eyes.
“I may be the Muse of Erotic poetry, but my boots have stomped more than their share of these asshats into the ground, Hera. You’d be wise to call off your dogs.”
Hera smirked and pushed her glass towards Erato.
“I don’t have to resort to dogs to deal with you, Muse.
Though I assume these are what queer mortals call bears?
” She flicked her fingers dismissively. “Men will always be men, mortal or otherwise. They think we need them for protection when they are more often than not, the only predator in the room.”
Erato drank to that.
“Now,” Hera graciously waited for the drink to burn a path all the way down to Erato’s stomach. “I will ask you again, what did you do to my sister, and please spare me the sordid details. I read some of your books, and I’ve heard about your exploits. I surmise Demeter had a good time.”
Erato winced. “Can I say that I resent this entire conversation?”
Hera drummed her fingers on the bar.
“You can. And I can say that I would respect you more for such an answer.”
Erato flicked a few crumbs from the polished surface.
“You don’t respect me at all, Hera.”
Hera was silent for a long moment before she spoke, a note of tentativeness in her voice.
“I confess I hadn’t thought much about you, Muse, for the previous Fates know how many epochs.”
The bears winced collectively.
“Ouch.” Erato rubbed at her sternum, ignoring the men. Hera smirked, then sobered.
“And yet, there was my little sister, pining like a fool for a muse. A muse who seemed entirely indifferent to her. A muse who fucked her, cut her losses and ran. Leaving Demeter to pick up the pieces?—”
“I didn’t run— She’s the one who ran— How could she pine for me? She barely knew my name?”
Hera huffed out a breath.
“Dear Hestia, help me not smite this muse, for she is for some reason the chosen one for my fool of a sister.”
“I am?” Erato gaped.
Several bears theatrically smacked themselves on the foreheads. One of them grumbled. “I don’t get that either. You are kinda slow.”
Hera threw him a decidedly warm look and Erato felt herself turn crimson.
“Do not encourage the bears.” She turned back to the bar and downed her drink in one gulp. Where Hera hadn’t even winced, Erato’s entire body caught fire. She gagged and heard tutting from her left.
“The bear is right, though. Because I don’t get it either, Muse.
And honestly, I was just ready to see what in Hades’s Hell she was doing delaying spring and thus setting off all those lazy gods to Olympus and to bother me, since I am the only one tending to the damn business.
I had no peace. And believe me, I really need that peace at this exact moment in time. ”
“You’re plotting something?” Erato perked up. Maybe if the conversation moved away from her?—
“Now, who’s not minding her affairs? What does concern you, however, is when I walked on that accursed boat, I saw my sister, who has not taken a lover in centuries, wrapped around a muse. The Muse of Smut of all things.”
Erato put her face into her palms.
“I hate what I do.”
“You do not. Not only are you good at the writing part, and believe me, as I’ve mentioned, I read and tried hating it. Then I could’ve called Aphrodite and mocked her mercilessly for the company she keeps. But I enjoyed it. And myself…” Hera’s smirk was sly and slow. Erato groaned.
“What were you saying about that smiting? Because I think I am ready. Take me now.”
Hera tsked again.
“I have no idea what she sees in you, to be honest. But I thought okay, writing good sex, giving good sex, if all the nymphs and dryads were to be believed. So maybe Demeter deserved some fun.”
Erato lifted her face.
“You bonded us together so that Demeter could get laid?”
Hera flicked a piece of lint off her dress.
“I have done more for less, Muse. But I figured a few days and the entire spring situation would be resolved. Imagine my surprise when I see her all enraptured by you, dancing with you for Hades’s sake and, miracle of miracles, rejecting Poseidon.”
Erato narrowed her eyes.
“Why miracle of miracles? Did he and Demeter date or something? You cannot be serious about that last assertion. Poseidon?”
“Yeah, he’s a douche and a tool and he owes us money.
He’s not good enough for Demeter. We don’t know what you ever thought when you suggested he court her, Hera.
” The bear’s gruff droll was somewhat muffled by him laying his face almost on the pool table to try and hit a difficult shot.
It was Erato’s turn to smirk. Hera rolled her eyes.
“So he wasn’t my best idea. I do have it in me to acknowledge when I am wrong. I told that Cupid as much.”
Something tingled at the corners of Erato’s conscience.
“Which Cupid?”
Hera waved her away.
“Sabine. But that isn’t important.” She’d said it a bit too quickly and Erato was ready to latch onto the obvious lie, but Hera powered forward. “It isn’t. What is important is that spring is still not here. And it is entirely your fault.”
Erato furrowed her brow.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Demeter doesn’t care about me. She couldn’t even say my name for days?—”
“Yes, yes, she couldn’t say your name. I bet she screamed it loud enough?”
The bears groaned collectively again and moved to a table further away from them. Erato considered joining them.
“You seem to think very little of yourself, Muse. I can’t say I understand.” Hera patted her perfect hair. It occurred to Erato that she had not thought of herself as perfect in quite a while. In fact, she had thought of herself as anything but… especially for Demeter.
“And why is that, Muse? Where is your swagger? Sure you won’t allow some mild disdain to stop you from getting what you, of all the immortals, want? Unless my sister is not what you want.”
Hera was looking at her expectantly. Erato gulped.
“You are goading me.”
“I am trying to figure out why you’re here, moping, feeling miserable?—”
“You dragged me here!” Erato threw her arms up.
“Only because my sacred bond was severed, and I didn’t even know Demeter could do it all along!” Hera sounded exasperated, and Erato suddenly felt like all the oxygen was sucked out of the room.
“She severed the bond?”
Hera looked at her with utter disbelief before repeating slowly, enunciating every word, as if Erato were indeed slow.
“She. Severed. The. Bond.”
Behind her, the chorus of bears sang out “She severed the boooooond!”
Erato’s heart was beating double time. Demeter could’ve ripped the thread twenty thousand times during their predicament. She could’ve cut it the second Hera placed it. She could’ve undone it at any given second, and yet…
“Yes, there, voilà, the light bulb moment. I swear, I don’t get what she sees in you at all.”
Erato threw a ‘don’t even think about it’ look in the general direction of the bears, preempting any commentary or, Hades forbid, singing. They stayed silent. Balls were re-racked rather quickly.
“I think I have made a terrible mistake.” Erato gestured to the bartender, and he placed the second vodka in front of her.
“Gasp!” Hera clutched her chest dramatically. The bears mimicked her gesture. Erato rolled her eyes. Hera went on with her mockery. “The bulbs just keep lighting up, Muse.”
“I am not at all certain this is how you should be speaking to your future sister-in-law, Hera.” Erato sipped her vodka slowly this time and grinned widely at the Goddess next to her.
“Oh Zeus, you will be insufferable about this, won’t you?”
Erato shrugged and elbowed Hera gently.
“I mean, if she’ll have me, and if you bless the union.
” Hera stared daggers at her but her heart was so light, Erato just kept grinning.
“And how could you not? I will tell everyone this match was entirely your doing. Well, yours and the bears. Are they actual bears, by the way? Did Artemis have a hand?—”
The men’s laughter boomed and Hera narrowed her eyes, snapping her fingers for silence.
“Enough about the bears!” Then she blew out a breath and lowered her tone. “And don’t bring me into this, either. The Cupid started it, and I am nobody to oppose the Fates. Even they know the brouhaha with the arrows is not to be taken lightly.”
Erato’s eyes grew large and Hera bit her lip, shaking her head.
“I should not have said that.”
“Was Sabine involved?” Erato’s heart, which had just risen all the way to the Olympus, plummeted down.
Hera plucked the vodka out of her limp grasp.
She downed it without as much as blinking, and Erato wondered about what exactly did this woman do all day up in her fancy club in Manhattan.
Then Hera did something so striking, so out of character, Erato nearly fell off the stool.
She reached and grasped Erato’s hand with her own cold fingers.
“It may seem that I care for very little, Muse. My children, dumbasses as they are. My club, my Olympus. My revenge against Zeus. I am well known for those things. But I have to tell you that my sister is the one who stood by me, despite all my schemes, my plotting. Generations passed and she has not abandoned me. All of the gods and goddesses demand things of me and then leave. They fear me. They think me unstable. The jilted wife of a philandering husband. And that might be true.” Hera’s fingers trembled slightly on Erato’s as she went on.
“But Demeter never left me. Never wavered in her support of me. Never once welcomed any of Zeus’s mistresses, never once picked him or anyone else over me.
And so you better believe it, Muse, I love my sister.
I am not always kind to her. Hades knows, none of us are kind to her, the true workhorse of the family.
But I love her. And hence I am here telling you that hell, damnation and all those other things are nothing like my wrath.
You are my sister’s Perfect Match, and I helped it along as best as I could. But if you hurt her…”
Hera slowly lifted her hand and gave Erato a long, hard look.
“You better fix this, Muse. Spring better come. And not just because I need it so I can be left to my own devices. Spring needs to come because Demeter is happy and love blooms inside her.”
Erato smiled and stood up. The bears behind her cheered.
“I promise to do what I can. My best, in fact.”
Hera’s eye roll was all disappointment. Erato lifted a finger, stopping more threats.
“However, since you reminded me that I am nothing short of perfection, Hera, and so my very best is very, very good. Demeter knows that well.”
The bears cringed, and Hera pointed to the door.
“Go! And if you ever say a word of this to anyone, especially to Demeter?—”
“Yes, yes, you will turn me into a toad.” Erato closed the distance between them and gave Hera a fast and hard kiss. The bears gasped collectively again, then sang in perfect harmony, “A toad! She will turn you into a toad!”
Erato thought she could use them in her life. It was fun to have such an instant soundtrack on occasion.
Before Hera could indeed hex her into oblivion, she scampered out the door.
She had work to do, mistakes to fix and the most beautiful woman in the world to confess her love to.
Toads—and bears—would have to wait. Though maybe this particular group could come along, she needed all the help she could get.