Chapter 56 Tile Me Something I Don’t Know
FIFI SCREAMS AS WE ALL go flying.
I slam against the base of Zeus’s statue and the sharp corner of it slices through my back.
Immediately I know the skin has been broken, but I don’t have time to try and figure out how bad it is, because the tiles that exploded upward and broke into sharp, craggy pieces are now starting to rain down on us like shrapnel.
“Cover your head!” Arjun screams, and I try, but it’s hard to move when my back feels like it’s been torn open from shoulder to waist.
Still, I try to tuck myself into a ball. And so does Kyrian, though he’s not having much luck, because he’s also trying to shield an unconscious Fifi.
Terror rips through me at the sight and I scream, “Is she okay?” as I start trying to crawl over to them.
“She’s fine!” he yells. “Just stop moving.”
But I can’t. Who cares if tiles are slamming into my back if something’s wrong with Fifi? I’m the one who got her into this. The one who got all of them into this. I can’t just leave them alone to face consequences obviously meant for me.
The tiles finally stop falling right around the time I get to my best friend. “Fifi!” I call, gently slapping her face to try to bring her around. “Fifi, can you hear me?”
Her eyes open, and for a second she looks totally dazed, like the lights are on but not even the pets are home. But then she blinks a few times and I see her come back to herself.
“Is everyone okay?” she demands, pushing herself into a sitting position.
“They’re fine,” I tell her, then look around to make sure I’m not lying.
Thankfully, Arjun and Kyrian really do look okay—Kyrian’s got a cut above his eye and Arjun already has a couple of dark bruises forming on his cheek and neck. But otherwise they seem like they escaped relatively unscathed.
“I think you two are the ones we should be worried about,” Kyrian says as he gestures to my back. “You’re bleeding.”
“I know. I can feel it. How bad is it?”
I gently pull up the back of my shirt just an inch or two and Kyrian takes a look and winces. “It’s really bruised and there are a couple of big cuts over your spine. What’d you hit?”
“Zeus.” I roll my eyes as I stagger to my feet. “Who else?”
“Don’t you think you should sit down a little longer?” Arjun asks sharply. He’s currently holding two fingers in front of Fifi’s face.
“Two,” she says, pushing his hand aside. “I told you I’m fine.”
“You passed out,” he counters. “That probably means you’re concussed, which definitely means you’re not fine.”
“I’ll worry about that later,” she says. “Right now I just think we should get out of here.”
“You guys go ahead,” I tell them, wiggling my toes and fingers to make sure everything still works. It does, despite the sharp pain in my back.
“What do you mean, you guys?” Kyrian demands. “Obviously you’re coming with us.”
“Of course. I just need to check on something. I want to know what Hera was pointing to.”
“Does it really matter what this Hera person was trying to tell you?” Kyrian thrusts a frustrated hand through his hair. “She nearly killed us.”
“I’m not so sure it was her.” I glance toward the area Hera had been pointing, then gasp.
“What’s wrong?” Fifi asks. “What do you see now?”
I don’t answer her. I can’t. I’m too busy picking my way over the shattered floor to the back of the museum. Because the sparkles have returned—the ones I saw everywhere my very first day here and haven’t seen since.
Only now they aren’t surrounding me. They aren’t trying to lead me down some path in the middle of nowhere. Instead they’re forming a giant glowing picture, plain as day, against the closed doors of the hall.
“Maybe I have a concussion after all,” Fifi says from right behind me, her voice filled with awe.
“You can see them too?” I whisper.
“I think we can all see them,” Arjun says.
“I can’t.” Kyrian sounds frustrated as he looks back and forth between the three of us. “Exactly what am I supposed to be looking at here?”
“Sparkles,” I tell him.
“Sparkles?” His brows shoot up so fast they nearly hit his hairline. “Are you telling me all three of you have concussions?”
“I don’t think it’s a concussion thing,” I tell him. “I think it’s an Aphrodite thing.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Shh,” I whisper, because unlike with the mosaics, the sparkles have formed only the outline of the image they want to make. But it’s enough—more than enough—because I can see it all so clearly.
Pandora on her knees, sobbing, the open box on the ground in front of her.
Prometheus chained on the side of a mountain, a vulture devouring his insides.
Zeus raging about his fire and yelling at someone to “make her more beautiful!”
“This isn’t right,” I tell Fifi and Arjun. “None of this is right.”
Fifi’s crouched down next to the sparkles making up Pandora. Tears are in her eyes as she reaches out and tries to touch the sobbing woman.
The sparkles dissipate like raindrops and don’t come back together until she lowers her hand.
“Well, if whatever it is isn’t right…” Kyrian’s voice is clear and steady behind me. “What would you fix?”
“Everything,” I whisper. “If I could, I would fix everything.”
And just like that, the sparkles disappear, the murals they were creating fading like they never were.
Which gives me an idea. It’s a wild idea and I have no clue where it even came from.
But I feel the need to make it right—to show the truth—burning inside me, lighting up my insides and making it hard to breathe.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, don’t have a clue what I can do. I just know I have to try.
As the idea spins more and more brightly in my mind, I drop to my knees on the torn-up floor.
“Are you okay?” Fifi drops down beside me. “Do you feel sick?”
“I’m fine,” I answer as I reach for a broken tile. It’s red and jagged and I know exactly what I want to do with it.
I press it into the floor right in front of me. Then reach for another.
But before I can grab on to the second tile, every single tile in the room—except for the one I pressed into the floor—shoots straight into the air.
“Is it happening again?” Arjun demands as they hang in the air all around us. “Tell me it’s not happening again.”
“It’s not happening again,” Kyrian assures him, his voice dry as dust. “Whatever this is, it’s something totally new.”
He’s right. It is new. Brand new. I can feel the novelty and the power of it deep inside me as the tiles start vibrating.
“Um, this is new,” Fifi says, cautiously reaching out a finger to touch one of the tiles close to her. But the second she makes contact, it shoots off in another direction. “Well, that’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Or ever,” Arjun adds.
I wait for Kyrian to pile on, but he’s just standing there, watching me with those shimmering, electric-green eyes of his. And that’s when I know exactly what I’m going to do.
I reach for one of the tiles in the air, half expecting it to run from me the way that other one did from Fifi. Instead, it all but jumps onto my palm, along with six or seven of its closest neighbors.
I press them into the ground as best I can, then reach for more tiles and do the same.
Then I reach for more and do it again. And again and again and again and again and again.
I do it over and over, until my already-hurt back is throbbing.
Until my hands ache and my overused fingers cramp. And then I do it some more.
I cover the entire floor with the broken tiles, building another mosaic. One that isn’t abstract this time. One that has perfectly clear pictures in it. One that tells the real story and not some made-up myth to make the gods look good.
Except when I get to the end, when I have just one more tile to place, I reach into the air to grab it. Only nothing comes.
“There are no more, Ellie,” Fifi says in a voice filled with awe. “You’ve used them all. And it’s beautiful.”
“But there’s one missing,” I tell her. “It’s not finished.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Kyrian says. “Maybe it’s not meant to be finished.”
“Maybe,” I answer, but his words don’t sit well with me. It doesn’t feel right to have done all this only to leave it unfinished in the end.
“What is it?” Arjun asks softly, his eyes glued on the people in the middle of the mural.
A large man with olive skin and a salt-and-pepper bun on the top of his head.
He’s holding the hand of a much shorter woman with curly black hair and a small box tucked under her arm. At their feet, a young child plays.
Far above them in the sky, a vulture flies freely by. I almost told the story with Agatha, but since a vulture took her place, it seemed right to show him.
“It’s the truth,” I tell Arjun. “If the gods can write history any way they want to, then I can rewrite it the way it really happened.”
“Oh my gods, Ellie.” Fifi’s eyes fill with tears. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard!”
“It really is,” Kyrian agrees softly. But there’s a sadness in his eyes when he asks, “Do you think they’ll let it stay?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him, the sadness invading me as I bend over to stretch my aching back.
And that’s when I see it. The missing tile, wedged into the corner of the base of the Perseus and Medusa statue. Because of course that’s where it is. I swear, this statue is my nemesis.
I reach over and pull it out, then squat down and press the tile into the tiny spot on the floor where it belongs.
The moment I do—the moment the mosaic is complete—the sparkles come back. This time they fill the room, spinning and spinning and spinning around until I grow dizzy just watching them.
“What’s happening now?” Kyrian asks, eyes wide.
“Can you see them?”
“The sparkles?” He nods. “Yeah, I can see them this time.”
“We can all see them,” Arjun says as the sparkles explode outward and shower over the floor like confetti, then slowly sink between the tiles.
“What are they doing?” Fifi whispers.
“I don’t know.”
But then the most miraculous thing I’ve ever seen happens—and I’ve seen a lot since coming to Anaximander’s. But this…this is something extraordinary.
The figures in the mosaic start to move.
They start to grow.
They become three-dimensional and then they step right out of the mosaic.
“Oh my gods!” Fifi squeals.
Prometheus is much taller now than he was when I last saw him. He’s gigantic—as big as a Titan should be. And Pandora…Pandora really is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, with a smile so kind it lights up the whole room.
For one second, Prometheus’s eyes meet mine, and burning deep inside them is the fire of the humanity the gods could never take from him.
“Thank you,” he says in a voice so deep and rumbly it shakes the entire hall.
“You’re welcome,” I whisper as Pandora bends down and picks up the baby, cuddling him against her shoulder right before the three of them turn into marble and claim their rightful place in the Hall of Legends.