26
Three days pass. Three days during which Koda sleeps and recovers in a way no one realizes or expects.
Before dawn on the day of our fourth trial, I wake Koda as August showers. He surprises me by sitting up in bed by himself. He tells me good morning, and I say it back.
His symptoms never returned after he drank the single cup of tea. No fever. No cough. No chills. Nothing. And while that’s remarkable, that’s not the miracle Koda experienced. The miracle lay in the other ways his body healed…
When he gets out of bed, he reaches for his cane, but when he starts walking, finds he doesn’t need it. Koda’s back and legs are straight again.
An hour before dawn, while twilight washes the sky azure, Niall, dressed in a black uniform reminiscent of the one we wore for Morrigan, arrives at the front door. He offers to go retrieve some clothes for Koda, but Koda stands energetically and says he feels like walking home.
Niall frowns as he watches our friend gather his belongings, bending easily, carrying things instead of needing them to be carried. And in his frown sits the question: How? How is this possible?
I can’t answer him. Partly, because I don’t know. Some of the ingredients in that tea were simple plants that grow in Abuela’s garden. Plants she puts in all her blends. I recognized the petals. But there was something else in it, and whatever it was, the other gods want it.
When the divine see the changes in Koda, how will we explain his transformation? What will they do to us to learn what healed him?
I watch the two of them from the doorway as they cross the pathway to the main shore, waiting to see if Koda will need Niall’s hand in the deeper sand. He doesn’t.
It’s like he’s twenty years younger.
I’m not sure what today’s trial will bring, but Koda’s newfound strength will help us if it doesn’t damn us first.
Vailea stopped by yesterday to tell us that the announcement made at the championed palaestra feast was that we’ll all be given another surprise today. We’ll receive this one during the contest itself instead of before it. After the last surprise they gave us, I’m not eager to receive another one.
The shower water shuts off and shortly after, August walks out of the bathing room dressed in cargo pants and a white tee shirt. “Where’s Koda?” he asks, moving to pick up the cane he left behind.
“August… The tea healed more than his sickness. He’s able to walk on his own now.”
August’s shoulders tense. “I imagine there aren’t many things that could heal him like that.”
I bite my nail. “Anansi is capable.”
“Will he lie and say it was his doing?”
I shrug. I don’t know what the tricky god will do. If he thinks I’ll divulge the source of the ingredient he wants, he might, but he would certainly threaten to tell the truth if I don’t reveal it.
Susanoo wasn’t allowed to help Akira. What if Anansi’s lie backfires and Koda is killed because the divine think he healed Koda to give his mortal an advantage?
Today, I decide to wear my bloodstained bodysuit. It protects my prosthesis better than any of the other clothes, which matters more than being fashionable.
Feathers and all, I pull my hair back in a high ponytail. My obsidian shard is secured in a makeshift cloth sheath hanging from a torn piece of fabric tied around my waist. I take my spear from the corner and hand Torsten’s – Elias’s – sword to August.
“Should we give it back to our Greek friend?” he asks.
“No. And I can’t wield them both.” I try to smile.
“Okay, then. We can win,” he tells me, holding my eyes.
I want to believe him. I want to feel as sure as he sounds when he says it. So I say it, in case speaking it will somehow make it happen. “We can win.”
“Are the others meeting us at the temple?”
“Yeah.” I glance at his fresco before we leave the oikos, the little island, and the shore, in case it’s the last time I see it. We take the stairs and march toward the fourth trial.
Peng and Tae are waiting inside when we push aside a swath of pale fabric. Peng’s leathers are soft pink, while Tae shimmers in new armor with Isis, wings outstretched, etched into the gold over her chest.
Ulani and Vailea arrive; he wears bronze and she is in leather armor of the palest blue. They carry their sword and trident, looking like they might tear the world apart if the gods separate them today.
Elias arrives in blue with black-garbed Niall and red-clad Koda.
Hazi comes in alone, the only one wearing the deep purple fabric of the Mesopotamians. In the last trial, he said he’d tell me about the gift he received from the oracle, but I haven’t seen him since. I wonder if he changed his mind.
Then Kallik and Torsten stride across the stone, Kallik in dark brown leather and Torsten in silver. His armor is bulky. He sees the sword I took from him in August’s hand and sneers.
August smiles in reply, which pisses Torsten off. The Norseman’s stare glints with the promise of a fight.
Marima, Brigid’s choice from last night, marches in wearing a skin-tight black suit and no armor at all, like me. Her outfit eases my nerves. If Brigid didn’t dress her for hand-to-hand combat, maybe the fourth trial won’t require it, after all.
Nikolai, Njord’s mortal, wears silver to match Torsten, while Sura, Pele’s selected, is clad in bronze armor like Ulani.
Next to enter the temple are Wen, brutal Triglav’s angry mortal, and Veronia, huntress Devona’s, both wearing lavender ensembles and looking like they plan to win this trial together for their pantheon’s glory.
I’m counting to make sure everyone’s here when the sound of the horn blares all around us. Yuuki jogs in, wearing golden armor with Thoth engraved into the breastplate, and settles next to Tae.
Hermes flies into the room. The instant his feet hit the stone, he speaks. “This is the simplest challenge you’ve faced to date.”
I bristle, flicking a distrustful glance at August.
“And since we promised you a surprise, we’ve made it a meaningful one. We understand you’ve likely grown homesick. That’s why someone dear to each of you has been placed in this trial.”
My ears start to ring.
“We’ve made it easy for you to find them. Once you reunite, the two of you will need to make your way back to the portal. It’s that simple. As always, the mortal who enters the arena first will be declared the trial’s winner and will be awarded the laurel.”
Terror courses through me. August whispers a curse. Our wide eyes meet.
According to Hermes it’s an easy race, out and back, with someone we love along the course. It must be my brother.
Brigid said that Abuela was safe, but she didn’t mention Cillian. It must be him. Because if it’s not, it means they’ve found Mamá. Because of me.
I press a trembling hand to my head.
Hermes’s voice echoes through our silence. “In thirty breaths, at the sounding of the horn, the portal will illuminate.”
The race starts now. To the portal itself.
August grabs my hand and pulls me to the side of the staircase. He leaps down to the landing, bypassing the steps. I flip onto my belly and start to ease over the ledge as people thunder down the stairs.
Aymes lifts me down and we rush to the front of the crowd, meeting Hazi and Torsten at the flickering gold portal.
“They better not have harmed them,” Hazi seethes beside me, bouncing on his toes.
Torsten grunts his agreement.
Just like that, the gods have stripped our alliances bare. It’s every mortal for themselves and their loved one.
August looks over at me. “Be careful.”
I nod. “You too.”
Hermes paces above us.
“And be quick,” August adds, drying nervous hands on his shirt.
I offer him my own advice. “Be a soldier in there, not a contestant.”
His brows furrow.
“They’ve dragged our loved ones into this, Aymes. Get them out.”
Time slows as the horn creeps toward Hermes’s mouth.
August kisses his palm and hurls it away, then grabs my hand. Three squeezes.
We. Can. Win.
Hermes blows the horn, the sound a harsh blast in our ears, and the portal ignites.
We push through, arms pumping as we race into a world of ash. Like snow, it falls from the sky, covers the ground, and succumbs to the breezes that toss this way and that. There are banks of it. Drifts and mounds.
The land is a veritable ocean of ashfall. The only things in any direction are far away, blurs on the horizon, and I can’t tell what they are.
Our feet pound into the soft coating as we run. Plumes build and linger behind us.
The sky is ashen, too. A gray, endless twilight. Muted and dull and terrible.
“I see them!” Torsten yells to Kallik, who’s trying to catch up and struggling. “At the river!”
That curving watery serpent looms in the distance. Black and still as night, slithering through the ash staining its inky surface. Small, shallow boats float in the placid, winding river, and standing in them are people who don’t belong in this world or in this trial.
I scan face after face, looking for familiarity and finding only strangers.
Hazi veers left, following the slick bank. “Father!” He slips in the mud, but digs a hand in and somehow stays upright and keeps moving. “Father!”
And then I see him. My brother is to the right, in the last boat. “Cillian!” I shrill, racing toward him.
Veronia shoves me out of her way, screaming for someone. Tears stream down her face. “Gods, Vanessa!” she shrieks.
An ash cloud overtakes me when I finally reach Cillian and stop. My brother is holding a long pole that reaches the river bottom. “Cillian, come to me!”
He doesn’t even flinch. Just stares ahead, looking not at me, but through me. I yell for him again and again, but he doesn’t realize I’m here. This isn’t right.
Torsten roars for his mother. Thanks to the gods’ querulous design, she’s in the boat beside Cillian’s. The Norseman steps into the squelching mud and gets stuck in it. He tries to work himself free but the more he moves, the more it swallows him. His silver armor is too heavy.
I pace the shore, trying to understand what we’re supposed to do to reach them. Or are they supposed to reach us?