28
Isearch every table and every space for the source of the scent. For billowing smoke, ivory or crimson – but find nothing out of place. “Do you smell that?” I ask August.
He sniffs the air. “The flowers?”
Absently, I shake my head.
Lightning forks outside, striking all around us. Brilliant flashes of anger. An arid wind gusts and for a moment, it’s like I’m home, where desert storms are known for their brutality. Their rage can carve canyons.
I wish one would cleave this island and bury it in the sea.
“Do you feel that?” August quietly asks.
Slowly I nod. And wait.
There are moments in life when you realize that when you weren’t looking, everything changed. When you wonder how you missed the pivotal point that separated then from now. Your security is torn away. Your world tilts and you struggle to keep your footing.
And then there are moments like this. When you’re aware of the shift as it happens, and you’re fortunate enough to mark the moment as one of the ones that matter most. When you brace for that tilt and welcome it.
The rain is tentative at first, pushing petrichor into the temple. And then the sky opens and washes the world in her tears.
Zeus pulls Hera across the room to dance, their steps synced to the storm and the bolts that skewer and slash. The gathered divine clap.
They think the storm is his doing.
A gust roars in, snuffing all the candles with one fury-filled breath. Tendrils of smoke don’t even get the chance to curl.
Pele rekindles the flames as Njord stands, forcing the wind outside and pinning it there. The gods laugh and dance and drink to our deaths as the championed sit, grateful for a seat at their executioners’ tables.
I turn to August, our knees brushing. “Want to get out of here?”
He smiles, surprised. “Absolutely.”
Elias notices us stand and watches me put my hand in August’s. And much to Athena’s chagrin, he releases a suggestive whistle. At Anansi’s table, Koda chuckles. Ulani and Vailea raise their glasses to us.
Our allies glance toward the dance floor, where they likely assume we’re heading, but we cut a path to the side of the temple and run out into the violent storm instead.
In a handful of hours, we’ll have to walk back between those columns to either receive instructions about the trial or be left to our own devices – and we will either survive it, or we won’t.
And if none of the gods in that building are willing or brave enough to stand up to Ares, Aymes and I will be forced to forfeit the games before they even start.
“I need to do something, but I want you to be there.” Rain carves rivers over my face, spilling over my lips as I speak.
He nods. “Whatever you want.”
My heart flutters at the resoluteness in his stare. I grin at him as the storm lashes us both and yell over the wind, “To my oikos!”
The staircases are waterfalls.
Our pale clothes are soaked through.
We dash across pelted, pocked sand to my empty house. Inside, we catch our breath and smile at one another.
“I forgot. What I need to do requires fire.”
He grins. “Are you burning it down?”
I shake my head. “No, I just need it.”
A bright fork of lightning strikes the beach. “Be right back.”
From the doorway, I watch him fearlessly run into the storm and dash into his oikos.
Watch the downpour recede as he hurries back with a lit oil lamp, its fueled flame shielded by his hand.
Sheets of pelting droplets chase him up my sandy path.
He laughs as it drapes over his back when he enters the room, but the fire still burns when he walks farther in.
I close the door against the weather and pad over to him, leaving a trail of wet footprints to the room’s middle.
The feathers in my hair are sodden. I squeeze the water from one of them. Mamá said to burn hers if I needed her. And this… this is her feather. Maybe she can help. Maybe a god owes her a favor. Something. Anything.
Or if she has any of the tea, we can learn what’s in it that Anansi wants so badly. Could we bribe him with an amount of the ingredient he craves in exchange for Ogun championing August?
Even if there’s nothing she can do or give, I just want to see her.
I need to tell her something while I’m still alive.
I’m not sure how things will be once I die.
Carina came to me the other day through the mirror, but was it difficult for her to accomplish?
Did Mamá have to call for her? How often can she do that? Does she have to bleed to reach her?
There are too many questions and too few answers.
“Bring the lamp over here,” I say.
He comes closer as I hold the feather to the flame.
Fire spreads slowly over the vane. The barbs curl, shrivel, and become ash. They crumble and fall away, settling on the floor. My nose scrunches. Burning feathers smell like burning hair.
August and I wait, but no glimmering portal opens. No door appears. My mother doesn’t come like she said she would, and she doesn’t make a way for me to reach her.
Maybe she can’t risk it. Or… Maybe she can’t reach me when I’m on their island?
I don’t want to think she lied to me.
Wind suddenly forces the front door open so fiercely, the wood bangs against the wall. A drenched quetzal bird swoops into the room. A moment later, another flies into the room, a smaller female with muted colors. Then another male with gorgeous streaming feathers.
More birds flap inside, taking cover from the storm, singing and flapping, perching on the two beams that span the ceiling, until the whole top half of the oikos writhes in dull and vibrant green, gray, white, and vivid red.
August stares upward with his mouth agape, marveling at the sight of them all. As they shake off the rain, droplets fall from the ceiling.
As one, they turn their heads to look at the fresco and scream.
They scream for her. And for me.
My mother didn’t come like she promised, but I think she sent these quetzals in her place. I just don’t know why or how they can help.
That night, we leave the doors and windows of my oikos open and walk back to August’s in a downpour that seems to have no end. We change into dry clothes and settle onto the bed together. August Aymes holds me against his side, drawing lazy circles on my bicep.
Pressing my palm to his chest, I feel his heartbeat and ask him about the life he’s lived.
He tells me stories about his parents and his two younger brothers, Aliver and Aster. Aliver wants to be a chef when he grows up and Aster longs to be a painter.
“And your mother obviously loves the letter A,” I tease.
He smiles. “And my mother loves the letter A the way yours loves the letter C.”
When I ask, he describes his home and bedroom. How he started singing and his career spiraled. His success was unexpected, as was the fame that followed, but it changed their lives in unimaginable ways. Most of them good.
“What’s it like? To do what you love?”
“It’s genuine in a way little else is,” he answers honestly.
His parents met in the mountains on a hiking trail. Both were walking up to see one of the summits when they began talking and trekked to the summit sharing stories like he and I are doing now. They descended as friends. All the rest came after.
He brags that Aster loves to read and has a few great friends who live farther down the mountain, while Aliver never stops running and talking until he literally crashes and falls asleep wherever he ends up. He’s such a sound sleeper, he never wakes when he’s carried to bed.
Their family has a dog – a tiny breed with fluffy ears that answers to Dingo and loves to sneak food from your hand if you slip something for him under the table. His mom always tells the family not to feed him scraps, but all of them do it. Even her, when she thinks no one is watching.
“Do you have any pets?” he asks, shifting to see me better.
“Only the quetzals that flit through Abuela’s garden, if you consider those pets. They are fed and loved, I suppose.”
“Do they have names?” He purses his lips.
“No.”
“Just shy of pets, then. Pets must have names,” he primly informs me. August glances down at the necklace on my chest. “Since the fourth trial ended, there’s a lot I don’t understand.”
I nod my agreement, so my tone doesn’t betray that I’m keeping things from him.
He asks me about Cillian, and I brag about his skill with chiseling stone. Tell him how obsessed Carina always was about writing and syntax.
That I never knew what I wanted for a future or career and wondered if I was meant to be a soldier, and that’s why I had no other aspirations.
I describe Abuela. How she loves bright colors and sweet treats. How her smile can calm any worried heart. How she likes to hum like he does. “I miss her.”
He hugs me tighter. “How did she come to raise you?”
“Mamá left when we were little, to become an acolyte.”
His arm tenses around me. “For what god?”
“I don’t know.” And that much is true. She serves the Mexica pantheon, but if she’s bound to a particular Aztec deity, I don’t know which one.
“What about your dad?” he rasps, his voice more guarded after hearing the truth about my mother.
I clear my throat. “Da died a year before she left us.”
He’s patient as I collect my thoughts. Though I know he’ll be satisfied with only that information, I want him to know everything.
“Back then, we lived in the Celtic realm. Near his aging parents. They passed shortly after he did… He and Grand-da and their friends met each spring and rode horses deep into the forest. They stayed in a little stone cottage that had been in the family for generations and spent a week together, hunting.”
“What did they hunt?” His voice is gravel.
The truth. It’s all I have left. “Boar.”
I feel him tense.
“It was a boar that killed him.”
August sits in the silence with me.
“Do you want to know what’s worse than that?”
He swallows. “What?”
“Our Da described a long, stone bridge that spanned the mountains near that cottage and told us wild stories of the hungry trolls who lived beneath it. He said they ate wandering children.” Tears clog my throat again.
“Other than Daedalus being dragged into it, did the second trial have anything to do with your life?”
I nod. “Three of us were captured in one of the battles we fought. We were tossed into a tiny cell. It was sweltering and dark, and the stone sweated like the walls of the maze. We were supposed to be executed at dawn, but Morrigan prowled through the darkness to find and free us before the sun rose.”
He pauses the slow circles to ask, “What about the ash or the river?”
“Ash fell from the sky the day we buried my sister. It painted the red desert gray until the rains came a few weeks later. No one knows why. I think the river was a threat to Cillian. He is an apprentice to a master building a temple for Athena, who represents memory. The Lethe represents forgetting. I lost Carina in this life, but her soul is safe now. I think Ares is threatening to carry Cillian’s soul to Hades’s underworld before Morrigan can claim it.
He would forget us there, and we would mourn him for an eternity. ”
August presses his eyes closed and mutters a curse. “I’m so sorry,” he says, pulling me tighter against his chest.
“So am I. I never meant for anyone else to be hurt.”
“Whatever happens tomorrow, I’m glad for this. That I had some time with you.” He kisses my forehead. “I wish things were different.”
“I do, too.” It’s all I can manage.
I thought Mamá might be able to help somehow.
I’m not sure anything can help me now.
“I still mean it. I’d rather die with you than live for any of them,” he says of the gods.
I try to smile. Fight the tears that swell my throat. And lie to August Aymes. “We should get some rest. I’m exhausted.”
He hears the lie immediately, but he doesn’t ask me for the truth. “Sure,” he softly agrees, shifting to get more comfortable.
He combs through my hair with his fingers and I close my eyes and pretend to sleep, all the while savoring every touch, his scent, his warmth. The sound of his breath and the feel of his heartbeat under my ear.
If I asked Morrigan, would she send Ceann ársa to carry us back to her realm knowing it would start a new, vicious war?
I think she would do it. But the cost would be too great for too many people.
It’s hard to argue with self-preservation, but that’s what I do until the sky lightens from black to royal blue. I think and scheme and try to bargain and look for a way out of this mess. We need to escape death – at least for today.
We can worry about tomorrow later.