“Back off, Titans!” cried Zeus. “Or we shall destroy you!”

“You tell ’em, Dad!” said Athena, her gray eyes flashing.

“How are we going to destroy them, Zeus?” said Hera. “Think about it! You’re the only one of us who has a weapon!”

But Zeus kept on. “Mount Olympus is ours, now!” he shouted. He yanked the silver sickle off his girdle and waved it at Dad. He thumped his fist on his chest, but it didn’t make the usual booming noise. Zeus looked down at his chest and gasped. “Hey! Where’s my aegis? My impenetrable shield? Hermes? HERMES!”

“Yo, Pops!” Hermes waved. He had the aegis buckled around his own scrawny chest.

Zeus looked back at the Titans. His eyes grew wide.

They were almost upon us now.

“Oops!” Zeus cried. He turned and started running. Athena was right behind him. The rest of us sped after them.

I’m not proud of this, but the truth is, we gods fled in terror. We ran helter-skelter down Mount Olympus. Except for Demeter, who made a little detour to the rock garden first to pick up her beloved stone.

As we ran, we gods heard big Titan feet pounding behind us. At last we broke through the blanket of clouds. We kept running until we reached level ground. Then we hotfooted it across Greece. Mortals stopped to stare openmouthed as we rushed by.

“Gods on the run,” Hera said. “How embarrassing!”

“Mortals will stop sacrificing to us if they think we’re scared,” Hestia pointed out.

Hera waved to the mortals. “Just warming up for the big marathon!” she called to them.

I looked back over my shoulder. I didn’t see any Titans. I didn’t hear any battle cries. Or pounding feet.

“They’ve stopped chasing us,” I called to the others. “I guess Dad just wanted to run us off Mount Olympus.”

And so at last we stopped. We stood there, gasping for breath and wiping the drosis from our brows.

“Now Dad will move back into the palace,” Zeus moaned. “It won’t be mine anymore!”

“Win some, lose some,” said Hera. “Come on. Let’s find ourselves a roomy cave where we can hide for the night, just in case.”

We hunted around, and at last we found a cave beside a lake. It was big and deep, with lots of separate rooms. We scurried inside.

The next morning, I woke everyone up and asked them to meet outside of the cave.

When we were all gathered I said, “We need to—”

“Yes!” cried Zeus, who never could stand to let anyone else run a meeting. “We need to come up with a plan for taking Mount Olympus back from the Titans. Raise your hand if you have an idea.”

Of course no hands went up.

“I was going to say,” I continued, “we need to find a new place to live.”

“No!” cried Zeus. “Mount Olympus is our home! We have to take it back. Think harder! How can two dozen gods defeat a hundred giant Titan warriors?”

“We could take turns smiting them with your sword, Dad,” Athena said.

Zeus nodded. “Okay. That’s a start. Anyone else?”

But no one else had any ideas about how to drive the Titans off Mount Olympus, or about finding a new place to live. So that cave became our home. Hera, who could put a positive spin on anything, started referring to it as “Headquarters.”

Hermes’s son, Pan, who lived on earth, heard about us holed up in that cave. He came to visit us one day, and stuck around. Pan was a pretty strange fellow. He had goat horns and ears and a little goatee. He had hooves and hairy goat legs, too, and a goat tail. And talk about nervous! One day Zeus dropped the silver sickle onto a stone. The clatter startled Pan, and he screamed.

Pan’s scream was the loudest, most horrible sound that any of us had ever heard, and it scared the girdles off us. We jumped up and started running around, yelling and shouting, and no one knew what was going on. In short, we were in a panic. It took a long time for us to get used to Pan’s crazy shouting.

Weeks went by. Zeus never stopped badgering us to think up a way to boot the Titans off Mount Olympus. But no one ever had any ideas.

One day Hera called us all together. “I have a plan,” she said. “We can play games against the Titans for the right to live on Mount Olympus.”

“What kind of games?” asked Apollo.

“All different kinds,” said Hera. “Kickstone, for one.”

“Kick-what?” said Zeus.

“It’s a game we used to play down in Dad’s belly,” I explained.

“We can run races, too,” Hera said. “And have jumping contests and wrestling matches. Whoever wins the most games gets to live on Mount Olympus.”

“The Titans already live on Mount Olympus,” I said. “Why would they agree to play?”

“Because games sound like fun,” Hera said. “And because the Titans will think they’re unbeatable.”

“They probably are unbeatable,” Hestia pointed out. “They’re titanic!”

“Size won’t matter in the games I make up,” said Hera. “And besides, we’re a talented bunch. Hades spent all his time down in Dad’s belly jumping. Carrying that stone has given Demeter amazing upper-body strength. And Po is a great swimmer.”

“Yes!” cried Po. “Plus, I invented the doggie paddle, the frog kick, the swan dive, and the cannonball!”

“You mean you’re going to make up games based on what we’re good at?” I said.

“Exactly,” said Hera. “And since we’re playing for Mount Olympus, we’ll call them . . . the Olympic Games.”

“I’ll do weight lifting,” Zeus said. “I’m as strong as an ox. No, make that ten oxen.”

Hera nodded. Then she turned to Hermes. “You can sell anybody anything. How about flying up to Mount Olympus and talking the Titans into this?”

“No problem.” Hermes jumped into his winged sandals, put on his winged helmet, and off he flew.

While we waited for Hermes to come back, we taught Zeus and his kids to play kickstone. We played game after game of it in a field not far from the cave. Apollo was a natural dribbler. Aphrodite had a kick like a mule. And Dionysus proved to be a fearless goalie. Nothing got by him. The Muses were duds on the field, but they discovered a talent for standing on the sidelines and inspiring some amazing plays. Hera watched everyone and made notes.

Two days later Hermes plopped right down in the middle of a game.

“We’re on!” he said. “When the Titans stopped laughing, Cronus agreed to play games for Mount Olympus. He gave me a list of a few games the Titans want to play, too.” He handed the list to Hera. “We’re to meet them in Olympia Stadium a week from today.”

Hera raised a megaphone to her lips. “Listen up, gods. Intensive training starts at dawn. The games I’ve invented will use your strengths—”

“Hold it!” said Zeus. “Who made you team captain?”

Hera shot him a look.

“Uh, for Olympic team captain I appoint Hera!” Zeus said quickly.

Hera handed a list of her games to Hermes, and he flew it up to the Titans. Then she drew a chart with the events she’d made up so far on the wall of the cave.

“Now wait a second,” said Athena. “What’s badminton?”

Hera smiled. “You’ll love it.”