The four of us strode across the empty street, not even bothering to check for cars. We then headed toward the antique shop, which was owned by my mother and stood between our town’s small clothing store and the restaurant run by Zach and Luke’s parents. Its simple façade made the shop look like it was built as a set for an old Western movie, but the inside, which was decorated with faded tapestries, looked more like a storage room in a medieval castle.
I pushed open the door, and as the tiny silver bell rang to signal our step through the wooden doorway, the familiar smell of leather and dust filled my nose. My mother looked up from her desk in the back, and her brown eyes met my gray ones for only a split second before she walked into the back room. Apparently she didn’t feel the need to supervise us poking through all the miscellaneous junk.
On the right side of the room was a montage of mismatched furniture, mostly ancient wooden chests and tables with intricate designs. The left side of the room held more miscellaneous items, such as swords and small metal sculptures, bearing witness to the fact that my mom and dad had gone through a long phase of a medieval obsession before I was born. There was also a ship in a bottle, along with a large broken grandfather clock that had supposedly belonged to Benjamin Franklin. Where my mother found all these things was a mystery to everyone, including me and my father.
The four of us began picking through the dense pile of stuff on the left side of the room. After a few minutes, we hadn’t found much, but Luke spontaneously decided he liked an old, rusty black trident, and I frowned, supposing it could be cleaned up somehow. A laughing Zach had just picked up a metal sword that was way too long for him and was swinging it about wildly when I heard the tiny bell ring, meaning someone else had just walked through the door.
I turned to see who it was and recognized the owner of the gas station, a muscular man with caramel-colored hair, squeezing through a small opening between two tables, heading to my mother’s desk in the back of the room. My mom must have heard the bell too because she walked out of the back storage room and sat down in the leather chair before politely greeting the man. “Hello, Robert, how can I help you today?” Just then, I noticed his daughter standing in the small walkway behind him, looking quite bored and sending sympathetic glances toward the boys as if she pitied them for their blatant immaturity.
Her name was Camille, one of the quieter ones in our small class. I didn’t know her as well as Zach, Luke, and Connor, but she was nice and we talked often. She had flushed cheeks and wavy, blonde hair usually held up in a tight bun, with hazel eyes almost exactly like Connor’s. In fact, the two of them looked so much alike that people who didn’t know them might mistake them for siblings, maybe even twins.
Twins. My eyes lit up as I saw her carefully pick up an antique wooden bow and study it curiously. Instantly I knew who she was: Artemis, the maiden goddess of the moon and the hunt, a daughter of Zeus, and the twin sister of Apollo.
Feeling excited to have found another goddess, I glanced over my shoulder at the guys. Luke was busy inspecting his trident, and Connor was rummaging through some old junk, but I caught Zach’s eye and jerked my head toward Camille. He must have understood that I suspected she might be a Greek goddess, because he nodded and followed me over to her almost immediately.
“Hey, Camille,” I started, and she looked up to meet my gaze. “Have you ever been in the woods before?”
She raised her thin eyebrows and challenged, “If I had, do you really think I would still be standing here alive?”
Okay, so she had a point.
“Maybe,” I answered honestly, thinking about our godliness, and Zach quickly nodded his head in agreement.
Then I looked down at the bow Camille was still holding and noticed how beautiful it was. It had a design of a flower vine running down it, and the wood was still in very good condition. I also noticed the faded leather quiver full of arrows that sat on a chair next to Camille and asked, gesturing to the bow, “Have you ever shot before?”
Camille looked back down at the bow, then back up at Zach and me, and shrugged. “Once or twice.”
“Are you any good?” Zach piped up cheerfully.
“Maybe,” Camille responded shortly, narrowing her eyes at Zach again.
Zach exchanged uncomfortable glances with me, but I gave him a nod of encouragement and he said, “How would you like to come with us into the woods tomorrow? I promise you won’t get killed, as long as you stay with us.”
Camille studied us suspiciously, debating her options. Then she checked behind her to make sure her father wasn’t listening and said in a low voice, “All right, I’ll admit I’m curious. What time?”
“Ten. In the morning, that is … and you may want to bring that with you,” I said, pointing at the bow and arrows, but then her dad called for her again. She wordlessly raised her eyebrows at us one last time as she followed her father out the door, leaving the bow on the chair. When she winked at Zach and me, I knew she would come back for it later.
Meanwhile, Zach walked back toward the other end of the shop, continuing to look for a suitable weapon. I picked up a small spear that I decided I liked well enough and was going over to meet the boys when I saw a shiny, convex, round metal object with a large golden Medusa head on the front of it. From the two hooks embedded in the backside, I could tell that the former owner had used it as a wall decoration, but I saw it for what it really was: a shield. Athena’s shield, an aegis, to be specific. My shield. So I picked it up, knowing I could find a way to fix it.
I walked outside with the guys after Zach had settled on a jagged piece of metal, which had a strange resemblance to a lightning bolt, and I knew that when it was charged with electricity, it would do some serious damage to whatever unfortunate creature was in its path. Connor had decided he would find a weapon later because he hadn’t seen anything he really liked yet, but there was no real rush. We did not have to pay, since my mom owned the store, but I wasn’t sure she had even noticed us leave with the weapons. That was probably for the best; she became too overprotective of me when she was worried.
We turned left, walking on the sidewalk past Zach and Luke’s parents’ restaurant, the Fire Pit, when we saw another classmate sitting alone outside at one of the small, round, green tables set for two.
“What in the world are you guys doing with those spears and … is that Athena’s shield?” questioned the husky voice of Shane, a boy who used a wooden cane due to being disabled since birth. Whenever he wasn’t using the cane, he walked with a jarring limp that just looked plain painful. Most kids stayed away from Shane because of this, but he was nice if you got to know him. His hair was dark and, for some unknown reason, speckled with gray, making him appear much older than he really was. His parents were the county carpenters, automatically making them good friends of my mother’s, and he was also quite gifted in that particular skill set.
Zach, Connor, Luke, and I looked down at what we were holding in shock, surprised to find out that he knew about Greek myths. It was not often a kid of our age was into that sort of thing, but I supposed he might have extra time around the house, since he was unfortunately restricted from doing things a normal kid might otherwise enjoy.
With an indifferent shrug, Zach told him vaguely, “It’s for the forest.”
Shane raised one of his bushy eyebrows at Zach, but he continued to eye my shield at the same time. “I could fix your shield, if you want.”
That was an offer I couldn’t (and would be stupid to) refuse, so I handed him the shield as Connor asked, “Hey, do you think you could make me a bow and some arrows?” When Shane nodded thoughtfully, as if already forming a design in his mind, Connor thanked him.
Then we waved goodbye to the boy who I was certain was Hephaestus, the smith god, and the four of us hurried to get home. We were ready for the next day to come so we could go into the woods again, this time with another god or two.
___________________
The next morning, we had a quick breakfast of pancakes and sausages at Connor’s house, and then we raced to meet Shane outside the restaurant. “Here you go,” he said, handing me my newly polished shield (minus the hooks, thankfully), to which he had attached thick leather straps. He also gave Connor a brand new wooden bow and a quiver full of arrows. All I could think about was how on earth Shane had managed to build all of that in a single night.
Just then, Camille walked out of the antique shop behind us, holding the bow she had been looking at the day before in one hand, with the worn leather quiver slung lazily over one shoulder. Shane’s jaw dropped. “You too?” he asked Camille, and she just shrugged. Apparently she didn’t feel bothered enough to offer up an explanation.
Shane shook his head in wonder before asking, “Are you all going in right now?” We all nodded, and Shane looked down at the concrete, thinking quietly to himself for a minute. Then he declared, “I’m coming too.”
“What?” we all exclaimed at the same time, staring at Shane in disbelief. I was sure we were all thinking the same thing: could he really make it with his bad leg?
But Shane seemed to have read our minds, because he responded firmly, “I can make it.”
I had to admit that he was pretty tough. Still, Shane must have been really curious to know what was in the forest, and I couldn’t blame him. At a loss for words, Zach and I looked at each other, shrugging. Neither of us really wanted to tell him no.
Suddenly, I heard the slapping sound of feet hitting pavement coming from behind us. We turned around to see yet another classmate, a girl with reddish-brown hair, wearing a purple tank top and a pair of skinny jeans. I sighed when I realized it was Alicia, a slightly snobby girl who had latched onto Zach during our very first day at school. Because she was so fond of Zach, she was often rude to any other girl who tried to get close to him, especially me. I really wasn’t sure why, because I had never thought of the relationship between Zach and me as romantic. It was purely a brother-sister type of relationship … or father-daughter, if you were referring to our godliness. However, Alicia’s jealousy made her the perfect candidate for Hera, Zeus’s powerful wife.
“Is there a party I wasn’t invited to?” Alicia asked, but she didn’t wait for anyone to answer her. “Because if there is, I’m inviting myself.” Everyone but Alicia groaned. Although she was popular, she didn’t get along well with too many kids. We had to let her come, though, even if we didn’t particularly want to; we had an ulterior motive unknown to Camille and Shane.
A few minutes later, all seven of us were making our way along a narrow path in single file. It was slow going, however, since we kept having to wait for Shane to catch up with the rest of us. Even with his trusty cane, he was still stumbling and tripping all over the place. As if to dampen our mood even more, we were heading east toward the meadow when the light suddenly got darker, much darker than it usually was under the cover of the trees.
We looked around wildly as a thick mist rolled in out of nowhere, swirling around us like the walls of a tornado. It sounded as if wind was whistling through the tree leaves, but there was no wind to speak of, not even a breeze buffeting our hair. Behind me, I heard Camille mutter something like, “I knew I shouldn’t have come.” But I just ignored her and raised my spear because the mist, still thickening, was forming into the unmistakable shape of a human. Luke and Connor too looked prepared for a fight, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alicia cling desperately to Zach’s arm, as if he could protect her from whatever was descending upon us.
Looking closer, I saw that it was a girl … or something that looked like a girl. She was barefoot and wore a deep purple dress and shawl. The only skin showing besides that on her feet was on her tan face, which bore large eyes that were glowing bright green, with no pupils or irises. She had thin, plucked eyebrows, and her lustrous black hair was tied in a side braid, entwined with lavender ribbons. Her hand rose up into the air to ask for silence, but we gods were too bewildered to say anything anyway.
She opened her mouth and more lime green light emanated from within her as she spoke: “I am the Oracle of Delphi, here to deliver a prophecy.” Her voice sounded strange to me, but I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t have time to dwell on it, though, because she continued to tell us the prophecy as the mist billowed into thick gray clouds behind her.
“In six years’ time will come one god’s prime,
And he will be tired of being under fire.
He will fight for what he thinks is his right,
But it could tear apart the balance that’s fair,
And the duty will fall upon you all
In order to save the world.”
Then the girl, who looked about one or two years older than us, fell silent, and the silver mist swirled around her again, swallowing her up until we could no longer see her. As the mist slowly faded away into thin air once again, we saw the girl collapse in a heap onto the soft ground, and the glowing light that had been projecting from her green eyes faded, leaving her with the closed eyes of a regular person.
Suddenly the truth hit me, and I realized why the Oracle’s voice had sounded so weird to me: she had been speaking a different language. Yes, she had been speaking in Greek, but somehow we all seemed able to understand her perfectly. That alone proved we were gods.
Still incapable of stringing together complete thoughts, the seven of us stood gaping in complete shock at the spot of grass on which the Oracle of Delphi had just collapsed. We had to save the world. In six years. Wow, I thought to myself in disbelief. At least we had time to prepare, to find the other remaining gods.
I was finally brought back from my thoughts when Camille demanded, “Okay, does someone want to tell me what’s really going on here?” Unsurprisingly, Shane and Alicia looked just as confused, and so Zach launched into a long story about how he, Luke, Connor, and I found out we were gods, which took quite a while. At least there weren’t any monsters around.
Meanwhile, Connor had been attending to the Oracle, who still had not woken up from whatever kind of sleeping trance she was stuck in. Connor patted her cheek gently at first, but then he started to slap her more violently. I turned around, eyes wide with horror, and without even thinking, I said in perfect Greek, “Apollo, what do you think you are doing?” Connor only shrugged, and I was pretty sure I saw him smirk.
At this, the Oracle’s eyes flew open, and she quickly tried to sit up, but her purple robes were tangled around her legs and thus prevented her from bolting upright. “What happened?” she asked in broken English, and I could tell she did not normally speak in our first language. When no one answered her right away, she said slowly, “You are them … the gods, no?”
“Well, some of them,” Zach replied blandly, studying her closely. “I’ve never seen you around here before, but I thought we knew everyone. Where do you live?”
The Oracle of Delphi sighed, and her green eyes looked into Zach’s blue ones extremely seriously. “Deep in the forest, to the northwest. I only come out when I need to deliver a very, very important prophecy.” Nodding at Camille, she explained further, “Lady Artemis’s huntresses bring me food. They are the ones who told me about you.”
I smiled to myself as Camille’s pretty face lit up and she immediately raised her eyebrows with a look that read, I have huntresses? She appeared to be a mixture of surprised and impressed.
But then the Oracle abruptly leaped up off the ground, obviously spooked by something unknown to the rest of us. As she hurried off unexpectedly, she yelled back over her shoulder in Greek, “Do not be afraid of the future now! Embrace your godliness here!”
“Well, that was weird,” Shane remarked, scrunching up his nose in confusion as we watched the Oracle disappear into the trees and the mist, leaving us alone to ponder the mysterious prophecy and the rest of the gods.
“Understatement of the century, my friend,” Camille agreed, shaking her head and patting Shane’s shoulder. “Understatement of the century.”