The stream burbled in its course beside the forest path as the first few leaves of autumn surfed their way down it. Janette trotted beside the stream, smiling at the water and ignoring the muffled chirping coming from the sack she carried slung over her shoulder.
Snipes really were noisy, but at least this one wasn't struggling too much. She was surprised to have found it at all. Before she'd spotted it sleeping under a tree—with its turtle head, falcon body and raccoon tail just like Jack and Dan had described—she'd suspected that the whole "snipe hunt" idea had just been the latest of her brothers' many attempts to ditch their ten year-old sister. Yet now that she'd caught one, she was glowing with pride. The cold air didn't bother her; the snipe was real! Her brothers finally liked her! And she'd caught it all by herself!
She was skipping and singing, "I caught the snipe!" when she heard the man's laughter.
"Caught a snipe, have you?" She heard his voice before he quite literally appeared on the path before her, wearing a dark riding cloak that matched his thick black hair. "Are you sure about that?" Behind his neat beard the man's smile was friendly, and his English accent made Janette giggle.
"I did!" Janette beamed.
"May I see it?"
She nearly opened the sack, but stopped herself. "Well, it might get out. I don't want it to escape before my brothers see."
The man chuckled. "Things can't escape that haven't been caught. I'm afraid your sack is empty."
The sack suddenly did feel very light. In fact, it felt like nothing at all. She quickly opened it and looked inside. Oh no! "Where is it?" she cried.
"Never there!" he declared with a grin. "Made you see it! The old bait and switch, I do so love that one! My own invention, you know! Played a bit of a trick on you, I'm afraid."
Janette threw the sack to the ground. "That's not nice!" There was no snipe. Her brothers really had been trying to ditch her. She could feel the tears coming.
"All in good fun!" he said. "Why are you crying?"
She told him.
"Oh, come now, snipe hunts are a tradition! I invented those, too, actually."
"But they're always doing it!" she sobbed. "They don't want me around at all!"
The man's smile faded. "Always?"
Janette nodded.
"Well, that does hurt, doesn't it?" He crouched down to her level. "My family's like that, especially my father."
She sniffed. "Your father?"
"Oh, Zeus." He smiled. "You know, king of the gods and all that."
"There's no real Zeus," she said. "You're trying to trick me, too."
"Oh, sure, not anymore. He picked up and left a while ago. 'Hermes,' he said, 'stay behind and look after things.' Took most of the family. Ditching on a pantheonic scale."
Janette recognized the name from the book of Greek myths her dad had given her. Her only friends were books, but they were still just books. "You're not Hermes." She was tired of being tricked.
"Not Hermes? If I weren't Hermes, could I do this?" He suddenly disappeared and then reappeared five feet away, then ten, then twenty. At the last he flew up above her, hung in mid-air, and then slowly floated back to the ground. "God of messengers, scoundrels, and merchants!" he announced with a bow. "Oh, I know what you're thinking: 'Where's the winged sandals? Where's the winged hat?' Truth is, I really don't need them. They're just for show and, quite frankly, hats are rather out of style now."
Janette blinked in amazement. A real god? "But . . . why do you have an English accent?"
"Spent a lot of time there in the last thousand years. Zeus always had me carrying messages to Britain to get me off Olympus. When you're the trickster god, people don't always want you around, either. Or maybe it's just because I was the youngest."
"It's no fun being the youngest," Janette said.
"It's hard," he agreed. "Finally, they sent me out and left when I was gone. But it's not all bad. I did a lot of freelance messenger work after that. You like the King Arthur legend? I did that one! Oh, sure, the Muses want credit for getting it written, but who do you think handled the distribution? It was the middle of the twelfth century. Moveable type printing wasn't even around until 1455! I met Shakespeare later, too."
"I'm only ten. I don't know much about him."
"Oh, he was the bomb, as you kids say. I learned that phrase on the Internet." His face soured. "Great thing, the Internet: global, instant communication everywhere. Of course, I might like it more if it hadn't cost me my bloody job!" He suddenly flashed a dazzling, perfect smile. "Not that I'm bitter, of course."
"You didn't invent that, too?" Janette asked. He did seem to take credit for a lot.
"The Internet? Of course not. That was Al Gore, the bugger. Not much for me to do now but play jokes on people. Not that that isn't fun."
"It's not fun if people are always playing jokes on you."
"No, rather not, I'd say," Hermes answered. "Maybe you ought to turn the tables."
Janette looked up at the god and smiled.
Fifteen minutes later, Janette stepped from the bushes where Jack and Dan were playing on the riverbank and throwing stones at the birds.
"Find a snipe yet, Janette?" Jack asked with a grin at his brother.
"Uh huh!" she said happily.
Dan snorted. "Oh, yeah? Then where is it?"
"Behind me."
At that, the bushes shook violently and a giant beast forced its way through them to tower over Jack and Dan. Its great turtle's head opened its mouth to brandish jagged fangs and shake the sky with a thunderous roar. Immense wings buffeted the air as it stepped toward her brothers with an angry swish of its great striped tail.
"It wouldn't fit in the sack," Janette said innocently.
When Jack and Dan had torn off screaming into the woods, the giant snipe shifted and became Hermes again. Janette shook with uncontrollable giggling. "That was too cool!" she squealed.
"Told you it'd be fun," Hermes said.
She giggled. "They're gonna be mad at me."
"Oh, but they had it coming, didn't they?" He grinned at her. "I'm just sorry we couldn't include a giant wooden horse somehow. I still can't believe they fell for that one!"