15

Helen shrieked and ran out. Hermione wailed.

I felt dizzy.

The servants didn’t move, as if turned to stone, too surprised to grab me. The floor seemed to tilt. I spread my feet wide for balance.

Paris rose, took a step to go after Helen, seeming unaffected by the rippling ground. He turned. “You spoiled her!” He raised his arm.

Would he strike me?

He didn’t. “Oenone will take me back, I think.” He sank down on his bench.

“Eurus, please come,” I whispered and staggered to the door. After a yard or two, the ground steadied.

Behind me, a servant cried, “Catch her!”

I sprinted through the house while feet thudded behind me.

The future Troy did not burn! My feet seemed to grow wings. Eurus was right outside. I hugged him, which I’d never done before. He squeezed me back.

When we let go, his face was bright, as if a star were inside him.

“We saved Troy.” Both of us. I wouldn’t have been here without him.

In a moment, we were blowing north. I looked ahead. Father would continue his peaceful rule. Hector would succeed him. He and Andromache would have seven children. I’d have children too. I wouldn’t be enslaved and murdered.

I watched the city’s sturdy survival and didn’t look ahead to my new, future death. It would be whatever it would be, come whenever it came.

Hera! See what a sardine can do.

But then Troy’s wall reddened and glowed. Smoke rose.

I screamed, “Noooo!”

Eurus’s wind stuttered. He brought me down on a hill outside Sparta.

“We have to go back.”

We found Helen, as beautiful as ever, dripping wet on Sparta’s riverbank.

Aphrodite was with her. The goddess of love and beauty had restored her. She wheeled on me. “Wicked girl! You’re lucky I could repair her.” She purred, “Perhaps improve her.”

Helen pinched my chin in her hand and brought her face an inch from mine. “You are a wasp, shriveled with jealousy.” Her eyes were sharp, as I’d never seen them. “Do you see a blemish?”

“No.”

“Poor thing, who would be willing to lose everything for you?” She let me go. “No one would give up breakfast for you. You hate me, but I entrance you too.” Her expression softened, became wistful. She tilted up her head. Lips parted, she smiled gently. Her eyes seemed somehow bigger than they were, and her gaze caressed me.

Aphrodite said, “Helen is unique.”

Bile rose into my throat. I had become immune.

Aphrodite looked startled.

But Helen didn’t notice. “No one will start a war for you. I pity and forgive you.”

“This one is wise.” Aphrodite touched Helen’s satin cheek. “Anger mottles the skin.”

I told Eurus I wanted to go home. In the air, I wept into his back. I’d done everything wrong.

He landed us in a field of grass and boulders. “I started a squall in the sea. You rattled my bones by sobbing.”

“I’m sorry.” I sat on the grass.

He lowered himself next to me. “How did we succeed and then fail?”

“You’ll hate me.”

He frowned. “You killed one of my sacred birds?”

“What is your sacred bird?”

“The greylag goose. They never recite annoying verses.”

“I didn’t kill a goose.”

“You chopped down one of my sacred trees?” He saw the question on my face. “The hazel.” His arms flew up. “Why don’t you know which tree is sacred to me?” His arms came down. “Because I’m a minor god. Did you chop down a hazel tree?”

I tossed back my head. “No.”

“Then why would I hate you?”

“If I murdered someone but didn’t hurt your bird and tree, you’d still think well of me?”

“I don’t know. Did you murder anyone?”

“I tried to ruin Helen’s life, and being burned hurts. You may not know that.” Not looking at him, I said what I’d done.

“For a few minutes, you saved many lives.”

“But now they’ll die again. All that’s really changed is in the past, where I scalded Helen on purpose.”

“Would you do it again if you thought it would succeed?”

I nodded, feeling sick. “Apollo sees the past and the future. At his altar, when he first spoke to me, he knew what I’d do today. Do you think he cursed my gift to punish me in advance?”

Eurus rose a few inches and came down hard. “If he had left you alone, you wouldn’t know about Helen until your brother brought her to Troy.”

“I might fear that war would come and throw broth at her then, to make Paris send her back to Menelaus. In every future I might do it.”

Eurus stood on his knees and gripped my shoulders in both hands. “Then in every single future”—he brought his face close to mine—“you’d be a heroine. Brave Cassandra.” He sat back.

A brave failure.

“You don’t believe me. If I were a great god, you would.”

I started laughing. “I’d believe it if my mother said it.” Not everything was about being a greater or lesser god.

He smiled uncertainly.

I lay back, exhausted. “Helen suspects they’ll start a war over her. She’s proud of herself for it.”

“I’d like to fly back there and scald her again.”

“Aphrodite would be angry.”

“Yes, she would. Sleep!” he commanded, as if he were Hypnos, the god of sleep.

Birdsong woke me. The notes were as bright as if tragedy didn’t exist.

Eurus was standing next to me. A blade of grass pointed sideways from his beard. I smiled at it and him. My hair must be wild again.

Smiling too, he asked if he could take me somewhere other than Troy. “There are wonders . . . You don’t have to be enslaved and murdered.”

I sat up. “Would brave Cassandra desert her city?”

He shrugged. “A true friend would stay alive to continue being my friend.”

“Wherever I am when Troy burns, I’ll be too sad to be an enjoyable friend.” I held up my hand to stop him from arguing, though his mouth was already opening. “Menelaus will be slow, gathering warriors and ships.” I must have been thinking while I slept. “Before then, six weeks from now, Paris and Helen will arrive in Troy. If my father doesn’t let them stay, we’ll all be saved.” I jumped up. “We need a plan.”

“We’ll make one. You’re good at plans.”

Not successful ones. “It will be our last chance.” The final rung. “If we fail, everything will be in motion, unstoppable.”

He leaped into the air with me, a lesser god sparrow and a girl sparrow, piercing the sky.