“Welcome to Mount Olympus. Trespassers will be tribulated.”
—sign, Mount Olympus
TRANSITING TO OLYMPUS without the benefit of godhood was a greater hassle than Apollo had expected.
Though few who don’t live there are aware, the gods’ abode on Olympus isn’t really in Greece so much as it is in a quasi-alternate space, tucked away in what’s best described as a glove compartment of reality. It is no more possible for a mortal to climb the slopes of Mount Olympus and reach the home of the Olympians than it is for someone to reach the moon using a trampoline, a snorkeling mask, and a very tall ladder— unless, that is, one of the gods willed it to be so or that mortal got very, very lucky. While it is true that more than one ancient myth records the tale of a mortal who climbed to the gods' abode, not recorded are the tales of hundreds if not thousands of mortals who failed.
In other words, never was something such as this written: “Stavros climbed the slopes of Olympus intent on petitioning Zeus for vengeance on the neighbor who hit one of his cattle with a two-by-four. He slipped and impaled his skull on a rock because he’s a loser and Zeus was off boning some king’s daughter anyway.” Such tales held little appeal to myth recorders of the time. They were short, they were dull (despite use of the word boning), and no one much enjoyed hearing stories about failure, as the Germans had not yet invented the concept of schadenfreude{1}, perhaps owing to the fact that no one had yet invented the concept of Germans.
Apollo was not entirely without means of discreetly accessing Olympus, but the usual option of shifting over directly to the front gate was no longer open to him. Not only did he have to hitchhike across the astral plane disguised as an unfinished thought, he missed his exit and had to backtrack (slowly) through the elemental plane of nougat.
Sneaking through the Olympian servants’ quarters disguised as an owl was a fair bit easier. The quasi-immortals who boarded there used trained owls for all sorts of things after becoming enamored with a certain mind-bogglingly successful book series about teenaged wizardry. Athena, fanatical of owls to the point of choosing them as her symbol long ago, especially loved it. It gave the place a definite whimsy, but cleaning up the owl pellets hacked all over every conceivable surface added more work than the birds saved. Apollo was just grateful for a way to slip into the gardens without attracting attention. He only hoped he had timed this right.
Getting in to see the Fates would be even more difficult than getting into Olympus. That the Fates didn’t much care for mortal visits was mostly a guess, extrapolated from the fact that there was absolutely no way for anyone but a full god to actually get through the gate to their abode. No lesser immortal crazy enough to try had ever managed it, to say nothing of a mortal doing so. If he couldn’t beg a bit of help in that regard, he was Styx out of luck.
He shifted from an owl to a wolf—he felt a little dirty borrowing one of Athena’s favorite forms anyway—and dashed through the garden, searching. To his relief, it didn’t take long before he spotted his sister sitting in cross-legged meditation by one of her favorite pools. She took no notice of the wolf coming up to sit beside her. Animals tended to flock toward any manifestation of Artemis, so quite a few had already taken up a nearby position. He never did understand why animals were so comfortable around the goddess of hunting, but he’d long ago stopped trying to figure that out.
For discretion’s sake, he remained in a wolf’s shape and voice as he spoke. “I need your help.”
Artemis opened her eyes to glance at him before returning to her meditation. “I’m sorry, Wolf, but it seems my brother’s gotten himself into a profusion of trouble. No one can find him, and if Poseidon hears not from him in three days, the new king’s wrath will be unleashed. So you’ll forgive me if I seem a little preoccupied.”
“Sister, it’s me,” he whispered. She opened her eyes again and glared.
“Oh, gosh, no kidding! You think me unable to tell my own twin brother from a wolf? Are you trying to be discreet, or shall I simply yell out your name for all to hear so you can be certain I recognize you? Give me some credit, Brother.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re in a fair bit of trouble, I daresay.”
“So I was right to sneak in.”
“Does a bear crap in the woods?”
“You’re the expert,” he answered. “How bad is it?”
“It really depends on the bear’s diet. They’re omnivores, you know. They eat an assortment of things.”
“I meant here, Artemis.”
She sighed. “I know what you meant, Brother, but you made me wait this long to find out what’s going on with you. I shall respond at least a little in kind.”
Apollo sighed. It came out as more of a growl, but then so did nearly everything else with a wolf’s vocal cords. “I don’t have very much time, Sister. Please.”
She sighed back. (Hers worked better.) “It’s bad, Apollo. Ares demands punishment for the attack, screaming for vengeance. I persuaded Poseidon and Hera to wait to hear your side of things, but they want answers. You’re making things worse by not coming forward, and the fact that they can’t find you has more than a few of the others suspicious that you may have some extra power they don’t know about. Gods are beginning to talk.”
Apollo connected the dots. “I found some power to avoid Poseidon’s gaze, ergo I found the power to kill Zeus?”
Artemis stared into the water. “Did you?” she asked finally.
“Absolutely not! You know how insane my schedule’s been since we came back! And do you think I’m the type to murder any of us?”
“No. Nevertheless, I had to ask.”
“So ‘maybe,’ in other words.”
“Let it go, Brother. I believe you. Yet you see how this all makes everyone wonder about you!”
“Even Demeter?”
“Oh, no, of course not Demeter. She’s all mittens and giggles as usual. She’s on your side, to be sure, but not everyone is. I took some abuse for defending you.”
Apollo gave a growl that was intended to be a grumble. Close enough. “Why aren’t they wondering about Ares? I haven’t enough credibility to attack the god of war and be given the benefit of the doubt?”
“I believe if you’d attacked anyone but Ares, you wouldn’t even have this much time to come forward. Demeter’s withholding mittens from him, by the way.”
“Good. His hands are too bloody to be toasty-warm.”
Artemis ignored the chance to commemorate what may have been the first ever instance of the term toasty-warm coming out of a wolf’s mouth. “So why did you attack him?”
“There’s too much to explain right now. The short of it’s that he really did kill Zeus, and I’m pretty sure he had help.”
“Can you prove it?”
“You think I’d be hiding if I could? I don’t even know who worked with him at this point, or exactly how they did it. That’s why I need your help. I need to see the Moirae.”
“The Fates? Why?”
“They’re outside of it all. They may have some insight that could help.”
“Yes, well, I figured that much. Why do you need my help? You snuck in this far, didn’t you?”
“I diminished, Artemis.”
Her wide-eyed gaze hit him as if shot from her bow. “Shut up! Don’t you even joke—”
“I’m not joking! How do you think I stayed hidden?”
“I sensed some sort of difference, Apollo, but I thought you’d found a way to cloak yourself or—Just because of Ares?”
“As I’ve repeated more times than I care to relate, I had no choice! Even now there are those who need protecting that are made vulnerable by my absence. I can’t get to the Fates without your aid. Will you lend it or not?”
He waited for his sister’s shock to fade enough for her to answer him. A trout leaped out of the pool in sheer pointless punctuation of the moment, as trout are wont to do.
“Why do you think the Fates will tell you anything?” she asked finally.
“Blind hope, mostly.”
She turned back to him. “So you’re desperate.”
“Don’t be insulting.” Not that she isn’t right, he thought. “I don’t know who to trust.”
“You’re not telling me the whole truth either.”
“There’s no time for the whole truth. And I’m trying to protect you.”
“Brother, I’m the freaking goddess of chastity. I can protect myself.”
“That’s exactly what Father thought, I’m sure. Are they or are they not casting suspicious glances at the Muses just for working with me?”
She scowled. “Hermes did bring that up.”
Hermes? Apollo wondered if he was connected to the plot at all or just making his usual mischief. No time, he decided. Fates first, wonder later. “I need your answer now.”
She actually made him wait a little longer, but the nice thing about the temporal concept of “the present” is that, when something happens (regardless of when it happens), at the moment in which it does happen, it happens “now”.
Federal judges rarely agree with this, but nobody likes them anyway.
“What part of ‘Muse’ makes you think ‘tracker,’ anyhow?” Thalia demanded. “I mean besides the ‘e’ the words don’t even share any of the same letters in your language! ‘Wake up, Thalia! Help us find the razorwings, Thalia! Oh, they’re somewhere off on the horizon in the dark, but surely you can find them!’ I mean, I appreciate the vote of confidence and it’s really nice to know you think I’m so talented and capable, but I really don’t think I ought to be held responsible for your disappointment if I can’t instantly help, do you? Silly question—of course you do, that’s why you’re frowning like that. You shouldn’t do that by the way, it makes your face all morose and scrunchy.”
The group had paused amid another trek through the dark, their campsite packed and slung over their shoulders. Thalia had just returned from a scouting flight to report that she had no idea whatsoever where the razorwings had taken the amulet.
“Maybe if you hadn’t zoned out in the first place!” Tracy shot.
“All right, first of all no more sentence fragments around me, they’re like nails on a chalkboard, understand?”
“But wasn’t that just a sen—”
“And maybe what, huh? Maybe I’d have been able to help you? Maybe I’d have pulled out the gigantic sword that I don’t have and wrestled the guy to the ground? I’m an artist, not a fighter; I was attending to some very important musing business! The whole world doesn’t stop just because you want it to, you know! I mean, not without bribes to the right people, but they’re really taxing to find, even harder to please, and sometimes they try to eat you so it’s really not even worth it unless you’re into that sort of thing.”
Tracy threw up her arms, at a loss for words. She wanted to tell Thalia to shut up. She wanted to tell her to fly her butt back up there and at least try to help. All that came out was, “Hell on wheels! Could everything just stop being so damn difficult for two seconds?”
The words faded to a distant echo in the darkness. The others just looked at her, blinking.
Thalia cracked a smile a moment later and giggled. “How long was that?”
“No!” yelled Tracy at Leif before he could answer. She pushed forward into the Muse’s personal space. The weight of the night’s trials, momentarily lifted when she thought Thalia would help her recover the amulet, had crushed down on her again. Her world had gone to hell in the past day, and all she had for help were a flighty Muse and a devoted stalker, neither of whom seemed to be able to stop talking! She wouldn’t give up. She could deal with it, but . . . “Just—just everyone shut up unless it’s going to help, okay? Geez!”
Thalia cocked her head pensively, then pecked Tracy right on the nose. “You need to lighten up.”
It was a moment before Tracy could react to that. “Lighten up?” she burst finally. “The amulet’s gone, Jason’s dead, there’s God-knows- what going on—”
“Gods know what,” Leif corrected.
“—sending Erinyes and razorwings and idiot stalkers at me left and right and you want me to—”
“Lighten up, yes,” Thalia finished for her. “I mean, ever since I’ve met you, you’ve been bringing the whole mood down, and frankly it’s grown tiresome. No longer funny. I need funny. I work well with funny! So—” She crossed her eyes and waggled her fingers at Tracy, somehow managing to speak with her tongue sticking out. “—lighten up.”
It occurred to Tracy that she had absolutely zero idea how to deal with this woman—this Muse—who stood in front of her. Just one more of dozens of problems, and they all made her so irritated that she couldn’t seem to suppress a giggle. That really made no sense at all, and she wondered how much it had to do with the nighthawk that just landed in Thalia’s hair.
The Muse’s blue eyes flicked up at it. They rolled even as she grinned. “Off the hair, please, thank you.” Obedient, it instead hopped to her shoulder and warbled a series of peets in her ear. Thalia’s grin grew wider. “Fantastic timing, truly. Thank you! I don’t suppose you’d be willing to—”
The bird flew off with a cry before Thalia could finish.
“Oh. I suppose not, then.” Thalia began to walk, flashing a giddy smile over her shoulder. “Follow me to the amulet! The little monsters dropped it.”
The corners of Tracy’s lips were quivering upward. “What just happened?” she asked.
Thalia stopped to heave a sigh. “I asked the bird to help me look while I was up there.”
“Why didn’t you say that before?” Tracy demanded.
“Say what before? ‘See this bird that isn’t here? I asked him to help me and he hasn’t come back yet because there’s apparently nothing to report?’ Don’t be silly!” Thalia giggled. “Well—do be silly, but sheesh, roll with the punches, sweethearts! Are you coming or would you prefer to stand there until I can find a horse to give you so you can look it in the mouth?”
Leif and Tracy both jogged to catch up as the Muse giggled again. Tracy found her mood improving and giggled a little with her, which was, again, rather irritating.
It was also somehow heartening.
“So wait,” Leif started up as they trotted along. “You can talk to birds now?”
“And I could talk to them before too, see, because that’s how I asked it in the first place.” She winked.
“I just mean, what’s being a Muse got to do with being able to talk to birds? How’s that connect to writing? Or wait. Is it a music thing?”
“Stop saying ‘wait’; we’re trying to hurry here. And no, it’s not a music thing. It’s got nothing to do with writing. It’s just that things got a little prosaic during the Dark Ages and I took a few extracurriculars. Is there a judgment about that you’d care to express? Does that offend your worldview or something? A Muse isn’t allowed to have outside interests?”
“No, I just didn’t expect it is all.”
“Hrmph. I also enjoy macramé and Ping-Pong.”
“Ping-Pong’s a funny word,” Tracy observed. “Ping-Pong! Ping-Pong!” She giggled again.
Leif was looking at her strangely. She supposed that wasn’t much of a change. “What’d you do to her?”
“Just lightened her up a bit,” Thalia said. “It’s a Muse thing.”
That stopped Tracy in her tracks. A second afterward she realized stopping wasn’t helpful and hurried to catch up. “You did this to me?” The tone of her voice didn’t have nearly enough outrage as she’d have liked. “What did you do?” There. Better.
“Oh, don’t fret about it, it’ll wear off soon enough. Just enjoy it. It’s better for everyone; trust me.”
Tracy laughed. “I don’t appreciate you messing with my brain!”
“This has nothing to do with your brain. It’s your mood, it’s more of an . . . aura . . . thingy. (Watch out for that rabbit hole, by the way. I said watch out for—Zut! No one listens!) It’s hard to explain.”
“Mood’s controlled by brain chemicals, actually,” Leif pointed out.
Thalia laughed. “Oh, right!” she mocked. “Braaaaaaain chemicals! You mortals are always so cute. Except when you’re not. Which actually is probably more of the time than otherwise, but . . .” She shrugged and continued jogging.
Tracy struggled to cling to her outrage, but the anger rapidly slipped through her fingers. She let it go for the moment, recalling something else. “I have a question,” she tried before bursting into a giggle. “Hehe. Braaaainss!”
No, stop it!
Thalia giggled with her. “Don’t mess with a Muse.”
She forced the curious image of rampaging clown-zombies from her mind’s eye and focused. Hehe. Braaaainss . . . She cleared her throat. “Okay, so this Thad guy’s mortal, right? So is it possible that he’s just some idiot jewel thief? I mean, if there are other gods and such trying to stop what I’m doing, they wouldn’t be sending a mortal after me, would they?”
“Sorting algorithm of evil,” Leif explained. “Can’t send the big-bad at us right off the bat.”
“What do you call Ares?”
“Exception that proves the rule?”
“Or more likely―whoever it is doesn’t want to reveal themselves to us or the other gods on Olympus,” Thalia offered.
“Why not? I thought they were happy to be back? Zeus dying made that possible.”
“Zeus made the edict that forced us to withdraw in the first place, yes. Once he was gone, the edict was gone too. But they’re also outraged— in principle, anyway—that someone would kill him. It’s all politics really, at least in the sense that some of it’s politics and some of it isn’t, but it’s easier to just say ‘It’s all politics’ and save a bit of pedantry.”
“Yeah, you’re real good at that, by the way.”
“You be quiet, Leiffy-dear.”
Tracy scowled. “So they like a good steak, but they don’t want to know how it got on their plate.”
Thalia nodded. “That old saying fits the situation pretty well I’d say. Plus, I would also like a good steak, come to think of it.”
“Why’d Zeus make you go away in the first place?” Leif asked.
“He never said. Which I always sort of wondered at, really, but I figured he had his reasons. It bothered me a little too, but you don’t argue with Zeus—or didn’t, anyway. He was king for a reason, you know. He was the only one of his generation whom his father didn’t eat, which made him more powerful than the rest of them put together, and that, if you haven’t figured it out by now, is just another reason why even the gods who didn’t kill Zeus might not want him back.”
Well, Tracy thought, sucks to be them. She hurried on, following Thalia and giggling occasionally.
Before long the Muse guided them to a halt at the base of a short hill. “What is it?” Leif asked.
Thalia cast a vexed look about the area. “It should be here . . .”
“Should be?”
“This is where the nighthawk said it was! It was very specific! It said—well I don’t need to go into what it said exactly, it said it was here!”
“What did it say?” Tracy pressed.
“It said it was here! Pay attention! I’ve been talking to birds for centuries, and they’re always very specific and exact about locations, especially the predators. They’re very good at marking—uh-oh.”
Leif and Tracy exchanged glances, both returning the requisite, “Uh-oh?”.
Thalia squatted in the dirt. “I . . . think that Thad guy might’ve gotten here first.”
She pointed to a set of footprints in the dirt that stopped right next to an impression that looked vaguely amulet-shaped. As far as Tracy could tell, the indentation might’ve been caused by something else, but she felt compelled to give Thalia the benefit of the doubt. Tracy cursed.
“We’ve got footprints, at least,” Leif offered, pointing to where they led. “They can’t be too old.”
Tracy nodded. “And his feet hurt. Follow me!”
They dashed off, yet again. Thad wasn’t the only one whose feet were hurting. Once they caught up with him, they’d—actually Tracy didn’t really have any idea just yet what they’d do, but once they did it, there would be resting.
The good news was that the tracks remained obvious and didn’t go far. The bad news was that they ended right next to a dirt road and a pair of clear impressions likely caused by the spinning tires of some sort of vehicle.
Tracy cursed again. “He had a car.”
“He might’ve hitched,” Thalia offered.
“It doesn’t really matter now, does it?” Again, Tracy didn’t put nearly enough frustration into her tone as she intended. She tried to focus. “Why didn’t you tell the bird to bring the amulet back when it found it?” It came out in a yell, yet not quite as loudly as she’d have liked.
“Ha!” Thalia cried. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another! Exactly how many animals did you get to aid us, hmm? Got a clan of badgers scouring the hills that you haven’t told me about?”
“Don’t talk to her like that!” Leif came back.
Tracy let Leif’s unasked-for defense go and focused on Thalia. “You’re the one who can talk to them!”
“Exactly!” Thalia cried. “I’m not Artemis here, you know! I can only talk to animals, I don’t have some special stupid slavery-power over them! You think training a cat is bad, try getting a bird to do what you want it to do—there’s a reason flighty means what it means! And for that matter, we’re dealing with jewelry here! Birds do not like carrying jewelry for anyone! Tolkien understood that; why can’t you? Stay here!”
“Where are you going?”
“Up! We’ve got a whole Blair Witch wander-about-the-wilderness- yelling thing going here and I’m putting a stop to that bothersome garbage right now! Plus, I’m going to look for headlights, so sit tight. Go have a fig bar or something.” With that, she was gone.
Tracy turned to Leif with a smirk that she couldn’t help. “I’m starting to think that yelling at the Muse doesn’t help matters much.”
“Got her to look, at least.”
She nodded, chuckling despite herself and trying to think. The fact that Thad got into a car rather than being whisked off somewhere by a god at least gave a cause for hope. Either he really was just a wandering wilderness jewel thief (okay, not too likely) or Thalia was right that whoever sent him wanted to keep their distance. A possibility began to bloom in her tired, giddy mind, a minor epiphany that Thalia unhelpfully interrupted with her return.
“The good news is that I can see headlights in the distance. The bad news is there’re more than a few pairs of them in assorted spots.”
“I think that’s pretty much just bad news, strictly speaking.”
“Leif honey, more good news is that I’m the Muse of comedy, so I won’t be kicking your ass for that.”
Tracy resisted reminding them that slapstick was considered comedy, clinging instead to her previous epiphany. “He mentioned having a suite in Vegas,” she said. “A luxury suite. He’s probably going back there if we’re lucky. If we’re not lucky, we’re screwed anyway.”
“There’s a lot of luxury suites in Vegas,” Leif pointed out.
“Yes, but it’s a start.”
Thalia clapped. “See? See what you can think of when you’re not focused on being all cranky and acrimonious? And we have to go back there anyway to meet Apollo, so this works out great!”
“Yes, great, right? Except for the fact that once we get to Vegas, we’re out of clues. I suppose we could ask around and try to find out where he’s staying, but I don’t know how—”
“Oh!” Thalia cried. “Oh, oh, oh! No, this is good, this is—well, I guess it’s a little risky, but hey, you’re a woman, you can probably manage to—hrm.”
Tracy turned to Leif. “That make sense to you?”
“Trust me; I’m aware you’re a woman already.”
“No, it’s—look,” the Muse went on. “I’m not sure if you know this, but Vegas is pretty much run by Dionysus! Eew, passive voice, strike that: Dionysus pretty much runs Vegas! Better?”
“I’ve never really—”
“Better,” Thalia said. “Anyway, so mostly he just lets other people run it for him and spends his time in a hedonistic stupor, but he knows practically everything that goes on in that town, or he can find out!”
“Apollo didn’t know who to trust. Is it really a good idea for you to bring another god into this?”
“You got a better idea, Miss Fussy-Britches? And I’m not going to bring him into this; you are. Don’t give me that look! It’s simple! Look, you probably won’t even have to tell him why you want to find this Thad person. You’ve got breasts and you’re pretty. He’s not going to care about the rest. Just get him to help you track Thad down and discover what he’s up to. At the very least you can probably find out if he’s left town or not.”
“What’s this about me asking him? You’re the immortal. Where are you going to be?”
“It's better if you do it,” Thalia answered. “He’s drunk more than half the time, anyway, so he might just think you’re some mortal who wants to offer sacrifice in exchange for some help. If I’m there, it gets all political. Plus, I’ve thought of something else that might help us, and it’ll take me a bit to go, um, get it.”
“What sort of something?”
“It’s a surprise—and I probably shouldn’t tell you anyway unless we need it. Don’t worry, it’ll be a piece of cake—talking to Dionysus, I mean, not the thing I’m—anyway, I’ll tell you exactly how to find him and get an audience. I’ll even let you borrow the bangle. He loves women. I’m sure he’ll listen to you!”
Lightened up or not, Tracy didn’t like the sound of that and said so.
“You know, you’re pretty uptight for someone whose mom scored with Zeus,” Thalia teased. “But whatever. I’m sure you won’t have to do anything scandalous. Just flash your lashes, show some leg, wear something low cut, and—don’t glower at me like that, I’m not the one who lost the amulet. Look, do whatever you want. Bring him some wine as an offering. Or a wine truck. I don’t know, it’s up to you. We can talk about it on the way. For now, I say we hitch a ride back to Vegas ourselves, rest up in a nice hotel, and then do our separate tasks. Before you know it, we’ll be reamuletified, meeting Apollo, bringing Zeus back, and living happily ever after. Or something to that effect. Now come on, here’s a car right now. Show some leg!”
Tracy shook her head. “Even if I wasn’t wearing pants . . .” She stuck out her thumb instead.
“Oh, for crying out loud.”
“I’m capable of getting what I want without objectifying myself, thanks very much.” The car drew closer without slowing. It threatened to pass entirely until suddenly the driver hit the brakes and the car skidded to a stop right in front of them. Tracy beamed, satisfied and not above turning around to gloat at Thalia.
The sight of the Muse standing stark naked behind her nicely torpedoed the victory.
“Sorry,” Thalia grinned and pulled her outfit back on. “It does that sometimes. So then, Vegas?”