BOOK TWO
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Constellation Day
Constellation Day! The one day a year set aside for people to appreciate the gift of starlight, without which the sky would be boring and sea travel impossible. To celebrate this magnanimous occasion, children dress up as their favorite astrological symbol, sing the song “Stars Flying By” ad nauseam, and participate in a maritime themed scavenger hunt, while adults get drunk and overeat. It’s a delightful holiday with no particular religious or nationalistic significance. Most people get the day off work, but the banks don’t close. You know what I mean.
“What does Constellation Day have to do with anything?” Flori asked as they set up camp for the night. “It’s just an excuse to have a pig roast.”
“It actually comes from an old holy day called the Detego of Olympus,” the Prince explained. “The story goes that Zeus, fed up with mortals making their way to his home and bothering him with their problems, tethered Mount Olympus to Apollo’s chariot, and when the horses reached sunset, he threw a monstrous thunderbolt at the mountain’s base, separating it from Earth and flinging it up into the heavens where it could no longer be reached or even seen by the non-godly, except for one night a year when the stars align, and Mount Olympus becomes once again visible…which maybe it used to, but it doesn’t anymore.”
“In the dragon community, it’s regarded as a hoax,” Jove interjected. “Something some humans made up to try and convince themselves they hadn’t been completely abandoned by the gods.”
“But then,” the Prince went on, “we met someone who convinced us that not only is the Detego real, but that the Queen will be able to use it to achieve her true goal – enslave Zeus with the power of the North Star. According to our man in the castle, the Queen became fixated on the idea that the gods posed a threat. She started raiding temples and oracles, kidnapping priests and priestesses in the hopes of finding a way to get an Olympian under her power. Gone are the days when all one had to do was shout ‘I’m better than Zeus at horseshoes’ for him to show up in person and demand a game. No rituals worked, no sacrifices, no amount of prayer. That’s why no one believes anymore – the gods stopped showing up. A couple weeks ago, the search abruptly ended, a bad sign, and we were unexpectedly summoned to one of our hideouts in the high country, where we met a woman with a story to tell.”
“What does Constellation Day have to do with anything?” Flori asked as they set up camp for the night. “It’s just an excuse to have a pig roast.”
“It actually comes from an old holy day called the Detego of Olympus,” the Prince explained. “The story goes that Zeus, fed up with mortals making their way to his home and bothering him with their problems, tethered Mount Olympus to Apollo’s chariot, and when the horses reached sunset, he threw a monstrous thunderbolt at the mountain’s base, separating it from Earth and flinging it up into the heavens where it could no longer be reached or even seen by the non-godly, except for one night a year when the stars align, and Mount Olympus becomes once again visible…which maybe it used to, but it doesn’t anymore.”
“In the dragon community, it’s regarded as a hoax,” Jove interjected. “Something some humans made up to try and convince themselves they hadn’t been completely abandoned by the gods.”
“But then,” the Prince went on, “we met someone who convinced us that not only is the Detego real, but that the Queen will be able to use it to achieve her true goal – enslave Zeus with the power of the North Star. According to our man in the castle, the Queen became fixated on the idea that the gods posed a threat. She started raiding temples and oracles, kidnapping priests and priestesses in the hopes of finding a way to get an Olympian under her power. Gone are the days when all one had to do was shout ‘I’m better than Zeus at horseshoes’ for him to show up in person and demand a game. No rituals worked, no sacrifices, no amount of prayer. That’s why no one believes anymore – the gods stopped showing up. A couple weeks ago, the search abruptly ended, a bad sign, and we were unexpectedly summoned to one of our hideouts in the high country, where we met a woman with a story to tell.”
The Detego of Olympus
“I belong to a secret society,” the woman began, “charged by the King of the Gods to protect the most precious thing he has on Earth…his daughter, Chrysanthia. Hundreds of years ago, when the gods still played a part in man’s histories, Zeus fell in love with a peasant woman and had many children with her, visiting them only once a year during a time when Hera attended a festival in her honor in the city of Argos. But Hera, a clever woman and jealous, recognized the secret smile Zeus quietly relished in the weeks after her return. So one year, she only pretended to go the festival, and instead followed Zeus to the farm where his lover and their demi-god children lived. The complete commonness of these people infuriated Hera more than any of Zeus’ previous, more remarkable conquests had, so much so she decided to punish them personally using a special mixture made by Hypnos himself, a concoction so horrid the God of Sleep couldn’t keep it for shame, and thanked his queen when she took it from him, promising to destroy it. When night fell, she snuck into the peasant woman’s cottage and applied the compound to the eyelids of her sleeping rival and each of the woman’s children, but she had only very little and could only cover one eye of the oldest daughter. The liniment birthed a nightmare – each member of the family watched in horror as his or her skin turned to bark and to stop it, they unconsciously scratched themselves to death in their own beds, save for the oldest who, recognizing the vision for a dream, woke herself up and escaped out the window. Hera chased the girl, but Zeus, awoken by screaming to the horrible sight of bloody beds, got to his daughter first, and changed her into a birch tree, one among hundreds. Hera threatened to cut down the whole forest, but the grieving Zeus overcame her, dragged her back to Mount Olympus, and in his fury flung the mountain up into the heavens, cutting it off from Earth; separating the gods from their peoples. The Detego signifies the first day of the month where the Olympus flies close enough to Earth that the Olympian gods may once again visit. Since Zeus travels by thunderbolt, he arrives a full day before anyone else. He uses it to return his daughter to her true form, spends the whole day with her, then he changes her back in order to hide her again. It is my job and the job of my order to care for the tree year round and keep it hidden and protected by magic until Zeus’s yearly visit, but after so many generations without incident, we became lazy and, foolishly, didn’t anticipate any threat from the Queen. We keep our numbers small to maintain secrecy – one either marries or is born into it, and we live so well on Zeus’s generosity, hardly anyone ever leaves. A few years ago, though, one of our order, my mother, felt the pull of adventure and left us to travel the earth. Recently, when visiting a temple in far off Caemberlie, she fell victim to one of the Queen’s raids. The Queen interrogated her with that wretched diamond, and finally found what she had been looking for, a person who knew where to find a god.
“My mother led the Queen to our sanctuary. When the alarm went off, I didn’t even recognize the sound – it had never rung in my lifetime. It hadn’t rung in dozens of lifetimes. I went to check on the tree, but encountered soldiers instead. I ran, they shot me with an arrow; I lost consciousness. I woke up under a pile of bodies, my friends, my family. They must have thought I was dead. I crawled my way out and snuck away under the cover of night, and have been searching for you ever since. Please, you have to do something. If the Queen gains control over Zeus, her power will be unlimited.”
“My mother led the Queen to our sanctuary. When the alarm went off, I didn’t even recognize the sound – it had never rung in my lifetime. It hadn’t rung in dozens of lifetimes. I went to check on the tree, but encountered soldiers instead. I ran, they shot me with an arrow; I lost consciousness. I woke up under a pile of bodies, my friends, my family. They must have thought I was dead. I crawled my way out and snuck away under the cover of night, and have been searching for you ever since. Please, you have to do something. If the Queen gains control over Zeus, her power will be unlimited.”
“Why do the Gods not make a new home on Earth?” Flori asked the Prince, her face illuminated by the fire. Everyone else slept, save for the Twins.
“Ambrosia,” the Prince answered with a slight eye roll. “It can only grow on Olympus and without it, the gods get cranky, apparently.” Flori thought for a minute.
“They’re addicts?!” she gasped. The Prince nodded. “Unbelievable.”
“The birch tree sits in an open air chamber at the center of a great temple which a person cannot see unless he or she has already been inside. She gave us directions to an old entrance no longer used by the order,” the Prince explained.
“Where is the woman now?” Flori asked.
“Infection killed her,” he said sadly. “To welcome Zeus, the order will be busy preparing a sumptuous feast. The Queen will no doubt have guards throughout the temple and the surrounding forest, but…”
“That won’t be a problem,” one of the twins chimed in.
“Should anyone see us, we can make them forget how to see and forget to make memories of forgetting to see,” said the other, the boy.
“Our presence will be a single blink to them,” concluded the girl.
“Great, right, thanks,” said the Prince, contemplating this colossal power. “Hey, I’ve been wondering, what about after these events? If we live or die, don’t you see the future past all this?”
“We end up back in the Underworld either way,” replied the boy.
“Death is meaningless to us,” the girl added.
“Not to you, though,” the boy pointed out.
“You won’t like it one bit,” the girl iterated.
“Yes, well, few do, I imagine,” the Prince said as politely as possible, repeating in his mind, We need them. We need them. We need them.
“Have you ever tried to do something different than the future you see?” Flori blurted out, a captivated expression on her face. Both twins laughed at the suggestion, an unsettling sound.
“To us, the future is a memory,” the boy explained.
“Doesn’t that get boring?” Flori pried.
“It’s like reading the same book over and over,” said the girl.
“Just because you know what’s coming doesn’t mean it’s no fun,” the boy added.
“We need to pick up the pace if we’re going to make it to the temple in time,” interjected the Prince. “Oh gods, could things have gone any worse?”
We could all be dead, Flori thought, but aloud she mused, “Isn’t is funny. Just a couple years ago, the gods were just stories to me, part of an outdated religion, nothing more than quaint poppycock, and now here I am, human again thanks to one—my destiny entwined with theirs so closely.”
“It’s sad,” the Prince countered. “There are people out there who are so sure that if they pray and sacrifice, the gods will look favorably on them, when really they are too busy self-medicating on Olympus to be bothered.”
“The things we think we know.”
“I wonder what else we’ve got wrong.”
“Ambrosia,” the Prince answered with a slight eye roll. “It can only grow on Olympus and without it, the gods get cranky, apparently.” Flori thought for a minute.
“They’re addicts?!” she gasped. The Prince nodded. “Unbelievable.”
“The birch tree sits in an open air chamber at the center of a great temple which a person cannot see unless he or she has already been inside. She gave us directions to an old entrance no longer used by the order,” the Prince explained.
“Where is the woman now?” Flori asked.
“Infection killed her,” he said sadly. “To welcome Zeus, the order will be busy preparing a sumptuous feast. The Queen will no doubt have guards throughout the temple and the surrounding forest, but…”
“That won’t be a problem,” one of the twins chimed in.
“Should anyone see us, we can make them forget how to see and forget to make memories of forgetting to see,” said the other, the boy.
“Our presence will be a single blink to them,” concluded the girl.
“Great, right, thanks,” said the Prince, contemplating this colossal power. “Hey, I’ve been wondering, what about after these events? If we live or die, don’t you see the future past all this?”
“We end up back in the Underworld either way,” replied the boy.
“Death is meaningless to us,” the girl added.
“Not to you, though,” the boy pointed out.
“You won’t like it one bit,” the girl iterated.
“Yes, well, few do, I imagine,” the Prince said as politely as possible, repeating in his mind, We need them. We need them. We need them.
“Have you ever tried to do something different than the future you see?” Flori blurted out, a captivated expression on her face. Both twins laughed at the suggestion, an unsettling sound.
“To us, the future is a memory,” the boy explained.
“Doesn’t that get boring?” Flori pried.
“It’s like reading the same book over and over,” said the girl.
“Just because you know what’s coming doesn’t mean it’s no fun,” the boy added.
“We need to pick up the pace if we’re going to make it to the temple in time,” interjected the Prince. “Oh gods, could things have gone any worse?”
We could all be dead, Flori thought, but aloud she mused, “Isn’t is funny. Just a couple years ago, the gods were just stories to me, part of an outdated religion, nothing more than quaint poppycock, and now here I am, human again thanks to one—my destiny entwined with theirs so closely.”
“It’s sad,” the Prince countered. “There are people out there who are so sure that if they pray and sacrifice, the gods will look favorably on them, when really they are too busy self-medicating on Olympus to be bothered.”
“The things we think we know.”
“I wonder what else we’ve got wrong.”
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