BOOK TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sasha had not slept nearly enough when the Prince woke her.
“Sasha,” he said softly. “It is you, isn’t it?” Sasha smiled, and he lifted her off the bed and squeezed her so tight she cried out. “Oh, sorry!” He said placing her back down gently. Every iota of her body hurt. She felt worse than before her nap. “Zeus wants to see us now.”
“How long was I out?” Sasha asked, trying to sit up, but failing.
“Twelve hours straight,” he answered, helping her. “Here, drink this.” He handed her a cup of white liquid. It slipped smoothly down her throat and with two sips, she had emptied the glass. Warmth grew outward from her stomach through her body, changing her pain from utterly debilitating to merely present.
“Whoa. One of Flori’s concoctions?”
“Of course.”
“How did it go with the healing?”
“Good. Easy, actually. I got through them all very quickly. Every guard, dragon and Chrysanthian is whole again.” Despite the light in his eyes, the Prince looked very old at the moment. Sasha could only imagine what new lines must have appeared on her own face.
“Did you sleep at all?”
“I tried to keep watch over you, but I woke up a little while ago drooling on your shoulder. Sorry about that.” Sasha laughed; it hurt. Worth it. “I missed you so much.”
“Me, too.”
They could hear father and daughter arguing from outside the door. “It’s not special to me. When every day is a celebration, no day is worth celebrating. You have 364 days to anticipate what is a night’s sleep for me!”
“You know it’s for your own good!”
“It’s been hundreds of years. Give me a chance. You’ve done nothing but make me a prisoner!”
“I’m keeping you safe.”
“I am sick of being safe. I want a life.” They knocked.
“We’ll continue this later. Come in!” Sasha and the Prince entered, and to their surprise found a room filled with people, all of whom looked extremely uncomfortable—Flori, Jove and Cicero among them. “How are you feeling, Sasha?” the King of the Gods asked, clearly uninterested.
“Fine, thank you,” she lied. The room reflected the aftermath of an all-night party. Empty bottles and crumby plates, half eaten fruits and spilled wine decorated the place now. Sasha didn’t see the Queen, the guards, the children or the other dragons present. She doubted that Zeus allowed them to leave the temple. She pictured other rooms full up with terrified individuals whose lives depended on what Sasha told Zeus now. She and the Prince found seats. Mito put plates of food in front them.
“Alright you two, where did this come from?” Zeus asked, bringing forth the North Star.
“A dragon,” the Prince answered. “Now dead.”
Sasha picked up a strawberry and admired it.
“It’s of Hades making, then,” sneered the god.
She smelled its sweetness.
“Persephone, actually,” the Prince corrected.
She took a tiny bite.
“I see.” Zeus’s expression went from one of judgment to something else…guilt, maybe? “How does it work?”
It tasted of heaven.
“It affects the mind,” said the Prince vaguely.
An epic hunger overtook Sasha.
“In what way?”
How long had it been since they had eaten?
“It depends on who’s using it and how they want use it, and it depends on the other person, what they’re like, what they want, it’s not exact or predictable.”
She attacked her plate.
“Can you show me?” He tossed the diamond to the Prince. Sasha choked slightly on her food.
“You’re not worried I’ll use it against you?” the Prince asked carefully.
“According to my people, you’re not the type.” The Prince considered a proper demonstration. The diamond glowed.
“Sing,” he whispered. All at once a piss poor rendition of “Stars Flying By” began. The unwilling chorus sang flatly and sloppily. Half way through the first verse, however, they made the collective decision to enjoy themselves, and verve took over. Zeus took the lead, bellowing the lyrics with a lovely baritone, and Sasha hummed along with a full mouth. The song ended with a cheer.
“Interesting,” Zeus said thoughtfully. “I want to know everything you know about this. Let’s have more wine, and let’s have a story. Spare no detail. I’ll decide your fates when you’ve finished.”
The Prince and Sasha psychically shared a sarcastic, ‘No pressure,’ and began at the beginning. The tale took hours, and as they went on, the two telling it became increasingly more animated and detailed. They relived their first journey to the Mountain of the Purple Dragon with nostalgic delight, recalled the danger of the Forest of El, the beauty of the Valley of the Dragons, and the despair of San Crosette. Flori and Cicero offered up extra details when the tale required it, but Jove didn’t say a word. Back stories and side stories weaved themselves through the tale as Flori battled her demons, the rebellion grew, and the truth of the Detego revealed itself. The storytellers filled each other in on their personal experiences of their two years in hiding, full of apology and anguish. Sasha talked about her voyage inside the North Star as best she could, but so much of it defied description. The Prince spoke imprecisely about what he did to his mother, but made a promise to himself to fill Sasha in later. They approached the end of the story slowly, afraid to finish for fear of what Zeus’s judgment would bring, but finally, they made it to the words “…and here we are,” before going quiet. Zeus said nothing for some time, until…
“I’d like to talk to Sasha alone.” The room shuffled out, except for the Prince, whose hand Sasha was crushing.
“I love you,” she told him definitively, as if trying to make up for the years lost.
“Likewise,” he assured her. They lived in that exchange as intensely and as long as they could before Zeus cleared his throat obnoxiously. The Prince left, the door closing echoed behind him.
“So…” Sasha said awkwardly. Zeus sat on the other side of the now empty room.
“Did you enjoy your meal?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Sasha said with an euphoric color to her words.
“Good,” he responded.
The next thing Sasha knew, Zeus was carrying her skyward at a hundred feet per second. Her ears popped painfully. The view grew more and more spectacular until it was just the tops of clouds. The light faded, and soon the stars seemed closer than the land. Finally, the skyward momentum ceased, Zeus’s arms disappeared, and her body floated in the cold, thin air. A moment of perfect peace touched her heart, then floating gave way to falling, and the peace dissipated. She looked downward, and the clouds still seemed far away. Then they were very, very close; then behind her. Panic set in. She looked everywhere for Zeus. For a bird. For anything! Why would he do this? Why would he kill her like this!! She thought of her life, her past and her imagined future, and of her beautiful Prince and then…she gave up. What else could she do? She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and pretended to fly. Not a bad way to go, she thought, when it comes down to it. She peeked with one eye to see how much longer she had, and there was Zeus’s face in front of her, his nose scrunched up. She couldn’t believe this guy. He took hold of her arms and together they slowed down, landing quite gently on a forest knoll.
Sasha lost it. “What the hell was that?” she shrieked.
“A test.”
“A test? A test??” Sasha laughed somewhat crazily. “Gee, how’d I do?”
“You passed.”
“By falling to my death!”
“Correct.” Zeus sat on a nearby stump with a graceful cool. Sasha, shaking from the experience, had a small conniption fit, stamping the soft ground beneath her and punching an invisible pillow before eventually sitting in frustrated huff. Zeus waited patiently for her next question.
“What would have constituted a failure?” she asked, coming back to her senses.
“Glad you asked,” he said smarmily. “You would have failed if you had say, I don’t know, stopped and reversed time.”
They strolled through the woods, back towards the temple. Sasha had a million questions rolling around her head, but worried about bombarding the god.
“You can ask your questions, Sasha,” he said, sensing her keenness.
“The stories are all true then? Poseidon rules the sea and you the sky and you all philander and bicker and turn people into trees and flowers and spiders and the like?”
“Some of the stories are true. Many are partly true, but embellished. Most are the creation of storytellers - fables for children.”
“What happened to you? Why did the stories stop?”
“I made us leave. One thing that people don’t consider when they hear stories about the gods is our age. Hundreds of years ago we were still hundreds of years old, but for us, relatively young. Wisdom comes to humans with age, but for those who cannot die, it is much harder won. We fought these stupid battles over and over, making the same mistakes again and again. We had so much to prove all the time, to each other, to you, using you, using every trick in the book. We acted on our every impulse because, why not? No one could check us except maybe each other and we never did. We kept poking our nose into human affairs, punishing them for being exactly like us, punishing them because we could, because we were superior to them, but I came to see that superior is a relative term. Our judgments carried no justice with them. We had all this power, and no conscience, myself included...myself most of all. We also started realizing how unnecessary we were. Apollo overslept one day and his horses rode without him. Wars broke out without Ares’s or Athena’s knowledge. Spring started showing up regardless of Persephone’s whereabouts. We thought that we were nature, but I started wondering if all along we had just been interfering with it. After I lost Chrysanthia’s mother and siblings, it became clear to me our participation in human lives did much more harm than good. I relocated us. An impulsive decision in hindsight, one made in anger, but I am who I am and it was for the best. Now pain and suffering still happens on Earth, but at least we’re no longer the cause.”
“Where are you, exactly.”
“A quaint little open space near Taurus, beautiful year round.”
“And what about the ambrosia?”
“What about it?”
“What is it?”
“It is a delicious fruit that is beneficial to our physiology.” Sasha searched Zeus expression for traces of a bigger story, but he stared her down with a smirk. “I like you, Sasha.”
“Thanks…”
“But you can’t keep the diamond.”
“No, we have to!” she knee-jerked, forgetting every other question she meant to ask. “We need it to fix everyone. Hundreds of people in this kingdom, maybe thousands need the diamond to get them back to normal.”
“I’m sorry it’s too much power for humans to have.”
“Didn’t you just say you’re not in the business of judging humans anymore? That you have no right?”
“I didn’t choose to be a part of this, you all dragged me into it! And this is different. I’m not sending you on a 20 year journey, I’m not cursing you, or turning you into a cow or a bug or something, and I could, so be grateful this is all I’m doing.” Zeus’s tone had turned hostile, and if you’ve ever had a god vaguely threaten you, you know it’s pretty intimidating. Sasha backed down. Zeus took a deep breath. “This situation has put me in an awful position. When I first moved Olympus to the sky, the other gods were furious with me, but we’ve finally found a balance, a peace. I’m taking that diamond away so it never becomes an object that disturbs our retirement. Believe me, humankind would not like it.”
“But,” Sasha said, trying to soften the edge in her voice. “It’s only the two of us, who can use it, me and the Prince. You trust us, don’t you?”
“He can share the Star’s secrets with others.”
“I promise he’ll never do that again.”
“I can’t take the risk." Sasha controlled her temper.
“Then you have to do it,” she said sternly.
“How would you propose I do that?”
“You’re the divine one. You think of something.” Zeus grinned.
“The way you talk to me. Are you not afraid of me, Sasha the Merry Maker?”
“That fall scared all my fear away.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll find it again, and sooner than you’d like, I think.”
“What if we only keep it for a year or two? We’ll fix as many people as we can, then you can have it, and do what you want with it.” Zeus considered this idea. “Please, I spent two years as someone broken inside. It’s not right. Take me as collateral if you need. I’ll work for you, I’ll play for you, you know, I’m pretty good, though I do need a new lute.” Zeus sighed, and Sasha closed the deal. “I’m begging you.”
“Fine!” he bellowed. Sasha tried to jump for joy, but her body reminded her that it need more recovery time. Zeus scooped her up onto his shoulder.
“One year.”
“We really need at least two.”
“Under supervision.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have someone in mind.” Sasha could guess who. She took the win, and moved on. They walked on towards the temple.
“So Apollo’s horses are real? Cuz Flori told me only idiots believe the sun moves.”
“They move the Earth, not the sun…”
“Sasha,” he said softly. “It is you, isn’t it?” Sasha smiled, and he lifted her off the bed and squeezed her so tight she cried out. “Oh, sorry!” He said placing her back down gently. Every iota of her body hurt. She felt worse than before her nap. “Zeus wants to see us now.”
“How long was I out?” Sasha asked, trying to sit up, but failing.
“Twelve hours straight,” he answered, helping her. “Here, drink this.” He handed her a cup of white liquid. It slipped smoothly down her throat and with two sips, she had emptied the glass. Warmth grew outward from her stomach through her body, changing her pain from utterly debilitating to merely present.
“Whoa. One of Flori’s concoctions?”
“Of course.”
“How did it go with the healing?”
“Good. Easy, actually. I got through them all very quickly. Every guard, dragon and Chrysanthian is whole again.” Despite the light in his eyes, the Prince looked very old at the moment. Sasha could only imagine what new lines must have appeared on her own face.
“Did you sleep at all?”
“I tried to keep watch over you, but I woke up a little while ago drooling on your shoulder. Sorry about that.” Sasha laughed; it hurt. Worth it. “I missed you so much.”
“Me, too.”
They could hear father and daughter arguing from outside the door. “It’s not special to me. When every day is a celebration, no day is worth celebrating. You have 364 days to anticipate what is a night’s sleep for me!”
“You know it’s for your own good!”
“It’s been hundreds of years. Give me a chance. You’ve done nothing but make me a prisoner!”
“I’m keeping you safe.”
“I am sick of being safe. I want a life.” They knocked.
“We’ll continue this later. Come in!” Sasha and the Prince entered, and to their surprise found a room filled with people, all of whom looked extremely uncomfortable—Flori, Jove and Cicero among them. “How are you feeling, Sasha?” the King of the Gods asked, clearly uninterested.
“Fine, thank you,” she lied. The room reflected the aftermath of an all-night party. Empty bottles and crumby plates, half eaten fruits and spilled wine decorated the place now. Sasha didn’t see the Queen, the guards, the children or the other dragons present. She doubted that Zeus allowed them to leave the temple. She pictured other rooms full up with terrified individuals whose lives depended on what Sasha told Zeus now. She and the Prince found seats. Mito put plates of food in front them.
“Alright you two, where did this come from?” Zeus asked, bringing forth the North Star.
“A dragon,” the Prince answered. “Now dead.”
Sasha picked up a strawberry and admired it.
“It’s of Hades making, then,” sneered the god.
She smelled its sweetness.
“Persephone, actually,” the Prince corrected.
She took a tiny bite.
“I see.” Zeus’s expression went from one of judgment to something else…guilt, maybe? “How does it work?”
It tasted of heaven.
“It affects the mind,” said the Prince vaguely.
An epic hunger overtook Sasha.
“In what way?”
How long had it been since they had eaten?
“It depends on who’s using it and how they want use it, and it depends on the other person, what they’re like, what they want, it’s not exact or predictable.”
She attacked her plate.
“Can you show me?” He tossed the diamond to the Prince. Sasha choked slightly on her food.
“You’re not worried I’ll use it against you?” the Prince asked carefully.
“According to my people, you’re not the type.” The Prince considered a proper demonstration. The diamond glowed.
“Sing,” he whispered. All at once a piss poor rendition of “Stars Flying By” began. The unwilling chorus sang flatly and sloppily. Half way through the first verse, however, they made the collective decision to enjoy themselves, and verve took over. Zeus took the lead, bellowing the lyrics with a lovely baritone, and Sasha hummed along with a full mouth. The song ended with a cheer.
“Interesting,” Zeus said thoughtfully. “I want to know everything you know about this. Let’s have more wine, and let’s have a story. Spare no detail. I’ll decide your fates when you’ve finished.”
The Prince and Sasha psychically shared a sarcastic, ‘No pressure,’ and began at the beginning. The tale took hours, and as they went on, the two telling it became increasingly more animated and detailed. They relived their first journey to the Mountain of the Purple Dragon with nostalgic delight, recalled the danger of the Forest of El, the beauty of the Valley of the Dragons, and the despair of San Crosette. Flori and Cicero offered up extra details when the tale required it, but Jove didn’t say a word. Back stories and side stories weaved themselves through the tale as Flori battled her demons, the rebellion grew, and the truth of the Detego revealed itself. The storytellers filled each other in on their personal experiences of their two years in hiding, full of apology and anguish. Sasha talked about her voyage inside the North Star as best she could, but so much of it defied description. The Prince spoke imprecisely about what he did to his mother, but made a promise to himself to fill Sasha in later. They approached the end of the story slowly, afraid to finish for fear of what Zeus’s judgment would bring, but finally, they made it to the words “…and here we are,” before going quiet. Zeus said nothing for some time, until…
“I’d like to talk to Sasha alone.” The room shuffled out, except for the Prince, whose hand Sasha was crushing.
“I love you,” she told him definitively, as if trying to make up for the years lost.
“Likewise,” he assured her. They lived in that exchange as intensely and as long as they could before Zeus cleared his throat obnoxiously. The Prince left, the door closing echoed behind him.
“So…” Sasha said awkwardly. Zeus sat on the other side of the now empty room.
“Did you enjoy your meal?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Sasha said with an euphoric color to her words.
“Good,” he responded.
The next thing Sasha knew, Zeus was carrying her skyward at a hundred feet per second. Her ears popped painfully. The view grew more and more spectacular until it was just the tops of clouds. The light faded, and soon the stars seemed closer than the land. Finally, the skyward momentum ceased, Zeus’s arms disappeared, and her body floated in the cold, thin air. A moment of perfect peace touched her heart, then floating gave way to falling, and the peace dissipated. She looked downward, and the clouds still seemed far away. Then they were very, very close; then behind her. Panic set in. She looked everywhere for Zeus. For a bird. For anything! Why would he do this? Why would he kill her like this!! She thought of her life, her past and her imagined future, and of her beautiful Prince and then…she gave up. What else could she do? She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and pretended to fly. Not a bad way to go, she thought, when it comes down to it. She peeked with one eye to see how much longer she had, and there was Zeus’s face in front of her, his nose scrunched up. She couldn’t believe this guy. He took hold of her arms and together they slowed down, landing quite gently on a forest knoll.
Sasha lost it. “What the hell was that?” she shrieked.
“A test.”
“A test? A test??” Sasha laughed somewhat crazily. “Gee, how’d I do?”
“You passed.”
“By falling to my death!”
“Correct.” Zeus sat on a nearby stump with a graceful cool. Sasha, shaking from the experience, had a small conniption fit, stamping the soft ground beneath her and punching an invisible pillow before eventually sitting in frustrated huff. Zeus waited patiently for her next question.
“What would have constituted a failure?” she asked, coming back to her senses.
“Glad you asked,” he said smarmily. “You would have failed if you had say, I don’t know, stopped and reversed time.”
They strolled through the woods, back towards the temple. Sasha had a million questions rolling around her head, but worried about bombarding the god.
“You can ask your questions, Sasha,” he said, sensing her keenness.
“The stories are all true then? Poseidon rules the sea and you the sky and you all philander and bicker and turn people into trees and flowers and spiders and the like?”
“Some of the stories are true. Many are partly true, but embellished. Most are the creation of storytellers - fables for children.”
“What happened to you? Why did the stories stop?”
“I made us leave. One thing that people don’t consider when they hear stories about the gods is our age. Hundreds of years ago we were still hundreds of years old, but for us, relatively young. Wisdom comes to humans with age, but for those who cannot die, it is much harder won. We fought these stupid battles over and over, making the same mistakes again and again. We had so much to prove all the time, to each other, to you, using you, using every trick in the book. We acted on our every impulse because, why not? No one could check us except maybe each other and we never did. We kept poking our nose into human affairs, punishing them for being exactly like us, punishing them because we could, because we were superior to them, but I came to see that superior is a relative term. Our judgments carried no justice with them. We had all this power, and no conscience, myself included...myself most of all. We also started realizing how unnecessary we were. Apollo overslept one day and his horses rode without him. Wars broke out without Ares’s or Athena’s knowledge. Spring started showing up regardless of Persephone’s whereabouts. We thought that we were nature, but I started wondering if all along we had just been interfering with it. After I lost Chrysanthia’s mother and siblings, it became clear to me our participation in human lives did much more harm than good. I relocated us. An impulsive decision in hindsight, one made in anger, but I am who I am and it was for the best. Now pain and suffering still happens on Earth, but at least we’re no longer the cause.”
“Where are you, exactly.”
“A quaint little open space near Taurus, beautiful year round.”
“And what about the ambrosia?”
“What about it?”
“What is it?”
“It is a delicious fruit that is beneficial to our physiology.” Sasha searched Zeus expression for traces of a bigger story, but he stared her down with a smirk. “I like you, Sasha.”
“Thanks…”
“But you can’t keep the diamond.”
“No, we have to!” she knee-jerked, forgetting every other question she meant to ask. “We need it to fix everyone. Hundreds of people in this kingdom, maybe thousands need the diamond to get them back to normal.”
“I’m sorry it’s too much power for humans to have.”
“Didn’t you just say you’re not in the business of judging humans anymore? That you have no right?”
“I didn’t choose to be a part of this, you all dragged me into it! And this is different. I’m not sending you on a 20 year journey, I’m not cursing you, or turning you into a cow or a bug or something, and I could, so be grateful this is all I’m doing.” Zeus’s tone had turned hostile, and if you’ve ever had a god vaguely threaten you, you know it’s pretty intimidating. Sasha backed down. Zeus took a deep breath. “This situation has put me in an awful position. When I first moved Olympus to the sky, the other gods were furious with me, but we’ve finally found a balance, a peace. I’m taking that diamond away so it never becomes an object that disturbs our retirement. Believe me, humankind would not like it.”
“But,” Sasha said, trying to soften the edge in her voice. “It’s only the two of us, who can use it, me and the Prince. You trust us, don’t you?”
“He can share the Star’s secrets with others.”
“I promise he’ll never do that again.”
“I can’t take the risk." Sasha controlled her temper.
“Then you have to do it,” she said sternly.
“How would you propose I do that?”
“You’re the divine one. You think of something.” Zeus grinned.
“The way you talk to me. Are you not afraid of me, Sasha the Merry Maker?”
“That fall scared all my fear away.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll find it again, and sooner than you’d like, I think.”
“What if we only keep it for a year or two? We’ll fix as many people as we can, then you can have it, and do what you want with it.” Zeus considered this idea. “Please, I spent two years as someone broken inside. It’s not right. Take me as collateral if you need. I’ll work for you, I’ll play for you, you know, I’m pretty good, though I do need a new lute.” Zeus sighed, and Sasha closed the deal. “I’m begging you.”
“Fine!” he bellowed. Sasha tried to jump for joy, but her body reminded her that it need more recovery time. Zeus scooped her up onto his shoulder.
“One year.”
“We really need at least two.”
“Under supervision.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have someone in mind.” Sasha could guess who. She took the win, and moved on. They walked on towards the temple.
“So Apollo’s horses are real? Cuz Flori told me only idiots believe the sun moves.”
“They move the Earth, not the sun…”
Our final installment, Chapter Twenty-Seven...