Love or Fate Read online

  “Well, Hera has done something very underhanded and terribly evil—you must help my brother, Apollo, please,” and this last part she said in her sweetest voice, a tone she rarely used for anyone. “Please…for me.”

  “Well, I do despise Hera…but I love evil! What a conundrum! Hmmm, okay, do tell, but I make no guarantees that I can help,” said the king.

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” said Apollo, and he began to tell his story. “As you may or may not know, some time ago Hera had three of the Muses—Era, Polly, and my beloved Thalia—banished to earth. Well, Zeus actually sent them, but he never intended for them to stay long. And, well, he accidentally sent them into the future…and to the United States of America.”

  “That Zeus,” whispered Hades with a raised eyebrow, “you know, I think he may be losing it, just a weeeeee bit.”

  “Well, perhaps. Now, Hera had other plans. She and Zeus made the girls’ using their powers against the rules. And then she sent the Furies down to watch the girls, or rather to trick them into using their magic.”

  “Oh, and those Furies are good, aren’t they,” said Hades, “good and evil—how I adore them. I let them have free run of the place, you know.”

  “Yes, so I’ve heard. In any case, the Muses did use their powers, and now Hera has whisked Zeus off to an island vacation and secretly banished the girls to Tartarus.”

  “Fabulous!” cried the king. “So we have a few Muses living among us; how delightful! Maybe I can have them over for some supper one night. Cook makes a mean battered and fried gnome. They’re so tender!”

  Apollo cringed. “No, see, I would like to get the girls out of Tartarus.”

  “But why?” asked the king, who was earnestly dumbstruck why anyone wouldn’t want to live underground, in the underworld.

  “You know perfectly well that the Furies have it in for the Muses. I’m sure they plan on making them their slaves. These girls, Era, Polly, Thalia—they did nothing seriously wrong. They aren’t dead, yet they live within your world. It isn’t right.”

  “Yes, perhaps, but this is a lovely place to spend eternity. You do not dare to criticize my kingdom?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just that, well…”

  “I cannot disobey Hera’s command. Besides, the laws state that kings may not trump queens, and queens may not trump kings. It’s a rule. Sorry.”

  “But sorry isn’t good enough!” yelled Apollo. He shouldn’t have been so brash, but his emotions were getting the better of him.

  “King,” Artemis interrupted, throwing Apollo a look. “Your Royal Highness, maybe you cannot override her decree, but you could anger her sufficiently and succinctly by undermining her plans a bit.”

  “Hmmm, I like the sound of that. Go on.”

  “Well, if you just let us into Tartarus, that would infuriate Hera.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It would be quite the practical joke to frustrate Hera’s efforts by aiding my brother in finding the girls. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes, that does sound amusing!”

  “And you could even further aid Apollo by giving him his powers back and turning him back into his godlike form. That would be the best joke of all!”

  “No, we wouldn’t want to do that. He looks so funny in that costume. It’s a delight, really.”

  “Yes, but…” Artemis was getting impatient with Hades’ nonsense. She couldn’t help wondering how this man had become a king. “Hades, Your Highness, what about his powers?”

  “No, no, can’t do anything about those, either. I don’t want to push it too far with Zeus and Hera. But I would love to get that old bat in a tizzy—you know, pull one over on her—so I will allow you, Apollo, to enter Tartarus. But Artemis, you may not join him. He must go it alone.”

  “With no powers?” asked Apollo.

  “With no powers,” said the king. “That’s the best I’ll offer.”

  “Is there nothing you can give Apollo to help in his quest—anything at all, sir?” begged Artemis. “Trust me when I say, I am sure any small token of help will be quite frustrating to Hera. She will be disastrously depressed and maniacally morose!”

  “Hmmm, morose? Depressed? Well, okay.” Hades rubbed his greasy fingers together, and poof, a helmet appeared in a puff of smoke. “This is my magic helmet. It will make the wearer invisible. It will help you navigate your way through the maze of Tartarus.”

  “Oh, thank you, sir, thank you.” Apollo began to bow furiously.

  “This will at least conceal your identity—not that anyone would recognize you in that silly getup—and it will get you past the guards, even the Furies themselves. But I must warn you, the helmet will not protect you from the gatekeepers.”

  “The gatekeepers?”

  “They are the keepers of the riddles and are here to stop intruders from lollygagging and loitering. They can stop you at any time, anywhere. And when they do, you must answer their infinitely frustrating riddles to move on or POOF, you’re gone!”

  Apollo gulped. He wasn’t so great at tests, especially not without his powers to help him.

  “And remember, I’m strict about my rules. Once you’ve been here for twenty-four hours, you’re mine, got that? It’s just the way it is. You’ll have to find your own way out before that time is up.” Hades placed the tips of his fingers together. “Oh, such fun, what a game. I may have to grab a tub of these mosquito knees and watch the action!”

  “Thank you, sir, thank you, indeed,” and Apollo nervously grabbed the magic helmet. “I guess this is good-bye, Artemis. Thank you for all your help—you are the best sister a god could ever ask for.”

  “You are a fine brother, too.” Artemis wasn’t good with emotional good-byes. “Good luck. I am sure you will do adequately.” Apollo kissed her on her cheek and hugged her tight, and she disappeared.

  “Now,” said Hades, “I will count to six, and you will appear just inside the gates of Tartarus. You must find your own way to the lair of the Furies. I assume that’s where your precious girls are.”

  “Again, thank you. I’m sure Hera will feel sufficiently put out by all this.”

  “Yes, yes, okay. One, two, three, four, five…oh, here, take this”—Hades shoved a gigantic deep-fried boar leg under Apollo’s arm—“you may get hungry…six!”

  SEVEN

  We watched and waited as the Furies went on scheming in hushed voices. They went on so long that I got bored, so I distracted myself by staring at the zit on the tip of Tizzie’s nose, which bobbed up and down as she spoke. It was one of those beet red ones. You couldn’t help but stare at it.

  “Stop!” Tizzie yelled, looking up from the huddle and rubbing self-consciously at her nose.

  “What?” I said.

  “You’re staring—stop!” she replied.

  “Well, it’s just so huge!”

  “Thalia!” yelled Polly. “Don’t stoop to their level. We’re ladies. Even if they aren’t.”

  “But it is—it’s enormous. Gigantic. Tremendous. Humongous!”

  Now, this was fun. I didn’t see what keeping my mouth shut was going to do for us, anyway. They already had it in for us. They weren’t going to spare us because all of a sudden we happened to be ladylike and charming. We were doomed. At the very least, I should have the pleasure of being snotty.

  Tizzie began to shake with anger.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky, Pol,” I said through the corner of my mouth. “Maybe we can drive them so insane, they’ll want to let us go.”

  Insane? Well, perhaps. Now bring out the Venus flytraps!

  It took a moment, but our bare concrete room became crowded with Venus flytraps. Snapping Venus flytraps, the kind the cyclops of North Cyprus are famous for growing. One snapped at Polly and got a piece of her skirt. She jumped away with a gasp.

  The Furies cackled and then cleared their throats.

  Now that you’re our slaves,

  we’ll list all your chores.

  Here
are the tasks that you now have in store.

  Toilets must be scrubbed at least ten times a day,

  And the floors need your attention,

  in a most particular way.

  There are dishes and pots and clothes to be washed

  And slimy house lizards that need to be squashed.

  Now, on to the cooking, meals must be gourmet.

  We expect fancy food, an entire buffet.

  Gratiné, crudité, consommé, flageolet!

  Cassoulet, canapé, pâté, and flambé!

  “Oh…” Era was crying. “Thalia…can…cook.” How uncharacteristic of Era to find sarcasm in the midst of a crisis. And at my expense, too.

  We enjoy it very much when our feet are massaged,

  And our boils must be lanced and then camouflaged.

  Make sure to remove all the gook

  twixt our toes,

  Then rub your noses in it like Eskimos.

  “The Eskimo people kiss with their noses; they do not rub noses to feet,” said Polly very matter-of-factly, a single tear falling from her eye. But the Furies just laughed.

  I was actually finding the whole thing slightly comical, but my sisters were not. The idea that Era would clean anyone’s feet—even her own—was enough to make her go into a fit of hysterics. And while Polly would have gladly cleaned up after people she thought were deserving and good, she couldn’t bear the idea of making life prettier for the Horrible Ones.

  There’s something green growing

  at the Tartarus trash heap.

  We’ll have it carted in since the smell

  will make you weep.

  Then you must deflea our tigers and

  groom our pet moth.

  (He’s special—he has fangs and

  a loud, hacking cough).

  If you get thirsty, we’ll kindly oblige

  with water from the Acheron, gathered at low tide.

  The smelly moaning wet stuff is yours to guzzle,

  And if you act out, we’ll put you all in a muzzle!

  Now they’d gone too far—we had to drink that cruddy water? My two sisters were even more devastated than I was. Their tears had gotten the better of them, and they had fallen to their knees and were sobbing. I swelled with anger. Not just at the Furies, but at myself. This was all my fault.

  You’ve got your list, you know what to do.

  Don’t look so sad, ladies, don’t look so blue.

  You only have to wait on us hand and foot

  Forever and eternity…your lives are kaput!

  I looked at Polly and Era, and Polly looked at Era and me, and then Era looked at me and Polly. Then she looked back at the Furies. And then she let out one heck of a scream.

  “DADDDYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!”

  EIGHT

  Apollo appeared just inside the gates. Except that he didn’t truly “appear”—because he couldn’t see himself, nor could anyone else thanks to Hades’ invisibility helmet. This, he thought, was going to be a breeze…despite the fact that there were three paths in front of him to choose from. He turned up his invisible nose and attempted to smell out the Furies’ lair. Left, he thought, the smell of evil is definitely coming from the east. So he lifted his invisible legs and started to walk.

  The path he’d chosen was the darkest of the three. The ground was almost mushy. Not quite as soft as pudding, but definitely softer than, say, a tightly pulled trampoline. And it was thick with the scent of aging dung beetles. Apollo knew that his sense of smell would help him find the Furies and therefore Thalia and her sisters, but he still couldn’t help wishing at this moment that his nose wasn’t so highly sensitive.

  On top of his nasal discomfort, Apollo was very worried about running into the Furies. He knew all too well their ability to seamlessly transform themselves into other beings. Who was to say they wouldn’t confront him here in Tartarus, in unrecognizable form? He resolved to stay on his toes. But not literally, because the path was getting slimmer and slimmer and shorter and shorter, and he had to start walking crouched down and hunched over.

  The path also got darker as he descended downward. The ground was covered in slime, and Apollo kept slipping, grabbing the sides of the cavelike walls with his invisible hands to balance himself. Whenever he did, he managed to grab a handful of goop. He didn’t want to know what it was; he just wiped it on his invisible football jersey. Only the goop wasn’t invisible, so now it appeared that a floating piece of goop was walking down the dark corridor all on its own.

  Apollo panicked and tried to scrape it off, rubbing against the other wall. That just made it worse. Now he was a walking pile of goop and grime. Despite his fear and his inability to see much around him, he hoped upon hope that it would stay dark all the way to the Furies’ lair.

  It stayed dark, all right. So dark that Apollo didn’t see the end of the tunnel coming. Still hunched over, he walked right into a craggy rock wall. “Ow!” he yelped, and then swallowed deep. He turned to his left and walked right into another wall, although this one wasn’t rocky. It was itchy. It was covered in a dried-grass-like material, spiky and scratchy. Apollo turned around quick and tried the third and final direction.

  SMACK!

  “Owww,” said the wall.

  “Yowww, whoa!” said Apollo, not just out of pain, but out of confusion—he had never encountered a talking wall before. And really, who has?

  “Please, sir, watch where you’re going,” said the wall.

  “So, you can see me?” asked Apollo.

  “Of course, I see all. For I am the wall.”

  “Rhyming? No! Are you a Fury? Show yourself, Tizzie. Or is it Alek? Meg!” screamed Apollo.

  “Quiet, quiet. I’m not a Fury. Do I look like a Fury? No. The rhyming was just a coincidence. Now, do you want to get through or not?”

  Apollo nodded, still confused.

  “Well, all right, then. But before I let you through, you must first answer a question.”

  “Fine, but how is it that you can see me? Is it the goop?” asked a worried Apollo.

  “I told you, I’m the wall, I see all—oops, I mean I see everything. No rhyming. I am a gatekeeper. So riddle me this. Recite the Greek alphabet…backward. You have twenty-five seconds.”

  “You’re kidding—that’s the question? I thought it would be harder than—”

  “Quick, you now have but eighteen seconds!” warned the wall.

  “Right, then.” And Apollo recited all twenty-four letters without taking another breath. “Omega, psi, chi, phi, upsilon, tau, sigma, rho, pi, omicron, xi, nu, mu, lambda, kappa, iota, theta, eta, zeta, epsilon, delta, gamma, beta, and alpha. Whew!”

  “Well done. Just nine seconds. Could be a record.”

  “So that’s all? That was it, I can be on my way?”

  “No, no. That wasn’t really the riddle. I just love to torture you dead souls.”

  Apollo’s invisible shoulders drooped.

  “No, now here is your real riddle. And it’s a hard one. Oh, you’ll never know this one, it’s so very obscure, very hard. I’d say it’s practically impossible.”

  Sweat dripped from Apollo’s invisible hands.

  “I mean, I don’t know how in Tartarus you’ll ever know this. Ha! Oh, this will be fun. I mean, have you ever even heard of this being, I wonder? Doubtful!” and the wall laughed and laughed.

  “Get on with it, please!” Apollo snapped.

  “Oh, back to the gates you’ll go! Okay, then. What is…are you listening? What is the favorite color of the Muse, the middle one, the most rambunctious of the nine Muse sisters, Thalia? Hee, hee.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. That’s your question. Get it wrong and you are bounced out of Tartarus to the Gates of Cerberus. Tee hee. Go on now, take your hapless guess.”

  “Easy. It’s purple,” Apollo said, relieved.

  “I’m sorry, that is…what? Why, that’s…CORRECT!”

  The wall sounded aghast and very
disappointed.

  “Yes, yes, so I can move on, right?” Apollo eagerly asked, amazed at his luck.

  “Well, yes. I guess you’ve won…why, a brand-new path. Have fun cruising the halls. And thank you for playing the game!” With these last words the wall disappeared and became a very narrow entranceway into another corridor.

  This new corridor was well lit and filled with strange creatures that had, at one time or another, belonged to the land of the living but were now killing time in Tartarus for the rest of eternity. There were tiny little devils, the size of large mice, running every which way underfoot. Angry gnomes stomped around, pushing each other. An ugly and disturbed baby dragon came barreling down the hall and just missed Apollo by a mere foot. A dust storm kicked up, and particles clung to Apollo’s goopy yet invisible frame. Three insanely tall, thin men, pale as the brightest clouds, walked toward him, grimaces on their faces. But they apparently didn’t see him. Nor did they see the shapely dust cloud he had become. No one did. They just brushed on by.

  There were doors, maybe hundreds of doors, lining this hallway. Apollo didn’t know where to go next. He lifted his nose and expanded his nostrils, but there were far too many things, too many smells. Even the Furies’ atrociously stinky breath was masked by the various scents emanating from all these different creatures.

  Should he keep walking down this endless hallway? Try this door or that one? He looked around for clues but found nothing.

  Then he heard a loud, clear whistle. It was coming from a small haystack piled in front of one of the doors. He walked over, knelt in front of it, and listened again. And again, there was the whistle. This time the noise attracted Apollo’s attention to a thin, shiny needle gleaming among the strands of hay. He shoved his hand in and pulled it out.

  “Hello!” said the needle in a very high voice.

  “You can see me?” asked Apollo. He wasn’t amazed that the needle could see. Or whistle. Apollo had seen a lot of strange things in his time. But then he remembered, gatekeepers could see all.