New Olympus Trilogy: Teenage Goddess Teenage Star Hell on Earth (25 page)

After some more talk, everyone agrees to reconvene the next day for the big group effort. Yila wants to keep me as a hostage until then, and Diego scowls and grumbles, but Hell remains firm. In the end I am allowed out, more or less on parole.

Hell, who has not released my hand in all this time, transports us to my grandmother’s garden. The sudden sunlight is blinding; I cannot help it, tears come up and my throat feels almost strangled. Hell hugs me consolingly. “It’s the relief. I can hardly imagine what you must have gone through, Mel. I’m sorrier than I can say that I did not protect your better, but you’re safe now.”

“Thanks to you,” I say. What if he had never come to attend my school? If I’d never befriended Myra, and become close to him? I’ve only escaped a miserable end through a series of unlikely chances, when I think about it.

“It was your own cleverness in bargaining with that snake goddess, and winning time, that saved you really,” Hell says. “I was terrified I’d find you too late.”

“There was nothing else to try, and I wasn’t simply going to give up.” My voice is a little tear-sodden, but Hell does not seem to mind; he tenderly passes his hands over my cheeks, and the wetness magically disappears.

“Do you feel any different?” he asks me after a sweet kiss.

“Well, I feel happy and relieved, and the thirst and headache are all gone. I could eat a big meal, though. Is it lunchtime already?”

“Almost, but that wasn’t what I meant. The moment I realised what had happened, I knew I could not risk you being harmed again. In that cave, I shared my own immortality and some of my power with you – not that I feel any weaker myself,” he adds, sounding almost puzzled. “Next time somebody tries to devour you, they’ll get a nasty surprise.”

“That would be good.” As small as I am, I can use all the power I can get. Then his meaning penetrates. “
Immortality?
You can just share that?”

“I wasn’t sure. Father can do it, but most of us cannot. I just tried and felt it take. Anyway, I cannot stand the idea of you getting older and dying while I remain always young.”

“I was worried about that myself,” I manage to say, as I attempt to comprehend the change he has announced so casually. “Though most adults say that at our age, relationships rarely last. I have been thinking about this off and on. Grandmother considers me old enough to marry, but you are only fourteen, and your father’s example is not the most steadfast.”

Hell just grins. “Well, I think it will last, but the gift is permanent in any case.”

I try to thank him, overwhelmed. Then a new worry obtrudes. “Your parents may undo this gift, if they disapprove of what you’ve done.”

“They better not try,” Hell states, a militant gleam in his blue eyes. “But you worry over nothing. There is precedent, - my cousin Eros and Psyche.”

We are silent for a couple of minutes, as I consider what this tremendous change will mean to my life. My thoughts are interrupted by a startled squawk. A large blue and yellow parrot on a mango tree has just caught sight of me.

Hell stares at it with disdain. “This foolish bird is your brother Jorge, who consigned you to that snake. Only Myra can easily undo the transformation. She has been impersonating you; your family is unaware of what has happened. Let me call her.”

He merely moves his hand a little, and a few seconds later Myra pops into existence – except that she looks like me! She’s even wearing one of my favourite pants, size 8, which would never fit her normally.

“You’re back!” she cries, and comes to hug me, transforming into her own shape as she does so.
Except that I’ve never seen my friend as she looks now – luminous and beautiful beyond words, dressed in something exotically draped, all white and gold. 

“It’s good to see you again. You had us worried after you disappeared,” I tell her, hugging back. “Hell found me and got me out, but we had to promise a great deal in exchange.”

“Oh?” She looks at Hell, who explains about the world-shaping project to take place the next day.

“And you really know how to do this?” she asks.

“Yeah, Pallas showed me the technique, but I’d be grateful for your help. We need all the power we can gather.”

“Count me in,” she says immediately. “Let’s go to New Olympus and round up everyone else who wants to help. Father will make an exception to their schedules if I ask him nicely – he still feels guilty about depriving me of my powers and nearly getting me killed.”

“Yes, and I want our parents to meet Melinda,” Hell says. I goggle. He’s taking me to meet Zeus and Hera? I look down at myself, and note that my skin is whole and unblemished, but the silk nightgown I still wear is ripped and dirty, as well as smeared with my blood in several places.

“I cannot go anywhere like this,” I point out. Hell smiles. Before he can transform me, I tell him “I’d like a real shower this time, and some of my own familiar clothes. They are a comfort.”

“Well, there’s nothing I could deny you right now. What about the parrot, though?”

I look at the bird, who stares at me malignantly, and shiver. ”I have to think about it, let him stay like this until I decide.”

“So be it.” I find myself in my room, and rush into the shower. I need to wash away the horrible experience, and I stay under the hot heavy spray twice as long as normal.

As I step out and reach for the towel, I stop for a moment and check my body in the full-length bathroom mirror. Nothing much has changed, I am still me; but the skin and hair are now perfect, the small blemishes and scars from childhood hurts are completely gone. My eyes are the same chocolate brown as before, maybe a bit brighter.

I take the small sharp nail scissors and rake the tip over the skin of my left arm. Blood appears for a moment, then the wound immediately closes and within a second or two, there is no sign left of the small wound.

So Hell was not kidding – I knew he would not, but this proof makes the transformation more real. I wrap a thick cotton towel around my body and cross my room to the closet for fresh clothes.

Once dressed in slacks and a t-shirt, I remember the dirty nightgown I left lying on the bathroom floor. I look around for it, to throw it into the garbage, but it is gone.

“I restored and put it with the others,” Hell tells me as he follows my glance. He’s sitting cross-legged on my desk. “As I recall it was one of your favourites?”

I nod. Seeing it whole and clean again the next time I use it is better than getting rid of the thing; it will remind me that anything can be remedied, as long as I have Hell in my corner.

“Time to go to New Olympus,” he says gently. I am apprehensive, but intensely curious too. He takes my hand, and off we go.

Even though I had that preview in the cave I am in no way prepared for the reality of Hell’s home. We arrive at a spectacular beach, dominated by high hills with palace-like buildings and temples on their tops. Everything is on a super-human scale and perfect. Even the stones on the broad way leading upwards are unchipped, brand new. Most unnerving is the total absence of human elements like litter boxes, shops, ice-cream vendors, or signs. The bushes are all blooming and not one wilted flower spoils their colourful profusion. What immortal gardener could achieve that? 

Hell gives me a few moments to just look around and get my bearings, then points out the most important sights. The biggest place is his parents’, of course. I squeeze my eyes together against the blinding white of the columns against the deep blue sky. There’s something about the sky that tells me we are no longer on earth, though I find it difficult to put my finger on just what.

“Should have brought sunglasses,” I murmur, surely the most inane comment ever on first arriving in the Gods’ domain. Hell grins and passes his hand in front of my eyes. I still don’t have my glasses, but the glare no longer bothers me and my eyes are now comfortable with the brightness everywhere.

“Thanks,” I mutter.

Hell takes my hand and begins pulling me towards the palace. It is going to be a hike of at least twenty minutes. I ask him why we arrived down here and not straight in the palace.

“Dad likes to have some warning and I’m not supposed to bring outsiders here,” Hell explains as we climb the steep slope. To my surprise I find it easy and am not even out of breath yet.

We pass an apple tree with golden-coloured fruit hanging low. Hell grasps one of the apples and hands it to me. “You said earlier you were hungry. Try this.”

As I bite into the succulent fruit, two men pop into existence just in front of us. One is a very handsome young man – about our own age – with a bow on his shoulder, the other a monstrous hulk with a quantity of eyes distributed all over his head and torso.

“Hello, Eros, and Argus,” Hell greets them. “I brought Melinda for a visit home.”

“At least things won’t be dull around here for the next few weeks,” Eros comments with a strange smile. “Hello, Melinda. Did Hell explain that he’s putting you in danger?”

“I’ve just emerged from worse danger. Hell will keep me safe,” I tell him. Hell throws me an approving glance but then turns back to the others – are they his friends?
Confederates? Relatives? Surely not the grotesque one with the many eyes. I have to force myself not to stare at him, which would be rude. What was his name – Argus? It sounds familiar. He must figure in some mythological tale I have read and promptly forgotten.

Hell quickly explains the plan to create and furnish a new dimension for the Snake Goddess and her family the following day, and asks the two to pass the word around for volunteers.

“If Zeus allows it,” Eros gloomily observes. “He may not be best pleased at your taking on such a huge project.”

“I gave my word,” Hell says, and they accept that as decisive and vanish as quickly as they arrived.

“Argus alerted me that you had been taken,” Hell tells me as we resume our climb. “Unfortunately Yila’s cave was inaccessible and invisible to him.”

“What of the new world you are planning to create for
Yila?”

“Ah, everyone who co-operates in its establishment will forever be able to find and enter it,” Hell tells me. “She won’t be able to hide people there, the way she did with you. But with any luck we can stop this vile practice of human sacrifice for good.”

“I would like to help.” Though what can a mere human contribute to the creation of a divine habitat?

“You can if you want,” Hell tells me, to my surprise. “You are no longer just human, but even before this you had your imagination and ideas to contribute. Don’t sell yourself short.”

I can tell that he means it and smile.

Hell looks at me searchingly. “Do you really want to help out these deities who were ready to destroy you?”

“Not precisely help them out, but make sure they don’t do that to anyone else in future. And I did think of proposing the bargain in the first place.”

“I know.” Hell squeezes my hand. How have we made it all the way up to the huge pillared entrance of the palace already? It is flanked by two marble lions looking straight at me with menacing expressions.

“She is with me,” Hell tells the lions, and I feel a sudden diminution of the threat level, even though they don’t move an inch.

“Are they alive?” I whisper.

Hell shrugs. “In a manner of speaking. They can tear any threatening intruder into shreds, but as far as I know they have never had to do it since they were first installed centuries ago. I forgot that they are more than décor, to be truthful. Come, let’s beard the real lion in his den.”

Hell leads me past enormously high columns and gold-plated doors, pools filled with exotic reeds and fish, and an impossibly fragrant flower garden to a big hall that reminds me of the inside of a huge temple. It seems empty except for a beautiful woman half reclining on a low bench.

“Hello Mother, allow me to introduce Melinda to you,” Hell breezily tells her. “Where is Father?”

The woman sits straight up and stares at me. If I had not just had to face and distract
Yila, I would be intimidated. Hera is much more refined and beautiful, but has a similarly cold, merciless gaze. She also oozes charisma – or divine power, I guess it is called here – to the point where most people would throw themselves on their knees before her. I stiffen my spine and stay upright, looking right back into her fathomless eyes.

Without speaking to me she turns back to Hell. “This is most unwise, my son. You should not bring your human lovers to New Olympus. And to give her immortality without consulting Zeus or me- “

“I have to act as I consider right,” Hell maintains, not at all cowed by his formidable mother. “Let me explain to everyone at once, please, and I need some help from other gods to fulfil a promise I made. It would be best to call for an assembly.”

“You are still so young –
“ she begins.

“I am ready to do my assigned work,” he interrupts. “You must have known this day would come.”

Hera is silent for a few moments. In a human, the brow would crease in a frown, but this Goddess remains outwardly remote and perfect.

“You are sure this is it?”

“I am sure.” I have no idea what gives Hell this certainty, but I squeeze his hand to show my support.

“So be it,” a deep rumbling voice says, and my boyfriend’s father Zeus materializes besides us, clearly having heard the entire exchange. He looks at me with less coldness than Hera did, there might even be the tiniest smile, though it’s hard to tell with the long beard.

“Melinda, is it? Welcome to New Olympus.”

I find myself bowing deeply. His majesty is like an elemental force, irresistible. “It is an unlooked-for honour, Sir.”

“So you are the reason my son elected to stay on earth when his sister came home,” Zeus muses. “I might have guessed.”

“Not the only reason,” Hell puts in. “But I am very glad I stayed, for Melinda has been targeted by another set of left-over deities and very nearly destroyed.”

Over the next few minutes the hall gradually fills with people – gods and humans and some in-between, as I suppose I am myself now.

As we wait for everyone to arrive, a middle-aged human with a cheerful twinkle introduces himself as the major-domo and at my request, brings me a large double café latte, perfectly prepared and just the right temperature. Some of the others present are munching grapes or drinking a mysterious sparkling drink from golden pitchers.

“Is that nectar?” I ask Hell.

“Yeah.
You can try some when you finish your coffee.”

The nectar has a subtle but incredibly enticing scent. I take a huge gulp to finish my coffee faster. Hell watches me and grins understandingly.