Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (21 page)

The bronzed face of Medusa startled the nymph. Athena knocked aside her friend’s javelin and counterattacked, stabbing her spear right at Pallas’s gut.

Normally, Pallas would’ve had no trouble dodging. Athena expected Pallas to move.

But this time, Pallas was too slow. Athena’s spear went straight through the nymph’s stomach and out the other side. Pallas crumpled to the ground.

Nymphs are magical creatures. They can live a long time and withstand a lot, maybe even the sight of Medusa, but they aren’t immortal. If you impale a nymph with a spear, she will die.

Pallas died.

Athena fell to her knees, sobbing in shock and horror. She cradled her poor friend’s lifeless body and glared at Zeus, still hovering in the air with the Aegis
.

“DAD!” Athena screamed. “WHY?”

Looking in his daughter’s stormy gray eyes, Zeus felt almost as scared as he had when he’d faced the giant Typhoeus. “I thought…I didn’t mean to…Oops.”

He disappeared and fled back to Olympus.

Athena was miserable in her grief. Her friend’s body dissolved back into the waters of Lake Tritones, the way water nymphs often do, but Athena decided to honor Pallas with a sacred monument. The goddess built a wooden replica of Pallas and painted it with such skill that it looked almost lifelike. Then Athena cut off a small section of the Aegis cloak (which, being god-size, was pretty huge) and draped it over the shoulders of the replica Pallas.

The statue became an important artifact. Eventually it ended up in the city of Troy, where it stood in a special shrine called the Palladium, meaning
the
place of Pallas.
Women could go there and claim sanctuary from Athena. No one would be allowed to harm them. Men, on the other hand, weren’t even allowed to look at the statue. The punishment for doing so was death.

The statue of Pallas looked so much like Athena that people began to call it the Pallas/Athena. Then people got confused and started calling the
goddess
Pallas Athena.

Athena was fine with that. In a way, by taking her friend’s name, the goddess was keeping Pallas’s memory alive.

So feel free to call her Pallas Athena, but don’t ask her if you can book a room at the Palace Athena. I can tell you from personal experience, she doesn’t think that’s funny.

Come to think of it…Athena doesn’t have a great sense of humor in general.

The way she dealt with Arachne, for instance?
Harsh.

Arachne started life with no advantages at all. She lived in a kingdom called Lydia, which was in the country we now call Turkey. It was nothing special, sort of the South Dakota of Ancient Greece. (Sorry, South Dakota.) Arachne’s parents were lower-class wool dyers, which meant they spent all day stirring bolts of cloth in buckets of stinky, steaming purple soup—kind of the equivalent of flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

They died when Arachne was young, leaving her with no friends, family, or money. Yet Arachne became the most famous girl in the kingdom because of pure skill. She could weave like nobody’s business.

I know, you’re thinking,
Wow. Weaving. South Dakota is starting to sound exciting.

But, dude,
you
try weaving. It’s hard! I mean have you ever looked at the fabric of your shirt up close? Next time you’re in a boring chemistry lecture, check it out. The cloth is made of threads—millions of them going up and down, back and forth. Somebody had to take the material, like wool or cotton or whatever, brush it out so all the fibers go in the same direction, then spin it and twist it into those tiny little threads. Then they had to line up a zillion sideways threads, all parallel to each other like guitar strings, and weave the up-and-down threads into them.

Sure, now we’ve got machines to do that. But imagine, back in the day, doing it all by hand. Every square inch of cloth took hours and hours to make. Most people could only afford one shirt and one pair of pants, because they were so freaking hard to make. Curtains or sheets? Forget about it!

And that’s if you just made it one color, like white. What if you wanted a pattern? Then you had to plan out which threads to dye what color and you had to get them all in exactly the right place, like a massive puzzle. With my ADHD, I could never do that.

Weaving was the only way to get things made out of cloth, so unless you wanted to run around naked all the time, you’d better find yourself a good weaver.

Arachne made it look easy. She could make you a Hawaiian shirt with pictures of flowers and frogs and coconuts woven into the fabric, and she could do it in about five minutes. She could make curtains with silver and blue thread so when the fabric rustled, it looked like actual clouds moving across a blue sky. Her favorite thing was making tapestries—which were big pieces of fabric art that you could hang on your walls. They were only for decoration, and they were so hard for most weavers to make that nobody but kings and pro basketball players could afford them, but Arachne made them for fun and handed them out like party favors.

That made her popular and
very
famous.

Pretty soon the local folks were gathering at Arachne’s hut every day to watch her work. Even the nymphs left their woods and their streams to gawk at her weaving, because her tapestries were more beautiful than nature.

Arachne’s hands seemed to fly. She picked up a tuft of wool, spun it into thread, dyed it whatever color she wanted, and looped it on the frame of her loom in less than a second. When she had a whole row of strands going up and down, she attached the sideways thread to a long piece of wood called a shuttle, which was kind of like a giant sewing needle. She slid the shuttle back and forth as fast as a ball in a tennis game, weaving the threads together into a solid piece of cloth, and because she’d planned out her colors so perfectly, a picture appeared in the cloth as if by magic.

Shuttle, shuttle, shuttle, shuttle: WHAM!

Suddenly you were looking at an ocean scene woven from cloth, but so realistic that the waves seemed to break on the beach. The water glittered in blue and green metallic thread. The woven people on the shore were so carefully crafted you could make out the expressions on their faces. If you held a magnifying glass up to the sand dunes, you could pick out each individual grain of sand. Arachne had basically invented high-definition weaving.

One of the nymphs gasped. “Arachne, you are
amazing
!”

“Thanks.” Arachne allowed herself a smug smile as she prepared to weave her next masterpiece.

“Athena herself must have taught you weaving!” the nymph said.

Now, this was a huge compliment. Arachne should’ve just nodded, said thank you, and let it go.

But Arachne was too proud of her own work. She had no use for the gods. What had they ever done for her? Arachne had built herself up from
nothing.
Her parents had died and left her penniless. She’d never had a bit of good luck
.

“Athena?” Arachne snorted. “I taught
myself
how to weave.”

The crowd shuffled nervously.

“But, surely,” one man said, “you should thank Athena for your talent, since the goddess invented weaving. Without her—”

“No tapestry for you!” Arachne hit the man in the face with a ball of yarn. “Weaving is
my
thing. If Athena is so great, she can come down here and test her skills against mine. We’ll see who gets schooled.”

You can guess what happened. Athena heard about this challenge. When you’re a goddess, you really can’t let somebody get away with calling you out like that.

The next day, Athena descended to the earth, but rather than come in with spears blazing, she decided to visit Arachne in stealth mode and check things out. Athena was careful that way. She liked to get her facts straight, and she believed in giving people a second chance. After all, she’d accidentally killed her own best friend Pallas. She knew that mistakes happened.

She took the shape of a feeble old woman and hobbled over to Arachne’s hut, joining the crowd that had gathered to watch the weaver do her thing.

The mortal was good. No doubt about it. Arachne wove scenes of mountains and waterfalls, cities shimmering in the afternoon heat, animals prowling in the forests, and sea monsters so terrifying they looked ready to leap out of the fabric and attack. Arachne churned out the tapestries with inhuman speed, flinging them into the crowd as prizes, firing them from her T-shirt cannon, making all the spectators happy with valuable parting gifts.

The girl didn’t seem greedy. She just wanted to share her work with the world.

Athena respected that. This mortal Arachne hadn’t come from a rich family or gone to a fancy school. She had no advantages, and she’d made something of herself from skill alone. Athena decided to give Arachne the benefit of a doubt.

The goddess pushed her way through the crowd and began to speak to Arachne as the young girl worked.

“You know, dearie,” said Old Lady Athena, “I may be old, but I’ve gained some wisdom with my age. Would you accept some advice?”

Arachne just grunted. She was busy with her weaving and didn’t want any words of wisdom, but she said nothing.

“You’re very talented,” Athena continued. “There’s absolutely no harm in gaining the praise of other humans. You’ve earned it! But I hope you’ve given the goddess Athena proper credit for your talent. She invented weaving, after all, and she grants talent to mortals like you.”

Arachne stopped weaving and glared at the old lady. “Nobody
granted
me anything, Grandma. Maybe your eyes have gone bad, but look at this tapestry.
I
made this. I don’t need to thank anyone else for my hard work!”

Athena tried to keep her cool. “You are proud. I see that. And rightly so. But you are dishonoring the goddess. If I were you, I would ask her forgiveness right now. I’m sure she would grant it to you. She is merciful to all who—”

“Get lost, Grandma!” Arachne snapped. “Save your advice for your daughters and stepdaughters. I don’t need it. If you love Athena so much, go tell her to come find me and we’ll see who owns the art of weaving!”

That was it.

Athena’s disguise burned away in burst of light. The goddess stood before the crowd, her shield and spear gleaming. “Athena has come,” she said. “And she accepts your challenge.”

Pro tip: If you’re a mortal and a goddess appears right next to you, and if you want to survive the next few minutes, the proper thing to do is to fall on your face and grovel.

The crowd did exactly that, but Arachne had guts. Of course she was terrified inside. Her face went pale, then flushed red, then turned pale again. But she managed to stand and glare at the goddess. “Fine. Let’s see what you’ve got, old lady!”

“Ooooo,” said the crowd.

“What
I’ve
got?” Athena shot back. “The little girl from Lydia’s going to show me how to weave? When I get through, this crowd’s going to be using your tapestries for toilet paper!”

“Burn!” said the crowd.

“Oh, yeah?” Arachne sneered. “Must’ve been
dark
inside your daddy’s head if you think you can weave better than me. Zeus probably swallowed your mama just to keep you from getting born and
embarrassing
yourself.”

“Snap!” the crowd yelled.

“Oh, yeah?” Athena growled. “Well,
your
mama…” The goddess took a deep breath. “You know what? That’s enough trash talk. It’s time to weave. One tapestry each. Winner gets bragging rights.”

“Uh-huh.” Arachne put her fists on his hips. “And who decides the winner.
You?
”

“Yes,” Athena said simply. “On the River Styx, I promise a fair judgment. Unless you’d like these mortals to decide between us.”

Arachne looked at the terrified mortals and realized she was in a hopeless situation. Obviously the mortals would decide for Athena no matter how good Arachne’s weaving was. They wouldn’t want to get zapped into ashes or turned into warthogs for angering the goddess. Arachne didn’t believe for a minute that Athena would be fair, but maybe gods really
did
have to keep their promises if they swore on the River Styx.

Arachne decided she had no choice, so she might as well go out in style. “Bring it on, Athena. You want to borrow my loom, or do you need a special one with training wheels?”

Athena clenched her teeth. “I’ve got my own loom. Thanks.”

The goddess snapped her fingers. A glowing loom appeared right next to Arachne’s. The goddess and the mortal both sat down and furiously began to work. The crowd chanted, “WEAVE! WEAVE!” and pumped their fists in the air.

The Lydians totally should have sold advertising and gotten corporate sponsors, because it would’ve been the highest-rated weaving smack-down in Ancient Greek television history.

As it turned out, Athena and Arachne’s trash talk continued—but in the language of tapestries. Athena wove a scene of the gods in all their glory, seated in the council hall of Mount Olympus, as if to say:
We are the best. Don’t bother with the rest.
She depicted the temples on the acropolis of Athens to show how wise mortals
should
honor the gods.

Then, for good measure, Athena wove little warnings into the cloth. If you looked closely, you could see all the different famous mortals who had dared to compare themselves to the gods and had been turned into animals or flattened into roadkill.

Meanwhile, Arachne wove a different story. She depicted every ridiculous and horrible thing that the gods had ever done. She showed Zeus turning into a bull to kidnap the princess Europa. She showed Poseidon as a stallion chasing Demeter as a white mare, and then poor Medusa, an innocent girl wooed by Poseidon and turned into a hideous monster by Athena. She made the gods look stupid, and evil, childish, and no good for mortals…and I’m sorry to say, she had a lot of material to choose from.

When the tapestries were done, the crowd was absolutely silent, because both were amazing. Athena’s was majestic and breathtaking and made you feel the power of the Olympian gods. Arachne’s was the most scathing critique of the gods ever created, and it made you want to laugh and cry and get angry all at the same time—but it was still beautiful.