The Gatekeeper's Daughter (14 page)

“Impossible!” Ares objected.

The gods broke out into quarrelling among themselves, some nodding, others shaking their heads, and all Therese could think was,
Crap, crap crap! This isn’t going the way I envisioned!

“Quiet!” Zeus commanded. The voices stopped and all looked at the king of the gods. “I’ll discuss this matter with the others once you leave, but I make no promises of another outcome.”

“Thank you.” Therese turned to Hera. “I came for one final reason. I want to offer my services to Hera in return for a favor. My aunt is pregnant and the baby, my sister, is in jeopardy. Hera, can you save her? I’ll do anything you ask of me.”

All eyes were now on Hera. She glanced around the room, apparently delighted by the attention. “There is something I want. If you can get me this thing, I will save the baby.”

Therese’s heart burst with joy. “Name it.”

“I want my golden apple back from Artemis!”

Therese couldn’t help but think how petty this queen of the gods could be. She would demand an apple when she had hundreds? Therese hid her distaste.

Now all eyes turned to the goddess of the hunt.

Artemis pushed a stray brown hair back from her face and crossed her arms. “Well, I…I’m not giving it back.”

Again, Therese was filled with disgust over the pettiness of these gods. She resolved to never become like them, heartless and selfish. Her baby sister’s life was in danger and these two were quibbling over an apple?

As if Artemis read her mind, the goddess said, “Thousands of humans die each day, Therese. You must understand that the birth or death of one more baby doesn’t move me enough to give up an apple that has the power to transform whoever eats it."

“Name your price,” Therese said, her heart pounding against her ribs. “One thing I’ve learned from Thanatos is that everyone longs for something. What do you long for, Artemis? I’ll do anything.”

“What I want, you can’t give.”

“Try me. Tell me what it is.”

The goddess of wild animals walked across the marble floor to the center of the court and faced Therese. “Not here.” Then Artemis prayed, so the other gods couldn’t hear her, “Maybe you can help me. And if so, I will give up the apple. But what I want must remain a secret between you and me. I’ll come to you soon in the forest by your home.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: Artemis’s Tale

When Therese turned to leave the palace on Mount Olympus, she felt something press against her back. She reached over her shoulder and found a quiver full of arrows.

“I don’t understand.” She glanced at the gods around the room. “Is this a gift?”

“No.” Hades took her elbow and ushered her to the door. “The quiver and arrows magically appeared when you declared yourself.”

“They aren’t from Cupid?” They descended the rainbow steps.

“No. They came from
you
.” He led her past the whale fountain and out the gates to Than.

Than helped her into the chariot. “What a relief. What happened in there?”

“You should be proud of her, Thanatos.”

“I am, but perhaps you should tell me why.”

“As the poet John Donne once wrote, rarely can a man find a woman both true and fair. Therese is as loyal as she is beautiful.” He kissed her hand. “I’ll be glad to one day call her daughter.” Hades disappeared.

Therese turned, open-mouthed, to
Than. “Can you believe that? He kissed me.”

“I knew it wouldn’t take long for everyone to see you as I do.”

She circled her arms around his neck. “Take me home.”

He kissed her cheek and stroked her hair. “Let’s go, but tell me what happened on the way.”

Over the next several days, Therese spent much of her time walking through the woods behind her house, begging Artemis to show herself. Without mortal company, she was no longer safe from Deimos and Phobos, but she had to risk facing them if she was to meet Artemis and save her sister. She carried the collapsible bow given to her by Cupid, and slung across one shoulder was the quiver of arrows, feeling as natural there to Therese as if they had grown from her body. They must be meant to serve in her new purpose as goddess of animal companions, but she didn’t know if they could protect her from enemies. If the twins appeared, she’d find out.

She conveyed these thoughts to Artemis in the form of prayer, pleading with her to appear and share her secret. Therese didn’t know how long the baby had to live, so every minute was precious. “Please, Artemis. I’m here.” She stole up the path, paying special attention to the surrounding cypresses, since those were the hunter goddess’s favorite trees. But each day and night, Artemis did not come.

During this time, Therese was also inundated with prayers from people around the world who had lost their pets or who were worried about their pets’ health or behavior. She prayed to Zeus to grant her the power of disintegration so she could more efficiently respond to these prayers, and he prayed back that he would consider her request. Meanwhile, she’d sworn to Than, Poseidon, and Hermes that she wouldn’t god travel, so the only thing she could think to do was to inspire them by planting ideas in their psyches. “Look in your neighbor’s shed,” she whispered to one regarding a lost puppy, and, “Don’t feed him gluten,” she whispered to another whose cat had allergies. She was pleased when people took her inspiration to heart and solved their problems but was frustrated when others didn’t seem to hear her.

She also sped through her online courses, passing exams with perfect scores. At this rate, she would have her degree in less than a year.

During the day, because Carol was on bed rest, Therese did most of the cooking and cleaning around the house. Although Richard helped out, his job as a freelance reporter sometimes required him to leave to conduct research, including interviews. The solemn mood in the house was oppressive, so Therese didn’t mind stealing away to pick through the forest with Clifford. Most of the time, they went at night, before or after a visit from
Than, while Carol and Richard slept.

One night, well past midnight, in her sneakers, black jeans, black t-shirt, and black winter cap pulled low over her head, she crept past the twin elms and climbed up the path through the pines and cypresses with Clifford, when a sinking feeling came over her as it occurred to her that Artemis’s instructions to meet her in the forest might be a trap. Could it be a coincidence that the goddess of wild things chose the very woods in which Ares’s twin sons had been stalking her for weeks? She pressed her back against the trunk of a tree and took a deep breath. Clifford sat on his haunches near her feet.
Focus
, she told herself.
Use your new senses
. She closed her eyes and reached out with her consciousness, feeling for the pressure created by the presence of other beings. She felt the chipmunks in the trees, the deer yards away in the shrubs, the birds in nests overhead, and the insects in the wood and earth. Further up the mountains, she sensed a family of bears, but, like every night since she left Mount Olympus, she sensed no other god.

Then the ground beneath her opened up and she fell into the crack. Although she landed firmly on her feet, she winced in surprise.  Her head was level with Clifford, who barked ferociously beside her. She followed Clifford’s gaze to see the twins standing over her with their fists on their hips and smiles on their faces.

“What a foolish girl you are,” Deimos said.

“She decided to make this easy for us,” added Phobos.

Fear and panic threatened her, but not as overwhelmingly as when she was mortal. She took an arrow and fitted it to her bow.

The twins looked at one another and guffawed.

“Should we feel threatened?” Phobos mocked.

Deimos laughed so hard that Therese could see tears forming in his eyes. “Maybe we should run for our lives, brother.”

“That’s right. She looks so frightening.”

They held their bellies and continued to laugh at her.

She took aim and shot Deimos in the heart. Without pause, she fitted another arrow and shot his brother. Upon penetration, both gods turned into miniature dachshunds. She fitted another arrow, just in case they transformed back into their original forms. Clifford growled, baring his teeth, and the two dachshunds whined. Clifford sprang for them, but the twin dogs vanished.

“Bravo,”
came Artemis’s voice from a nearby tree. “Nicely done.”

Therese aimed her arrow at the shimmering cypress. “So you didn’t come to trap me?”

“I came to tell you the most important story of my life.” The tree fluttered, and in the next instant Artemis stood above her, her leather boots level with Therese’s eyes. “The saddest story of my life.” She waved her hand over the ground and a stump emerged. “Have a seat.”

Therese returned the unused arrow, noticing others remained in the quiver, as though she hadn’t already spent two. Realizing they must regenerate, like skin cells, she leaped from the crack in the earth to stand on solid ground beside her dog. “We made a good team, Clifford. You deserve praise as well.” She scratched his back. Then she sat on the stump and patted her thighs. Clifford jumped onto her lap. She was grateful for his warm body and friendly face as she wrapped her arms around him, her
heart returning to its normal steady rhythm after its panicky flutter during her encounter with the twins, and listened to the goddess’s tale.

“Centuries ago, I met my one, true love. Her name was Callisto, one of many nymphs who kept company with me, hunting in the woods, running foot races, picnicking beneath trees. We began as friends, but, over time, we grew to love one another, and we swore we would remain pure and true to each other forever.”

Therese knew precisely what it felt like to swear your heart to another and wondered what could have happened to have made the two lovers part. She kissed the top of Clifford’s head.

“But one day while we were bathing together in a warm spring with a handful of other nymphs, I noticed she was with child. Can you imagine my horror, my heartbreak,
my rage?”

Therese would have crawled inside a hole to die, but goddesses don’t die. “What did you do?”

“I made her leave my company and all our friends. I told her to go away and to never return.” She tucked a strand of her brown hair back up into its knot and wiped a tear from her cheek.

“So you never saw her again?”

“No.” Artemis’s voice cracked. “Soon after, I learned Zeus had tricked Callisto into having relations with him.”

“Tricked her?
How?”

A single tear slipped down Artemis’s cheek from a forest-green eye. “He disguised himself as…me.”

Therese widened her eyes in surprise. Zeus had raped Callisto. Once again, her shock and disappointment over the behavior of the gods gave her the resolve to be better than they. “Callisto was innocent. She never broke her vow to you.”

“No.”

“So what did you do?”

“I went everywhere looking for her, but after weeks of searching high and low, I learned Hera, full of jealousy, had turned Callisto into a bear.”

“A bear? But it wasn’t Callisto’s fault. Hera should have turned Zeus into a bear!”

“Sshh. Lower your voice. We can’t be overheard.”

“Sorry.” She nestled her chin against Clifford’s head. “Go on.”

“I continued to look for Callisto, but I was no longer sure what she looked like. I couldn’t sense her. And I was scared a hunter would kill her.”

“Is that what happened to her?”

Artemis folded her arms and shook her head. “The son she bore almost killed her by mistake when he was sixteen and out hunting, but Zeus intervened and turned him into a bear as well. Then he flung them both high into the heavens where they became Big Bear and Little Bear, or Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.”

“The constellations?”

“That’s right. They possess asterisms more commonly known as the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper.”

“And Callisto’s there still?” She wasn’t sure how that could be, since the stars were light years away.

“Yes.
For all these centuries. A day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t longed for her company, or a night that I haven’t stood gazing up at her, begging her to forgive me. If I’d given her a chance to explain, I might have protected her from Hera.”

Therese didn’t know what to say. Artemis was right.

“That’s why I took Hera’s apple. I tried to use it as a bargaining tool to force Hera to give me back Callisto, but she claims she can’t. I’ve also heard the apple can return a person back to his or her original state, but I have not been able to figure out how to get her from the sky without upsetting the universe.”

It would be impossible, Therese thought. “That
is
a sad story, Artemis. I’m really sorry for you. But I don’t understand what you would have me do.”