“Besides.” Athena smiled. “We’re older than we look.”
“Can’t be that much older.” George took a moment to scrutinize each of them. “I’d say you’re barely out of high school. Am I right?”
Athena and Hermes exchanged a look. “According to our fake IDs, we’re twenty-one.”
George laughed. “I don’t want to know about any of that. Though I can’t believe—” He looked from Hermes to Athena in the mirror. “They must be some pretty good fake IDs.”
Athena smiled. If he’d look into their eyes for more than a moment, he’d see their true age. The forever behind them. But he didn’t.
George would take them as far as Kansas City. From there they might catch a bus. A bus to the witches, and from there on to a prophetess. Unless of course they were too late and arrived to find her already taken. Or worse, arrived to find ragged pieces of her strewn across the floor of her house.
Would she have been my friend, Athena wondered, if we had fought on the same side all those centuries ago?
It was a strange question, one she had never thought she would ask. In any case she couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t imagine them having been on the same side. Back then her anger had been so fresh. Her disgust had been for all of the Trojans, all of the royal house of Priam and every god who opposed her will to stomp Troy into the bloody sand.
It seemed stupid now. Such a battle, such alliances, and for what? For pride. For pride and for vanity. She should have been above it. But then, none of them had been. Only her father had remained neutral, and as the war progressed, original wrongs and causes were overshadowed by the play of gods. Gods wanting to see who was strongest, using humans like chess pieces, like avatars in a video game.
I actually allied with her. It was hard to believe, even so many centuries later. It had been one of the few times that they had been able to stand in the same space and not spit daggers. Hera. Her stepmother. She had fought at her side against the Trojans, against Aphrodite, Ares, Poseidon, and Apollo.
It all started on a quiet hill on the slopes of ancient Mount Ida. She remembered how she had seethed and how ridiculous she had felt, done up in her best gown, her hair, usually hidden beneath her warrior’s helmet, flowing in dark plaits and curls down her back. Hera had been there too, wearing a crown of peacock’s feathers, her cheeks creamy white, br**sts thrust out proudly, angrily. Together they watched Aphrodite study her prize: one golden apple, marked, “To the Fairest.”
“I suppose you’ll both be sour now,” Aphrodite had said in her high, girlish voice. “But you can’t dispute the judgment.”
Paris, the younger prince of Troy, had been the judge. His task was to award the apple to the fairest of the three goddesses. Of course they had all offered bribes. Aphrodite, golden goddess of love and passion, had offered him access to the most beautiful woman in the world. Hera, Zeus’ queen and goddess of marriage, offered a fine kingdom and a world of power and riches. Athena had tried to ply him with promises of glory on the battlefield. And then, as Paris sought to deliberate fairly, Aphrodite had let her robe slip.
What was a boy to do? At the time, Athena had thought him the stupidest of men. But the passing centuries gave her more perspective. He’d been a seventeen-year-old boy, staring at the most beautiful naked woman in creation. Thinking with the brain below his belt was only natural.
But back then, she hadn’t taken the rejection kindly. She couldn’t remember ever having felt more jilted, more insulted, or, frankly, more stupid. There she was, done up like a debutante in her finery, when she’d never cared about finery. She’d put on their costume and danced to their tunes, and she’d paid for it. And then all of Troy had paid for it.
“Enjoy your little piece of fruit,” Hera had said acidly, glaring at Aphrodite. “A pretty trinket to add to all your other pretty trinkets. Let it comfort you, that you have nothing else.”
The sweetness left Aphrodite’s face. “Nothing else? I have everything that this apple represents. And you are angry, because you are second to me.”
If Hera is second, that makes me third, Athena remembered thinking. It had been difficult to hold her head up. She’d never wanted to be more beautiful than them. But she had always known herself to be smarter, and standing in her gown, staring at the golden apple and still ridiculously wanting it—she had failed herself.
“Leave her be,” she said to Hera, and turned her shoulder to Aphrodite dismissively. “What can she know of our worries? What can she know of kingdoms and battles and glory? She’s a silly, braided harlot. Good for men’s dalliances, then tossed aside. Is that apple anything to compare to our legacies? Of course not.”