“I don’t have much longer, sister,” he said.
“No.” Athena shook her head, furious, and wiped her eyes. “You do. If Hera can heal, then so can you. If she has a way, I’ll take it. I’ll take it and pour it down your throat. You’ll live, and she’ll die.”
He hugged her tighter. “Don’t hope too much.” He brushed her hair back, and she looked into his face, handsome despite everything. Like his vanity was strong enough to force his illness to stay below his chin.
“You should have told me,” she said.
“So you could worry more than you already do?” he asked. “No. I just wanted time. Normal time.”
“Why did you let me pit you against Achilles all day? You idiot.”
“Bah,” he said. “I can still take that kid.”
But he couldn’t. Not anymore. His time was up. She had to make her move, and make it fast.
17
NEVER LOOK A GIFT WOLF IN THE MOUTH
Cassandra’s shoes crunched through the receding snow of the cemetery. She pressed her heel down, and it sank an easy two inches into mud. She thought of the coffins, all buried beneath the thawing ground, and wondered if they were waterproof, or if the water seeped through the weaker ones and dripped onto the decaying bodies inside.
“Do you have anything to drink?” she asked Calypso. “I suddenly feel like retching.”
Calypso handed her a bottle of cherry vitamin water. It coated her throat and swished away the grave dirt. Across the cemetery, workers labored with shovels and a small Bobcat. The edges of their spades cut through the earth like butter. What a good day to bury someone.
“Thanks for coming with me,” Cassandra said. Aidan’s grave wasn’t too far ahead, a few headstones away from a large tree. “It keeps Athena off my back.”
“You really don’t like her,” Calypso said.
“You do?”
“No. But I understand her.”
Cassandra eyed Calypso quietly. She was so beautiful, and there was a sweetness to her that made the beauty impossible to resent. Odysseus thought she was maybe a bit manipulative, but Cassandra didn’t see it. Cally was dying, like the others were, but she didn’t carry any of the desperation that they did. Though maybe she would, when her hair turned gray and her forehead wrinkled.
No. Calypso wasn’t there to live forever. She was there for Odysseus. That much was plain.
They stopped in front of Aidan’s grave, and Calypso put her hand on the stone.
“It’s warm,” she said. “Aidan. A good, modern name. Maybe I should choose one for myself.”
“Odysseus calls you ‘Cally.’”
She smiled. “He does.” She gestured over Cassandra’s shoulder at the bare branches of the broad tree. “That tree will never bear leaves again. The buds will fall dead to the ground this spring. I wonder if it knew.”
The tree looked fine. No signs of rot or disease.
“How can you tell?” Cassandra asked.
“I can’t tell,” Calypso replied. “But I know. Aidan won’t allow the shade. The same way he won’t allow snow on this stone.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t like to think of him…” Cassandra paused. “As being under the ground. As being there.”
“He isn’t there. He is somewhere else. I didn’t mean that he was in that box. Only that some things are strong enough to leave pieces behind.”
“Pieces.” Cassandra frowned. “You’re not good at saying comforting things.”
Calypso’s laugh dragged a smile out of Cassandra from somewhere down deep.
“I know,” she said. “I haven’t lived with humans as long as Athena and Hermes have. I think it’s made me strange. If I wasn’t strange to begin with.”
“I don’t think you’re strange,” Cassandra said. “I start training today. Hand-to-hand stuff. I’d like you to be the one to do it, if you’re willing.”
“I think Odysseus wants to train you.”
“You or him, then,” said Cassandra. “Or Hermes.”
“So, just not Athena.”
“Not Athena, and not—”
“Achilles!” The way she said it, Cassandra knew Calypso wasn’t just finishing a sentence. His shoes squelched as he walked the last yards to where they stood.
“What are you doing here?” Cassandra asked.
“I wanted to see him,” he said. “The god beneath the ground.” He stared at the headstone as if it were a museum exhibit, and it made Cassandra want to tear her skin off. Her palms began to tingle and itch, but the tingle couldn’t do anything to Achilles besides make him nice and toasty warm.