"It"s gone. I don"t know all the details, but Hades told me that it sank forever when Atlanta lost some kind of challenge." Helen watched Lucas"s face fall, like something in his body ached. "I"m sorry, Lucas. There is no Atlantis."
"No. But there"s here," he said, his mood lifting. Helen looked at him, puzzled.
"Yes, but no Atlantis means that there"s no immortality. All those years the Houses have been killing each other to get to Atlantis and become immortal . . . and it"s all a fairy tale."
"I"ll bet anything your world is better than Atlantis ever was. And I bet if Atlanta could make people immortal, so can you."
"Well, thanks, but all I"ve made so far is a field of flowers. Not eternal life."
He looked at her for a few moments. Helen knew this look. He gave it to her when he was trying to figure out the best way to explain something complicated to her.
"Just spit it out," she groaned, grinning at the inevitable lesson he was about to give her.
"I"m just thinking about how your world works. Everything you want to happen, happens-no matter how crazy it is, right? But there are still rules," Lucas said, talking and thinking at the same time. "Let me put it this way. You healed my body. And I know I was pretty close to dead."
"Yeah, but . . ."
"When we go back to the other world. Ah, Earth," he said, grimacing at how strange it was to say that. "I"m a.s.suming that my wounds won"t come back, will they?"
"Of course not. You"re healed."
"So you changed my body. Whatever you did to my body here will carry over when we return to Earth. That"s one of the rules." Lucas waited for Helen to nod, which she did slowly, still trying to catch up with him. "Then what"s to say you couldn"t make me immortal here and I"d stay that way, forever, no matter what world we go to?"
Helen stared at him. "How do you do that? How do you figure everything out so quickly?"
"You may be all-powerful, but nothing beats plain old logic." He smiled at her. "Am I right? You can make anyone immortal by bringing them here and willing it?"
She nodded silently, thinking about how she"d get injured in Hades and wake up in her bed on Earth and still be injured. She knew from experience that if something happened to the body in one world it carried over into all the others. The same went for immortality. Helen knew this was right implicitly, the same way she knew her feet were there even when she wasn"t thinking about them. She could make herself and Lucas immortal just by thinking it here in her world.
Just one wish made here in this world, sitting in the gra.s.s, and she and Lucas could live together, young and healthy forever.
"Don"t," Lucas said, his face immobile. He knew what Helen was considering. "We need to really think about this before we go and do anything permanent."
Helen thought about how Lucas had looked when she brought him to her world just moments ago-his charred skin, the bone showing raw and red in some of the worst spots. She knew she was tough, but she also knew that there were some things she could handle and some things that she couldn"t. Losing Lucas was not something she could handle. Not now, not ever.
"Of course. We"ll talk about it later." She smiled placidly at him.
"Helen," he began, his eyes widening at her in warning.
She stood up before Lucas had a chance to lecture her, and pulled him to his feet. "Come on, smarty-pants. I want to go to Paris. Or Rome. Or Stockholm."
He didn"t know what she meant until a city skyline appeared at the edge of the field of gra.s.s and wildflowers. There was no ugly transition, no garbage heaps or poorly designed public transit hubs, just flowers and then pavement. A gleaming city sprang into being, perfect and contained from the natural world right next to it, like a kingdom in a snow-globe.
They stepped onto the pavement, and the city and all of its noise and bustle and life surrounded them. The scent of roasting coffee and baking bread filled the air, and their noses led them to a murmuring, clattering cafe, half a block down.
"It"s like New York, Vienna, and Reykjavik had a baby with Scotland," Lucas said in awe.
He looked up at the buildings, some ancient and castle-like and some gleaming and new. Right outside the tall buildings, a perfect wilderness of forests, lakes, and mountains awaited to be hiked, swam, and skied.
Lucas shook his head to clear it. "It"s Everycity."
"Yes," Helen laughed softly. "Every city I"ve never been to."
"I promised you once that we"d travel," he said, his face sad. "I"m sorry, Helen. It would have only taken us a few moments, and we could have flown anywhere together. But I never took you."
"We had other things on our minds," she said, taking his hand. "I didn"t build this to shame you. I built it to share with you."
Lucas raised his face to the sky, taking in the complex layers of smells and voices.
"Well, you got everything right-except for one thing." Lucas swallowed hard and smiled, glancing at her. "It"s a lot cleaner than any city I"ve ever been to."
"What can I say, I"m from Nantucket," Helen said, shrugging. "We don"t do filthy."
"Yeah, I"ve noticed. Even the dirt there is clean." Lucas laughed and turned his whole body to face hers.
For just a moment, Helen felt like he would kiss her, and everywhere in Everycity the sun shone a little brighter. But he didn"t kiss her. At the last second, he pulled back and changed the subject.
"Context clues. I know you want something to eat because you made us appear right next to a cafe," he said, his voice deep and textured. He turned away and squeezed her hand, like he was trying to snap them both out of a dream. "Come on. Let"s see what you put on the menu."
"Wait. Why?" she asked, suddenly shy.
"This world"s a reflection of your desires." He led Helen into the busy cafe before she had a chance to remove anything un.o.btrusively. He glanced left and right at the tile-top wrought-iron tables, mismatched crockery, and the open rafters above their heads, and smiled. "This is your subconscious. I want to know what you really want."
Too late to stop him, Helen followed Lucas as he walked into her subconscious. There was art on the walls-weird combinations of images that would never be on the same wall in a museum.
Ansel Adams and Toulouse-Lautrec somehow lived in perfect harmony in Helen"s little world. Cancan girls showed their legs next to n.o.ble pines buried deep in winter"s bleached purity.
It was everything that Helen loved about art, and everything she loved about human nature. She looked at another wall and saw a vibrant, almost violent-looking Van Gogh hanging just inches away from a soothing and orderly Mondrian.
Helen knew that Lucas saw every nuance, every dialogue between the works of art. One image informed the other as Helen went back and forth in her subconscious about what was more alluring-humanity"s ability to be rational and pure, or its need to be messy and s.e.xy.
Lucas walked right into Helen"s unfinished internal argument and saw everything that was buried inside of her-bare skin fresh from a hot bath, and birch trees dusted with snow. Helen felt naked and laid open for him to stare at. It was so embarra.s.sing she groaned.
She pulled Lucas into a tiny booth in the corner by the window and put up her menu, like a barricade. She tried to read the menu but it was blank. Just like her mind.
"Helen?" Lucas said gently, tugging down her menu. "You don"t have to hide anything from me. You know that, right?"
"S-sure," she stammered, shaking.
"I"m not afraid of anything inside of you," he pressed. "Good. Bad. Creepy. I know darkness. And I"d never judge you for having a few drops of your own."
"Oh." Helen looked around the room. Goya"s disturbing painting Saturn Devouring His Son captured her eye and held it. "And what if it"s more than a few drops?"
Lucas laughed. He s.n.a.t.c.hed her menu away, threw it to the floor, and grabbed both her hands. "Didn"t I tell you I love you?"
"Yes."
"I meant all of you. Even the weird bits."
"Remind me to burn this place to the ground as soon as we leave," she said, adoring him.
"Absolutely not." He looked around at the patrons. People of every race, age, and time period seemed to be hanging out together. Native Americans in feathered headdresses chatted pleasantly with pirates. Girls with eighties mall bangs flirted with guys right out of Elizabethan England. "I like it inside your head. It"s strange, but it suits me."
Helen looked around, and it all made sense to her. How cool would it be to be able to go to a cafe and strike up a conversation with someone from another time and place? It was something she"d always imagined doing, and now it looked like she didn"t have to imagine it anymore. She could be a part of it.
Neither of them was hungry or thirsty, they were just there to taste something yummy and enjoy each other"s company. It was chilly out, but pleasantly so, and when Helen looked at what they were wearing, both of them were dressed perfectly for a fall day. She hadn"t remembered dressing them, but they were definitely wearing some new clothes.
"Come on," he said, standing up and putting on his newly created coat. "I want to take a walk before it snows."
They left the cafe and started wandering down the cobblestone street, past shops and buildings that were busy with all kinds of people going about their lives. Helen had no idea where all these people came from. She guessed she"d made them up or remembered them. Whichever it was, Helen knew they were based in reality, and that was comforting to her. It would have been odd to wander around an empty city, or worse, a city full of mannequin-like robots.
The sun was setting, and Helen smelled snow in the air, just as Lucas had predicted. Windows lit up with warm glows as people turned on their lights or lit candles. Lucas had his arm over her shoulder as they strolled down the street.
"There are no poor people. No homeless," he said suddenly.
"No," Helen replied. "Everyone has what they need here."
"But how could anyone be grateful for what they have if they didn"t know what it was like not to have what they need?"
Helen shook her head and looked down. "I"ve always thought that was the lamest argument-that we need some people to be poor in order to remind the rest of us to be grateful. All that really means is that someone has to suffer poverty so other people can feel better about themselves. What a selfish way to look at the world."
Lucas chuckled and squeezed her against his side. "I agree. But you have to admit it is human nature to only really appreciate something if you"ve worked for it, or if you know you can lose it. How are you going to make the inhabitants of your little heaven feel fulfilled if everything comes to them easily?"
"Ah. The old "heaven is boring" problem, huh? Not in this universe." Helen looked up at Lucas, and they smiled at each other. "We"ll figure something out. We"ve got plenty of time."
"Wait," he said, narrowing his eyes at her. "What do you mean "we"ve got plenty of time"?"
"Just that we"re young," Helen replied cagily.
Before Lucas could continue asking questions, Helen imagined a carnival, and it appeared in front of them. Bright, multicolored lights flashed in the evening light, and cheerful music piped around them. The scent of spun sugar sweetened the air, and elsewhere they could smell something juicy and spicy getting grilled.
"Amazing," Lucas breathed. "Everything she wants she gets."
Helen pulled on his arm, grinning mischievously. "And what I want right now is to ride the carousel."
Matt heard Telamon sound the alarm. No human or Scion would ever be able to discern the skritching noises that the Myrmidons made from the chorus of natural noises on a beach, but Matt could easily tell the difference between the voices of the insects and those of his soldiers.
He left his tent to watch a party of Scions coming up the beach. Matt had known most of them from Troy and had disliked most of them. Odysseus was the only one worthy of respect.
"So it"s true," said a large, blond man. Matt knew him as Menelaus. "The Warrior has finally joined the fight."
"Tantalus. Head of Thebes," Telamon whispered in Matt"s ear. Matt nodded.
"When Hermes told me that Myrmidons were ma.s.sing on the sh.o.r.e, I knew the last piece of the puzzle had been found, and you were coming to fight," Tantalus continued, although Matt hadn"t asked him to. An uncomfortable silence followed as Matt stared at Tantalus, still reluctant to make an alliance with this man, although he knew it was inevitable. The Myrmidons had voted for it.
"You hired one of my soldiers. Automedon. He was one of my closest friends once," Matt said, expressionless. "Before he lost his way."
"Yes," Tantalus said warily as he sized up Matt. "I had nothing to do with his death, though."
"Uh-huh." Matt looked at the two men on either side of Tantalus-Odysseus on his left and Agamemnon on his right. Pallas Delos, as Matt knew Agamemnon now.
"How"d this happen, Matt?" Pallas asked, dismayed. He gestured to the Myrmidon warriors, arrayed in precise ranks.
"He was chosen," Telamon said defensively. "That"s all you need to know. We accept him as our Master."
The Myrmidons whispered the word Master in their ghostly way, unsettling the Scions who shared a round of nervous looks. They were afraid of Matt"s men, as they should be.
"And do you have all the skills of Achilles?" asked the man Matt knew as Odysseus. Matt leaned his head close to Telamon.
"Daedalus Attica, Head of Athens," Telamon told him immediately.
"That"s not your real question," Matt said, regarding Daedalus evenly. "You want to know if I have Achilles" weakness."
Daedalus"s mouth turned up in a half smile. "Every mortal has at least one."
Matt smiled back at him with closed lips, neither confirming nor denying what the crafty one was asking. They stared at each other until Daedalus looked away.
"Suit yourself," Daedalus said. He regarded Tantalus and Pallas and raised his eyebrows. "Well, I"m convinced."
"Are you sure about this?" Pallas asked Tantalus.
"The G.o.ds will crush us all if we don"t fulfill our end of the bargain," Tantalus replied, eyeing Matt with open distrust. "We bring the Warrior to the table, or all the Scions die. Zeus swore on the River Styx that if we do this our Houses will be preserved."
It was like it always was. At Troy, the Greek kings made their own deal with Zeus and saved their skins, and the innocent children of Troy were thrown from the top of the wall. Matt learned long ago that kings cared only about preserving their own kingdoms and were more interested with what they could get out of any given situation than doing what was right. Matt was suddenly so disgusted by the hedging and the political posturing he saw in the Scions that he turned to go back to his tent. This wasn"t what he"d come for.
"Hold on," Daedalus called out, taking a step toward Matt. The Myrmidons moved as one to intercept Daedalus. He put his arms up in surrender. "Easy. Everybody just take it easy."
"I"ll fight with or without you." Matt stopped and turned back to face them, speaking plainly. "I"m here to kill the Tyrant. If that"s what you want, then you may join me. If not, get out of the way."
Helen led Lucas into the maze of booths, tugging on his arm. He hung back playfully, acting reluctant to follow so she had to half drag him. On the way, a barker caught his attention with an outlandish dare, and Lucas just had to stop and throw a baseball at a stack of lead milk bottles.
It took him three tries, which he insisted had never happened to him before, but eventually, he won Helen a prize. There was a fluffy elephant that caught her eye for a moment, but she finally picked a glittery wand. It had a silver star on the top and dozens of ribbons flowing out of the bottom. The wand felt right in her hand and easy to carry. She waved it a few times, willing sparks to puff off of it as they paused in front of the gla.s.s-blowing booth and watched a man make a little gla.s.s dragon.
Neither of them could stop smiling. Helen heard the carousel and ran the last few steps. She hopped onto the back of a unicorn as it swung past, waving her glittery wand in the air like it was a riding crop.
"Tally-ho!" she cheered to her painted ceramic mount, but it didn"t go any faster. The pole down the unicorn"s middle was bra.s.s, and it smelled tangy and crisp in the autumn cold.
Lucas jumped up next to her, standing by her side rather than getting a ride of his own. He stood over her, his coat opening around her when he gripped the bra.s.s pole. They stared at each other for a long time as the rest of the world spun by them. The bright, fairground colors streaked and smeared in the corner of Helen"s eye but Lucas was still.
"Why won"t you kiss me?" she asked quietly.
"Can"t you make me?" he replied, raising a teasing eyebrow at her.
"I wouldn"t want to. Especially not on our first real date."
Lucas laughed softly. "I was thinking the same thing when we were in the cafe. You and I had coffee together once before school, but we never really dated, did we?"
"We never got the chance. The world was always about to end, or one of us was on fire or something equally annoying." He chuckled. She looked up at him and tried not to blush. "You know, we can do whatever we want here. I can make sure there are no consequences."