Antigoddess

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, breasts 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.”

Hera’s eyes flashed electric blue. Then they calmed and adopted a mighty, motherly quality.

“You are right, stepdaughter,” she said, her voice throaty and deep. “We should have tossed that bit of gold to her the moment it rolled into the hall.” She had reached out then and lifted Athena’s hair gently off of her shoulder. Such an actress. The gesture had seemed so genuine; it had almost fooled Athena herself.

“You hateful witches,” Aphrodite had spat. Angry tears had welled in her eyes. “You’re jealous, that’s what you are.”

“Jealous?” Hera asked innocently. “Jealous of what? Your ability to sleep with men?” She made a soft scoffing sound. “I sleep with Zeus, the greatest of all. Athena—” She laid a hand on Athena’s shoulder. “Athena sleeps with no one, and has no wish to. So go. Go on, Aphrodite. Let your prince dip his little wick into some beautiful woman. What can it matter to us?”

Aphrodite had no response other than to burst into tears and flee. Athena and Hera had watched with catlike smiles. With acid and malice, they had planted the seed of the Trojan War. Aphrodite had cried to her lover, Ares, and he had pledged his allegiance. So she had stolen the Spartan Queen Helen, rather than merely allowing Paris to sleep with her, and Greece went to war with Troy, battering it to the ground, and Cassandra and all of her family with it.

It had been easy. Hera’s cleverness and natural wickedness lent itself to the plan. No one in the world could pull a double-cross or lay a trap like Hera could. A trap like the one she’d set for Athena and Hermes in that bar in the desert.

Athena had known almost immediately. The whole setup reeked of her so-called stepmother. Though she hesitated to impart this hunch to Hermes, who feared Hera above all other goddesses, and with good reason.

Athena leaned her forehead against the cool window glass, and watched the scenery flow by. In the front seat, the conversation stopped in favor of a low and off-key sing-along with Bob Dylan. George had his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow and tapped his stiff fingers against the steering wheel in time to the music. It made her smile, watching him and Hermes sing with their heads thrown back. When he didn’t have his eyeballs plastered to her chest, he seemed like a nice guy.

Hera orchestrated the trap and Poseidon sent his Nereids to do the dirty work. The glamour, though, she thought lazily, the spell to make those ugly Nereids look like people. That’s what gave you away, Aphrodite. That part of the trick was yours. The tables had turned. Allies had shifted. Two thousand years ago, the three of them had made the world burn. Now it seemed they would do it again.

* * *

“Tell me more about these witches.”

Hermes shouted at her from the shower. He was still in the shower, and had been for the last thirty-five minutes. Steam was beginning to curl out in ghostly fingers from beneath the door.

“What more do you want to know?” Athena asked, raising her voice over the noise of the jets of water. She stood at the mirror that stretched over the large basin sink, combing her hair.

“What do you mean ‘more’? You barely told me anything, yet.”

Which was true. They’d slept most of the bus ride up from Kansas City, causing curious titters from the other passengers as they eventually began to wonder if the two ever needed to pee. A couple of fourth graders traveling with an aunt had briefly entered into a very serious double-dog-dare situation regarding which of them would hold a mirror under Hermes’ nose. Then Hermes had started to snore.

“They’re Circe’s witches,” Athena called. “You remember Circe, don’t you? She led a coven on the island of Aiaia.”

“What?” Hermes barked, and she rolled her eyes.

“Come out of there already! Do you know how much water you’re running through?” She tugged at a tangle in her water-blackened hair. “And the inside of that room must look like a sauna.”

Moments later the shower shut off and he emerged, letting out a massive cloud of steam. He ruffled his hair with a towel and smiled, looking pampered in a white Holiday Inn bathrobe. They had rented a standard room