The Gatekeeper's Secret: Gatekeeper's Saga, Book Five (The Gatekeeper's Saga) (10 page)

“If I win, I get to protect all domesticated wild animals, without her interference,
forever
. I can’t back away from this challenge. It’s not just about Anya. It’s not just about you and me. This is about animal companions around the world for all of time. I have to try. Don’t you see? It’s my purpose.”

He did see. His heart burned with love and admiration. The corners of his mouth twitched into a smile, but before he could say a word, she reached up and kissed him.

***

The African savanna—an immense, flat grassland with a few trees here and there—spread before Therese from where she stood in Kenya, on the edge of the Serengeti. A pride of lions took refuge in the shade beneath a tree about a mile away. A few miles further out were taller trees and a tower of giraffes. Therese sensed elephants in the woods between the giraffes and a swamp region, before the terrain returned to grassland. A herd of gazelle and another of zebras grazed in a region outside of Tanzania, which marked the finish line for this footrace designed by Artemis. Between there and where she stood was a cacophony of birds and insects.

Artemis came up behind her. “Ready?”

She looked up to see Helios, at high noon, above her. A few miles away, Athena hovered in the sky looking down at her. Therese and Artemis had each been allowed to choose a judge. She had chosen Athena. Artemis had chosen Apollo. He stood thirty feet in front of them with a red piece of cloth held high above his head.

“Ready,” Therese said.

Apollo brought down the cloth, and Artemis soared past Therese. They tromped through the grassland toward the woods and the giraffes, but Therese was never able to make up the distance she lost from her late start. The ground quaked below their feet, and soon all of the animals were running across the savanna, too.

After treading through the muddy swamp and broaching more woods outside of Tanzania, a judge wasn’t necessary to declare the winner. Artemis won by at least a mile.

But that was okay. The swimming race was next, and Therese felt confident she could win this one.

***

Jen sat on her bed gazing at Hip’s gift with awe. She had been so surprised last month when he had presented it to her on Christmas Eve. It looked like a regular snow globe, but when you shook it and said the right words, images from the
Dreamworld appeared in a burst of light and color and sound. It gave the person holding it the ability to see anyone’s dreams simply by saying the name of the person whose sleeping mind he or she wished to invade, but Hip’s main reason for giving it to Jen was for another reason: anytime, day or night, she could say his name and he would appear to her in the globe without putting her to sleep. He would not only be able to hear her, as he always did when she prayed to him, but now she would be able to hear him in return. They could communicate this way whenever she wished.

The rest of her house was quiet. Everyone else was already asleep, but now that she had the globe, she wasn’t as anxious to sleep as she once was. She enjoyed watching him at work in the globe, and, since he was aware of her watching him, he usually added funny commentary. He was hilarious.

Just now he was walking beside a boy through a wide dungeon dimly lit by torches. She could see them from behind. Hip immediately sensed her, turned back to her, and winked. She covered her giggle, even though the dreaming boy couldn’t hear her.

“Give me the dice, Dungeon Master,” the boy said to Hip. “I need to see if I can open that door.”

A huge wooden door loomed before them.

Hip said, “Dude, you don’t need to roll. Just open it.”

“The magi warned me that…” the boy stopped in his tracks.

“What?” Hip asked. He turned back to Jen, shrugged his shoulders, and turned his finger in a circle by his head to indicate the boy was crazy.

The door burst open. Both Hip and the boy jumped back and yelped in surprise.

A huge red dragon with shining scales and a horrible woman’s face glared at them with bloodshot eyes. Hip had once explained to her that figments—which were eel-like nymphs—took the shape of beings from the dreamer’s subconscious.

“It’s my mother!” the boy screamed.

The boy turned and ran in the opposite direction of the dragon as a sharp forked tongue shot out from the dragon’s mouth and whipped the boy.

“Do you get that symbolism?” Hip stopped to ask Jen. “This is about how his mother speaks to him.”

The sharp tongue lashed out at the boy. Hip jumped up and snatched the dreamer, saying to Jen, “But you should see his room. It’s
a pig’s sty. No wonder she yells at him.” Then to the boy, Hip said, “Don’t run. Offer her a gift!”

The boy stopped. His arms and legs trembled in fright. “Give me the dice, Dungeon Master!” he cried.

“They are under your bed in your messy room,” Hip replied. “Now give the dragon what you came here to give her!”

“No, Dungeon Master!”

Goblins appeared from the cracks in the walls and surrounded them on all sides. “Oh, hell,” Hip whispered. “This kid is stubborn.”

Jen giggled again.

Hip leapt from the dungeon and gave her a serious look. “Something’s going on in your brother’s dream.”

“Bobby’s?”

“No. Pete’s. Come on.”

The colors and lights shifted in the globe, and soon she could see Hip standing beside Pete and her father’s ghost in their barn.

She shuddered at the site of her father’s ghost, which she could see with clarity in the dream globe. Although it was transparent, it looked exactly as her father had appeared just before his death. A shiver rushed down her neck and spine, and a tight knot formed in her belly.

Pete was shaking all over, his head bobbing faster than ever, like he was being electrocuted from the inside.

“Help me!” Pete cried.

Jen stood from her bed, holding the globe with both hands. “What’s happening to him?” she asked. “Can we wake him up?”

“I’m dangling from an iron chain I don’t know where!” Pete shrieked in a voice that sounded nothing like his. “Go to Melinoe, Hypnos! Make her show you where I am!”

“It’s Cybele!” Hip said. “She’s trying to contact me through your brother.”

“Help him!” Jen screamed into the globe as Pete faltered to the ground in the fits of an epileptic seizure. She tried to remember that this was only a dream, but it seemed too real.

She dropped the globe on her bed and ran down the hall to her brother’s room where he was seizing on his bed in the same way he was in his dream. She shook him fiercely, calling his name.

“Pete! Pete, wake up!”

***

In Alexandria, Egypt, where the Nile River emptied into the Mediterranean Sea, Therese stood beside Artemis full of the excitement she used to have before a meet. She bunched her hair beneath her swimmer’s cap and pulled down the arms of her wet suit, noting the scoff of superiority from her competitor. Unlike Artemis, who wore her usual leather skirt and boots, Therese wore the gear, not for protection from the elements (which she didn’t need), but for diminishing the friction of her body against the water. In this race against the northern-flowing Nile all the way to its southernmost banks in Rwanda, she would need every advantage she could take.

“No flippers?” she asked Artemis as she clamped hers to each foot.

“Don’t need them,” the goddess said with the smile of a victor.

Therese would not allow her opponent’s confidence to unsettle her.

I can do this
, she said to herself.
I have the advantage.
She had more than the wetsuit and gear; she had years of swim team experience on her side.

“Have you already chosen an archery course?’ Therese asked, as they waited for their signal.

“Don’t need to,” Artemis said. “The contest ends in Rwanda.”

If Therese were to lose this race, the contest
would
end, and she could no longer protect domesticated wild animals that inadvertently ended up in a hunt. But if she won, the contest would be settled by a final competition using their bows and arrows.

Athena hovered above the river about thirty yards high holding the same red cloth Apollo used on the African savanna. Apollo was already in Rwanda, waiting.

“Are you ready?” Athena asked.

Both goddesses cried, “Yes!”

The red cloth was lowered, and the two goddesses flung themselves into the river.

***

Hip disintegrated and dispatched to his father and mother to report to them what had happened in the
Dreamworld.

“I think Cybele is trying to reach me through the seer,” Hip said to them. “His sister woke him before I could get the full message.”

Hip hated that the Holts were once again involved in the lives of the gods, but he couldn’t withhold this important information that  might be the key to saving Cybele.

“Can’t you return him to the deep boon of sleep to hear the rest of it?” Hades asked.

“I could,” Hip said. “But I thought it might be more fruitful to send an emissary to question him in the Upperworld. Messages can be garbled in the world of dreams.”

“Good idea,” his mother said. “But whom should we send?”

“Therese is the most logical choice,” Hip said.

“Yes, but Apollo should go with her,” Hades added. He turned to Hecate, who sat with her familiars on the other side of the room. “Go and ask Apollo and Therese to meet with me as soon as possible. This may be a way for us to finally save the manly goddess.”

Hecate stood and disappeared at once.

Hip’s heart filled with anxiety over the impact Cybele’s use of Pete would have on him and his sister.

***

Than watched with pride as Therese’s arrow found its target directly beside Artemis’s. Three times they shot and three times they proved themselves to be equally matched.

“It’s my turn to call the contest,” Therese said with a confident smile. “You said I could call anything.”

Artemis lifted her chin. “What will it be?”

“Music,” Therese said.

“But I play no instrument,” Artemis objected.

That was true,
Than thought. Artemis shared none of the musical talents of her twin brother.

“You mentioned no restrictions,” Therese said.

That was true as well, Than thought with a grin. Just when he thought he couldn’t be more impressed with Therese, she goes and proves him wrong.

Athena’s gray eyes gleamed, and she shared a smile with
Than.

“What she says is true, sister,” Apollo said.

Therese beamed with pride as she produced her flute and played. Artemis conceded the victory with a scowl. Domesticated wild animals everywhere howled a victory song for their goddess, and all of the gods heard it.

Hecate appeared before them. “Hades wants to see Apollo and Therese immediately.”

The joy in Than’s heart was now squelched with worry. What could his father want with his bride now?

Chapter Seven: Pete and Cybele

Once again, Therese found herself seated beside the god of light on his golden chariot flying through the evening sky toward Colorado. He looked more solemn than usual, but she hesitated asking him why. After a few minutes of biting her lower lip, her curiosity got the better of her.

“Are you okay?”

Apollo looked at her with a gentle smile, which relieved the knot in her belly and helped her to relax.

“I miss someone. That’s all.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

He drew his eyebrows together and sighed. “Becoming one of us almost cost you your life—many times. And even as a goddess, you’ve faced great peril.”

She wondered how the topic had changed to her.

“But I want you to know something,” he continued. “Most mortals who fall in love with a god end up settling for a lonely life. As you’ve discovered, we are all so busy that we cannot devote the time we should to the one we love. It breaks my heart to see someone pining away for me when there’s little I can do about it.”

Therese had no idea what to say to this, but her mind soon left the chariot and Apollo to focus on her best friend. Would Jen end up settling for a lonely life because of her feelings for Hip?

They were quiet for the rest of the ride as dusk settled over the countryside and Helios was no longer visible on the horizon. Soon the San Juan Mountains and Lemon Reservoir came into view. Apollo steered Lampos and Acteon to a landing in the forest near the top of the mountain nearest to the cabins, and, then together, he and Therese made their way down the trail toward the Holts’ place.