The Gatekeeper's Secret: Gatekeeper's Saga, Book Five (The Gatekeeper's Saga) (14 page)

“Do you have any idea where?” Artemis asked.

“It is nowhere in the kingdom of the sea,” Amphitrite declared. “We’ve looked everywhere.”

“Then it must be hidden in the skies,” Dione suggested.

Great,
Therese prayed to Artemis.
How can we investigate the skies without attracting Zeus’s attention?

“Thank you for your help, Lady Amphitrite,” Artemis said. “I suppose we should take a look at the site and check for clues.”

“Do you mind if I join you?” the goddess of the sea asked.

“Not at all,” Artemis said. “Lead the way.”

***

As Than boarded Charon’s raft with the souls in his custody, Hecate appeared.

“Your father needs you in his chambers immediately,” she said.

Than disintegrated and left with Hecate, curious to learn if there were new developments afoot and trying not to worry that something had gone wrong.

When he arrived in his father’s meeting room, Hypnos and his parents were already assembled around a table.

“Has something happened?” Than asked as he took a seat.

Hip was the one who answered him. “I went to see Aphrodite, as you suggested.”

“Oh?” Than asked.
So why have a meeting about it?
he prayed privately to Hip.

“She gave me this.” Hip handed him a small, folded piece of paper.

Than carefully unfolded it. Written inside were the words, “Help me.”

Than studied each of the faces around the table. “What do you think this means? Is she in danger?”

“We were hoping you could tell us,” Persephone said. “Of all of us, you have been particularly close to her lately.”

“She’s been ignoring me ever since Therese used her as a diversion when we rescued Artemis and Hephaestus from Mount Olympus.”

Hades rubbed his beard and sighed. “We need to determine whether she truly needs our help, or whether Zeus intends to use her as his spy.”

“How do we do that?” Hip asked.

Than was wondering the same thing.

“I have an idea,” Persephone said. “If Therese asks Aphrodite to be her matron of honor and the Graces to be her bridesmaids…”

“Mother, please,” Than interrupted. “She’s the least experienced god.” And they were relying on Therese too much, in Than’s opinion.

“You don’t have faith in her abilities?” Hades challenged.

“Of course I do,” Than said.

“Then it’s settled,” Hades said. “As soon as Therese returns from her mission with Artemis, bring her to me so we can hatch the plan.”

***

After searching underwater where Cyclopes Island used to be, Therese felt like a failure. They had found nothing to indicate what had happened, and none of the creatures they had questioned had any knowledge of its whereabouts. They all described the same phenomenon Amphitrite had already mentioned: There had been a loud rumbling, the earth and sea had quaked for a few moments, then a great current had sucked everything for miles toward the spot once occupied by land. Eventually everything had settled back to normal.

The four goddesses were about to give up their investigation when
Callisto appeared, flapping her hands with excitement.

“I have news!” she said. “I was visiting my son,
Arcas, last night—you know, Little Bear?”

“What news?” Artemis asked.

“I didn’t put it together until just now.” Callisto lifted her arms above her head in a dramatic gesture of enlightenment.

“Put what together?” Therese asked.

“He said there was a massive cloud that hadn’t moved for days,” Callisto explained. “He’s been watching it with interest, expecting it to unleash a deluge. He called it a marvel. He’s never seen anything like it on Earth.”

Therese arched a brow. “So you think the cloud may contain…”

“Cyclopes Island,” Dione said.

“Where is it?” Artemis asked.

“Arcas said it’s floating above the Arctic Ocean somewhere between Greenland and Iceland,” Callisto said.

“That’s the Denmark Straight,” Amphitrite said. “I know precisely where that is. Shall we go?”

Therese’s heart picked up speed at this new prospect of finding the island.

“Hold on.” Artemis looked from Amphitrite to Dione.

Aren’t we in a hurry?
Therese prayed privately to Artemis.

“I need you both to swear an oath on the River Styx.”

Ah, smart move. What about Callisto?
Therese prayed again.

She’s already sworn her allegiance to me.

“Not here,” Dione said. “We need to go on land. Sound travels for miles underwater, and we can easily be overheard.”

“Where should we go?” Therese asked.

“We’re not too far from my sacred temple in Ephesus,” Artemis said. “It’s heavily warded. Let’s go there.”

The four other goddesses followed Artemis across the Aegean Sea along the coast of Turkey toward Ephesus. Once on land, they ran, in invisibility mode, to the temple ruins. Tourists strolled along the grounds, but Artemis knew of a secret cavern beneath them where they could speak without distractions and, more importantly, without being overheard by other gods.

“I need to know that I can trust you,” Artemis said. “What I have to say is about standing up for goddesses who have been treated unjustly and whose voices continue to be suppressed.”

“I love it,” Dione said with a smile.

“You speak of our sister, Metis?” Amphitrite asked.

“First swear,” Therese said. “Swear you’ll tell no one what we are about to reveal to you.”

“Swear on the River Styx,” Artemis clarified.

“I swear on the River Styx,” Dione said, without hesitation.

Everyone looked at Amphitrite.

“It sounds like you’re asking me to commit treason against our king,” Amphitrite said.

Therese’s heart pounded wildly with anticipation. She hoped they hadn’t made a mistake in including Amphitrite.

“We believe he’s the one responsible for hiding Cyclopes Island,” Artemis said. “We suspect he’s building an arsenal of thunderbolts.”

“But why?” Amphitrite asked.

Artemis told them about Pete’s prophecy.

“He’s going to use my wedding for his attack,” Therese explained.

Therese went on to tell them about Cybele and
Melinoe, and added, “So you see, your sister isn’t the only goddess we need to save.”

“If we don’t stand up against this patriarchal tyrant,” Artemis began, “our rights may be the next to be stripped away.”

“He can’t continue to use women for his own pleasure, and then abuse them when it suits his needs,” Therese added.

“We aren’t the only ones who feel this way,” Artemis said. “We want you to join us, but first you have to swear on the River Styx to tell no one of our plan.”

Amphitrite raised her right hand and placed it over her heart. “I swear on the River Styx to keep this plan to myself.”

***

After her mom and Bobby had left, Jen sat in Pete’s hospital room at Mercy Regional and slipped the dream globe from her coat pocket. Pete had been in a coma for three weeks. The psych evaluation had to be postponed, but all of the other tests had revealed nothing. When Jen communicated with Hip through the globe, he had tried to cheer her up by saying that Pete was better off in the coma. She had begun to suspect Hip was the reason Pete hadn’t been able to wake up.

To make matters worse, Pete hadn’t been dreaming, so she had been unable to use the globe to gain insight into his head.

Undeterred, she focused on the globe and silently asked to see Pete’s dream. Although nothing happened for several long minutes, at some point, when she had nearly forgotten and had
begun to daydream about Hip, the globe lit up like a Christmas tree, and distorted sounds and images followed.

Worried she might be entering someone else’s night-time adventures, she whispered, “Show me Pete’s dream.”

The colors and images swirled like a hurricane. One by one, like the rolling credits at the end of a movie, the faces of people she knew appeared and disappeared: Therese, Than, and herself, and each of their family members stared back at her from the globe. She even saw Ray and Todd and other friends. They were dressed in nice clothes. And then it dawned on her.

Pete was dreaming about Therese’s wedding day.

This ought to be good, she thought.

In a beautiful wedding gown, Therese walked across the gravel pad on Richard’s arm. The sun was shining, red birds were chirping, and a beautifully decorated arbor had been set up at the end of the aisle, where
Than stood waiting. But something was wrong. The images shimmered, and a shout sounded from the globe. It was Pete.

“No!” he shouted again.

So maybe Pete was still in love with Therese after all, Jen thought. That would explain why he was having a dream about her wedding day, and why the dream was quickly turning into a nightmare.

The sudden appearance of her father’s ghostly face scared her, and she nearly dropped the globe on the hospital room floor.

“Pete!” the ghost moaned in a ghoulish voice that was only faintly like her father’s. “If Therese marries the god of death, the lord of Mount Olympus will fall, and your sister will perish.”

This time Jen did drop the globe. It fell on its side and rolled beneath the bed.

Chapter Ten: Revelations

Therese watched in amazement as Amphitrite’s daughter, Kym, rose toward them from the depths of the Aegean Sea in the form of a raving current that shoved everything out of its path for miles. When Kym reached the surface, she became a massive tidal wave that threatened the coast of Turkey. Amphitrite gave the signal, and all five goddesses dived into the wave.

Kym, the goddess of storm waves, lifted them up and changed directions, away from the coast of Turkey toward Iceland. They travelled across the Mediterranean, into the Atlantic, and then turned north toward the Arctic Circle.

No humans or animals will be injured or killed by this mission, right?
Therese asked Artemis.

We shall see
, came the goddess’s cryptic reply.

As they neared Iceland, Kym’s husband,
Briareos the storm giant, lunged from the sea and created a bank of black, ominous storm clouds that stretched for miles across the Arctic. Amphitrite cloaked Therese, Artemis, Callisto, Dione, and herself in a thick rain cloud, and then the five goddesses leapt from the crest of Kym and into the sky beside Briareos.

To distract any gods who might be watching, Kym changed directions and crawled along the Atlantic to the south toward the equator.
Briareos followed, leaving scattered clouds in his wake to camouflage the goddesses, but this made it impossible for them to discern which cloud had been spotted by Arcas. Amphitrite asked Briareos to burst his clouds over the Arctic, and this caused a blizzard to snow down below them. Once the storm-giant’s clouds had all dispersed, the goddesses could finally see the enormous black cloud sitting directly above the Denmark Straight.

They sailed below the cloud so that their own might appear indistinct from it. Then the five goddesses reached their hands up through the condensation and felt that, indeed, a solid mass was hidden inside.

Artemis went first, to check it out, before beckoning the other goddesses to follow.

You won’t believe what I see
, Artemis said to them.

When she reached Artemis’s side, Therese’s mouth fell open. Polyphemus sat on a hill with an icicle hanging from his crying eye. He broke off the icicle and threw it in a rage in the snow, only to watch another form with his tears.

Why is he sobbing?
Callisto asked.

Therese scoured the icy hills, searching for an answer. A mound of thunder bolts lay beside the weeping Cyclops. The sound of a distant forge echoed th
rough the blustery sky. The sheep bellowed as they wandered across their ice-covered fields. What would make a mean and nasty cannibal cry?

***

Jen paced the floor of her brother’s hospital room, banging her fists against her thighs. Should she even go to
Therese’s wedding? What if the prophecy came true? She sighed and paced and banged her fists some more. How could she not go to her best friend’s wedding?

“Jen?”

At first she thought Pete was waking from his coma, but then she recognized Hip’s voice. It came from the globe, which had rolled beneath Pete’s bed. Although she was frightened of it, she crouched on the floor and fished the globe out.