In the morning, Than gave Therese a pair of jeans, a shirt, clean undies, and pair of socks he had brought her from her house.
“You went through my underwear drawer?” she asked.
He gave her a wry smile.
“How are my pets?”
“Your aunt and her boyfriend are taking good care of them.”
Luckily her sneakers had dried overnight. After she changed, Than led her to the assembly hall where the gods and goddesses were just now coming in from either their chambers behind their thrones or the banquet hall or, in the case of Poseidon and Hades, the chariot shed.
Once the gods and goddesses were seated, Hephaestus presented McAdams and Therese with the golden sword and shield he had wrought and forged for them. Ares belted the sheathed sword around McAdams’s waist while Than did the same for Therese. Therese pulled the blade from the sheath. It was surprisingly light.
Than stood close by and whispered, “Be careful with that thing. I can’t be killed, but I can still feel pain.”
She gave a nervous giggle and returned the sword to its sheath, watching McAdams with a wary eye.
Than grabbed her hand and pulled her closer, so that they were breast to breast. “Speaking of pain, if McAdams, you know… I won’t let you suffer. I’ll take your soul, and I’ll take you straight to your parents.”
She swallowed hard and gave him a frightened nod. Then he kissed her once more before taking his seat beside his father.
McAdams had dark circles beneath his eyes and bags that would put those of Hephaestus to shame. He looked pale, almost languid, and Therese actually felt a little sorry for him. She wondered where he had passed the night and what comforts Ares, and perhaps other gods, did or did not provide.
Then she remembered how she had watched her parents die, and anger rose within her. She would kill him.
“We all know the rules,” Zeus announced. “So let us begin.”
Therese nearly jumped from her sneakers when the assembly hall vanished and in its place was a clearing surrounded by woods. Pines, cypresses, elms, hemlocks—all trees Therese recognized. Beyond the clearing, the sun at high noon pierced through the canopy of leaves onto a deer here, a squirrel there. Cardinals, sparrows, jays, and other birds whose names she did not know flittered from tree to tree, just like they did in the bird atrium at the San Antonio Zoo. Ants burrowed in the dirt around her feet, and white limestone rocks, pink granite rocks, and other kinds, too, were partly buried in the earth, partly exposed.
The thrones had disappeared, but the gods and goddesses sat on tree stumps in the clearing in the same formation in which they had gathered at the hall on Mount Olympus. For all Therese knew, they had never left the court, and all of this nature around them was a vast illusion.
Suddenly with a roaring thunder, the ground beneath them lifted up, like the floor of an elevator, and both Therese and McAdams stumbled and fell with the trembling earth. The clearing rose at least thirty feet so that the gods could look down upon the forest surrounding them below, like the reverse of a coliseum in that what was once the battlefield in the center had become the audience seating, and what was usually the audience seating was an outer circular battlefield. But unlike the audience of a coliseum, this battlefield was ripe with life and natural structures. Behind Zeus, mountains of pink granite jutted up from the forest below, exceeding in height the level of the gods’ platform. Beyond Poseidon, Therese could make out a river bordered by forest. A stream ran from the pink granite mountains, into the river, and then circled around Apollo and Hephaestus and plunged into a roaring fall to a deeper canyon behind Hades. The water pooled into a smaller body of water at the bottom of the deeper canyon. Another stream ran into a fall behind Aphrodite, but the trees were so thick on that side of the forest, that Therese could not see through them. Among the trees behind Demeter, however, she thought she saw fruit. If her plan was to outrun and hide from McAdams, this would be a long battle, and fruit would be necessary to keep going. Otherwise, she and her enemy wouldn’t need to kill one another. They would starve to death.
Therese and McAdams stood up on opposite sides of the platform staring at one another with fear and anger. Therese wasn’t sure what to do, and McAdams appeared as indecisive. All of the gods sat around them on their stumps, waiting. Aphrodite’s face was stained with tears.
Than, still close by, spoke in a low voice. “My best advice is to avoid hand to hand combat.”
“Then how will I kill him?” Therese muttered without taking her eyes off McAdams.
“Set traps, if possible, and keep far away from him. You’re in better shape and can probably outrun him, but he’s stronger.” Than could not keep the desperation from his voice. “Please be careful.”
Therese kept her eyes on McAdams as she backed away from him towards what had now become a cliff edge behind the tree-stump thrones of the gods. A person would certainly die if he or she fell from the platform and into the canyon woods surrounding them below. But the rocky ledges could be navigated the thirty or so feet to the bottom, and it seemed to Therese there could be caves in the canyon walls. She decided she should descend behind Demeter and collect whatever fruit she could carry, and then run for a hiding place until she could think of another plan.
McAdams charged at her, however, and gave her no choice but to climb down the cliff edge behind Hades. Therese threw her shield down and it plunged, then slid, and finally came to a stop near the bottom of the deeper canyon at least a hundred feet below. She turned and clung to the rock wall, quickly finding her footing as she scaled down the side. She looked up and saw McAdams standing above her. He wasn’t climbing down after her…yet.
“Oh, Than, I should have run to the trees!” she said in her mind, praying frantically, even though she knew he could not help her. “My plan was to collect food and stay on the run till he got weak. But look at me clinging to these walls! This is stupid! What am I doing? I’m going to kill myself slipping on these stupid rocks, and he’ll win by default! I’ve already dropped my shield!”
“Your plan is sound!” Than called after her. “You can still do it!”
Then it dawned on Therese, something she hadn’t thought of before! She could speak to the gods through prayer, and they could answer her! She would have to call them by name so Ares would not hear. Ares would inform McAdams. But the other gods, the ones she knew were on her side, she would speak to them!
She increased her pace down the canyon wall and lowered herself to the bottom. Her shield lay below in the deeper canyon, but she decided she would be faster without it. Since her goal was to avoid hand to hand combat, why be burdened with it when her hands could be free?
She ran along the base of the upper canyon wall toward the thick forest behind Demeter. In her mind, she said, “I’m thinking I should collect food, Than. And then hide. Do you agree?”
“Yes!” he shouted.
Then another thought hit her. She would ask the gods questions that could be answered with yes or no, so as to prevent McAdams from overhearing her plans.
“Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite,” she said in her mind as she ran. “If you can hear me, shout out my name, so I know.”
“Therese!” Artemis cried.
“Therese!” Athena echoed.
“Therese, my dear!” Aphrodite sang.
Therese looked up and saw McAdams had not descended to the forest. He stood there hovering over the cliff edge watching her. She wondered what he was doing. Perhaps he had the same plan of waiting untl she wore herself out.
“Demeter, Persephone, Hades,” Therese prayed as she disentangled herself from the thick undergrowth, twigs snapping beneath her feet. “Say ‘yes’ if you can hear me.”
“Yes!” Demeter cried.
“Oh, yes!” Persephone said.
“Smart girl!” Hades hollered. “Yes!”
Therese was filled with a renewed hope as she picked her way through the branches of trees and shrubs, some stiff like spears, others flexible like snakes, toward the fruit trees. The woods were now so thick, that she could no longer see McAdams. “Than, has McAdams climbed down from the platform?”
“No!” Than shouted.
So maybe he did plan for her to wear herself out. She found a narrow stream and sighed with relief. The woods had become so thick that only little spots of sunlight pierced through the canopy of leaves above her, and she couldn’t tell which way she was going, but the stream would now be her guide. Layers and layers of rotting leaves covered the ground beneath her, and she had to be careful to step over the occasional fallen branch or decaying log.
Another idea struck her.
“Than and Artemis, should I attempt to make spears from these fallen branches?” she prayed. “Just say yes or no. If it would be a waste of time say no.”
“Yes!” Artemis said.
“Ask me another question!” Than cried.
Ask another question? What question? She stared at the sticks.
“You want me to use the sticks for something else?” A thorn bush scratched her arm. “Ow,” she muttered.
“Yes!” Than shouted. “Recall what I said earlier!”
“Is McAdams still up there?”
“Yes!”
What had Than said earlier? He had said to avoid hand to hand combat, to run, and…to set traps! “You want me to use the sticks to set traps?”
“Yes!” Than answered.
“But I have no idea how to do that!” She groaned as she bent over and picked through the sticks on the ground, looking for strong ones.
She saw several bruised apples among the sticks and leaves, most of them rotten, but when she looked up, she could see ripe ones on the branches within her reach.
“I should pick fruit, Than, Artemis, and Athena, but carrying it now will hold me back. I should store it someplace. I should find somewhere to hide, to store my food and my weapons. I could booby-trap it!”
“Yes!” all three voices rang out.
Therese pulled off her shirt and bundled fruit inside of it. She found nuts on the ground and further up the stream, grapevines. She plucked as many grapes as she could fit into the makeshift bundle, gathered up the edges, and carried it in one hand and her collection of sticks in the other.
Think, she told herself, standing in her bra and jeans with her bundle draped over her back. Originally, she had planned to climb the granite rocks jutting up above Zeus, but only because she thought a look out was necessary. Now that she had figured out she could use prayer to keep tabs on the whereabouts of McAdams, she wouldn’t need the lookout. She would need to hide, and she would want to make it as hard as possible for McAdams to get to her.
She stood there, thinking. “Is McAdams still up there?” she prayed to Than.
“Yes!” he shouted. “But hurry! Don’t waste time!”
He wanted her to set traps, but she didn’t know how to do that. Think, Therese! Okay, McAdams would eventually need food if she managed to stay away from him long enough, so he would come here, to this part of the woods. This would be a good place to try and trap him, or at least weaken him with an injury. But how?
She shuddered. She was not cut out for this. Strategically planning how to hurt and kill someone went against her grain. Remember your parents, she told herself. Remember the last time you saw them!
She forced herself to visualize her father writhing in frenzy as the water washed over him, suffocating him. She forced herself to see her mother, bleeding at the neck, blood pouring from her mouth as she yielded to her death. She clutched the golden locket around her neck. I can do this!
Than said not to waste time, so maybe she should start sharpening the sticks until another idea came to her mind. She followed the stream out of the thicket where the undergrowth thinned out and looked for a place to sit and work. She saw a fallen log up ahead that would serve as a bench. On her way to the log, the ground dropped below her and she fell flat on her chest, dropping her bundle, apples flying everywhere. She had landed in a hole about two feet deep and four feet wide.
“Ow! She scrambled to her feet. “Oh, damn!” Leaves stuck to her skin and fell in her bra as she gathered the apples, leaving the nuts and most of the grapes, which had fallen beneath the rotting leaves. She heaped the apples back onto her shirt, bundling it back up. Luckily they still looked good, no bruises. Her knee, on the other hand, would definitely have a bruise. It had been stabbed by a sharp rock. At least her jeans had protected her skin.
A flash of inspiration.
She could use this hole to set a trap, and she could look for similar places in the ground. She would sharpen sticks at both ends, drive them into the bottom of these holes, and cover them with dead leaves.
“Than!” she said in her mind. “I’ve got it!” She told him her plan.
“Yes!” he shouted. “But hurry!”
“Is McAdams still there?”
“Not for long!” Than yelled.
“What is he doing? Oh, wait, you can’t answer that. Is he watching me?”
“No!”
“Is he making plans?”
“Yes! Yes, hurry!”
Now Therese was filled with worry over what McAdams might be doing up on the platform. She took her collection of sticks to the large fallen log, sat down, and unsheathed her sword. The sword was too long to whittle the wood, so she drove the blade into the ground and used it like a cheese grater, rubbing first one end and then the other of each stick against the blade. The sword was so sharp that it didn’t take her long to produce a large mound of sticks sharpened at both ends. Now she needed to find a big rock so she could drive each stick into the ground.
She ran around the fallen log looking for a rock. There has to be a rock in these woods! Panic threatened to overtake her as she dug through the layers of leaves and came up with nothing, over and over. Then she remembered where she had hurt her knee in the bottom of the hole and looked there. Yes, sharp on top but smooth on the bottom where it was wedged into the ground, it was the size of a large brick. She dug it from the earth and went back for her sticks. She had made the sticks a little more than a foot long and now she hammered them into the ground, a foot apart, so that they stuck up about eight inches from the bottom of the hole. Once she had impaled the bottom of the hole with the sharp, jutting weapons, she grabbed armfuls of dead leaves and hid the trap.
Then she picked her way back to the fruit trees to gather a few oranges, this time looking more closely at the ground for small dips where she could set more traps.
“Therese!” Than cried.
“Is McAdams climbing down?”
“Yes!”
“Is he coming after me?”
“No!”
“Where’s he going? Is he headed for the rocks behind Zeus?” That’s where she would have gone, for the lookout.
“Yes!”
“He hopes he’ll see me better from there,” she muttered.
“Exactly!”
“He’s waiting for me to wear myself out, and then he plans to come for me!”
“Exactly!” Than’s voice sounded desperate.
Therese trembled wildly. “I’ll set more traps. Shout if he heads this way.”
“I will!”
A movement in the wood caught her eye, and she froze, waited. She took a slow step and looked beyond the tree where she had seen the flash of something brownish. Now she saw it was a wild horse there with her in the wood. At first, she smiled, comforted by the vision. Then she thought of the traps. The animals!
Again in her mind, she asked, “Than! Artemis! The animals! What if they hurt themselves on my traps? Can you warn them somehow?”
“No!” Artemis called out.
“Ares!” Than shouted.
Ares? “Ares will understand where the traps are.”
“Yes.”
“But how can we warn the animals?”
“Your scent!” Artemis cried.
“They’ll avoid the traps because of my scent?” She found herself whispering rather than praying in her head.
“That will be our message! To avoid your scent!” Artemis shouted.
Therese looked at the horse. It made her feel less alone. She took an apple from her bundle and held it out. The horse’s nostrils flared, but it didn’t move toward her or away. Therese tossed the apple toward the tree. The horse trotted away.
Of course. The apple carried her scent. He had already been warned.
She spent at least two hours sharpening sticks, driving them into holes, and covering the holes with leaves, but she began to fear she might be wasting her time. What if McAdams never came this way? What if he killed her before he got hungry? She was wearing herself out. Was this worth it?
Then she slapped her forehead. Maybe she should have tried to mount the horse. She might have had a better chance against McAdams if she came at him from above on horseback.
Too late now.
She should set more traps, but she should seek a path he was sure to cross.
She gathered more fruit—oranges and pomegranates, and stuffed them in her shirt, but they wouldn’t all fit. Then she had the idea of tying the hem of the shirt in a knot and stuffing the fruit inside the shirt rather than gathering the edges all around. More fruit would fit this way. She wanted to collect as much food as she could because with all her traps out here, she didn’t want to have to come back this way and risk injuring herself in one of them. That would be ironic, she thought.
As she tore her way through the woods back toward the deeper canyon, she stopped whenever she found a good dip in the ground to set up another trap. She’d set down her bundle and the big rock she used for hammering, sharpen a dozen more sticks at both ends on her blade, and then stake the sticks firmly in the ground before hiding them with fallen leaves. The further she got from the thickest part of the woods, however, the fewer dead leaves were there on the ground. She realized as she followed the stream back down to the rocky canyon behind Hades that she would have to think of a different way to set traps on this side of the battlefield.
“Therese!” Than shouted.
She prayed, “Is he following me?”
“Hide!”
She looked up and realized she had now come into view of those on the side of the platform closest to her. She could see Than, Hades, and Aphrodite directly overhead. She had to remember to stay out of Ares’s view. She clambered against the canyon wall and hid beneath the cliff edge above her.
“Is McAdams following me?” she asked Than.
“Just now!”
“He’s just now leaving the rocks behind Zeus?”
“Yes!”
“Is he headed toward the woods or the lake?”
When he didn’t answer, she said, “I mean, is he headed toward the woods?”
“Yes!”
“Good. Maybe he’ll come across at least one of my traps. I think I have twelve or thirteen all around the fruit trees. But I need to think of something else down here in the canyon. There’s nothing here but rocks.”
“Yes!”
“What? I didn’t ask anything.” She thought back on what she had said. “Rocks? I should make traps with rocks?”
“Yes!”
But how? She thought. How could she use rocks to make a trap? The sticks went into hidden holes waiting for McAdams to happen by. They probably wouldn’t kill him, but he could get cut up really bad. But falling on rocks? What could she do with the rocks? Could she sharpen them? Chip them into sharp wedges? No. The rocks could fall on him. How could she make it so the rocks could fall on him? She could throw them at him. She could gather a stockpile and keep them near her hideout so that when he came for her she could launch…
Wait! Launch?
She had to work without being seen by Ares, and she had to work fast. She crept along the base of the cliff edge scanning for possibilities. She looked down into the deeper canyon below where her shield lay useless to her and out across to the other side about a fifty yards away. Think, Therese! Think!
Then, like a bullet, it hit her.
The waterfall!