Eros (26 page)

She reached under her top and unclasped her bra, pulled down one strap and extricated her left arm, then her right.
She yanked at the material, freeing it from her clothes and frowned at it.

The cups were rather small.
Not for the first time, she wished she’d been born with larger breasts.
It still might work though.
Taking a small handful of the grain, she dropped it into one of the bra cups and shook, exhaling loudly as the majority of the wheat fell through the gaps in the lace while the larger oats remained in the bra.
Skye grinned to herself.
It wasn’t a perfect method, but it had to be better than her hands.

She quickly developed a rhythm.
She pushed in her bra and scooped up the grain, then shook each cup to free the wheat onto one pile and emptied the remaining oats onto the other pile.
Some of the wheat clung stubbornly inside, catching on the lacy material.
It was fairly easy to get hold of those husks, however, and suddenly she was moving much faster than before.
Skye was aware she would never have time to separate out the entire mountain.
She would just have to hope that by managing to sort a large amount of it, Aphrodite would let her off.

Skye was so intent on her task that she blocked out everything else.
 
Scoop, shake, empty.
Scoop, shake, empty. For that reason she didn’t notice the wind picking up and the door to the barn beginning to strain and bang against the latch.
The rusty nails holding it in place were no match for the might of the wind.
She stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat from her brow – and that was when the door burst open, allowing the wind’s full force to gust in.
Before she could react, her two neat piles of separated grain were blown up into the air.

Yelling, Skye scrambled to her feet, waving her arms and attempting block the wind from destroying her hard work further.
It was too late though.
Everything she’d achieved so far had been destroyed, every separated grain pushed back against the original mountain.

Skye’s
mouth dropped as she stared in horror.
She ran back to the door and pushed it but, with the latch broken, she had no way of keeping it closed.
Swirls of grain blew up from the mound, mixing with each other.
She sank down against the wall and watched helplessly.
There was nothing she could do.
Dawn was little more than a couple of hours away and she had failed.

Her eyes pricking with tears, she followed the movement of a few errant oat flakes, dancing in the wind as if they were taunting her.
Skye cursed aloud and swiped at them but they jerked away from her, merrily sweeping upwards through the air.

‘Bloody oats!’ she cried, flapping her arms out towards them.

Then she stopped. ‘Oats,’ she said again, although this time in a whisper.

Only the oats were flying around because they were light enough to be picked up by the wind.
The wheat grains moved but they were far heavier and weren’t carried as far.

Her mouth was dry.
Skye knew exactly what she needed to do.
Ignoring the flapping barn door, she ran to the other side of the building.
There was only the one entrance but, far above her, on the opposite side to the door, there was a large skylight set into the roof.
It was covered in glass and Skye could make out the night sky with the stars glistening above.
The tinge of purple indicated the approach of dawn.
It didn’t matter, though; suddenly there was a way out of her predicament.

The ladder was heavy but it wasn’t far away from the skylight.
She yanked it along the wall a few metres.
When it felt stable and it was close enough, she began to climb.
The skin around her fingers was tender from all her work separating the grains but
Skye ignored the pain and pushed herself upwards as fast as she could.
It was fortunate the ladder was tall enough to reach the sloping skylight;
if it hadn’t been, all would have been lost.
But even though she managed to reach it,
there appeared to be no way to open the window itself.

Without thinking, Skye pulled off her shoe and grasped it in her right hand.
Averting her face, she smashed the heel into the window as hard as she could.
At first nothing happened but she continued, sensing that the glass was weakening.
Wobbling slightly on the ladder, Skye took a deep breath and flung her arm at the glass.
This time it worked and the window cracked.
She gulped in relief and hit it again.
The glass broke off into several shards.
Taking care not to cut herself, she gingerly broke off enough pieces to create a large gap, then quickly slid back down the ladder.

‘Come on,’ she whispered.

Creating a gap into the outside world worked perfectly.
There was now a howling wind tunnel between the door at the far end and the break in the window.
The airflow was strong enough to swoop through from one end of the building to the other.
Covering her eyes with her sleeve to avoid being blinded by the flying oats, Skye ran out of the barn, her hair whipping around in all directions.
Irate cows in the nearby field bellowed their displeasure and Skye shouted gleefully into the wind.

‘Do it!
Come on!’

She jumped around like a mad woman while, high above her, a tiny smile played around Zephyr’s lips and the first glimmers of the sun appeared on the distant horizon.

‘It’s hardly perfect,’ Aphrodite stated caustically, her eyes sweeping over the mound of oats, which had been pushed to the far end of the barn as a result of the gusting wind.
‘Not all the grain is separated.’

‘You are being somewhat unfair.’

‘The task was to properly divide
all
the wheat and oats.’

Zeus raised a single bushy eyebrow.
‘In twelve hours?
Even you have to admit that she did a good job with the time she had.’

‘She had help.
She couldn’t have done this alone.’

‘Your son hasn’t left Olympus for days.’

‘That doesn’t mean he didn’t inveigle someone else into helping.’

‘Aphrodite…’

‘Fine,’ she snapped.
‘The girl passed.’

Zeus watched her, his face impassive.
‘He is really in love with her.’

‘The question is whether she returns the sentiment.’

‘Perhaps if you spoke to her, you would gain a better understanding of her character.’

A look of pain crossed her face.
‘Liking her won’t mean anything.’

‘Is that why you’re avoiding speaking to her face to face?
You’re afraid you’ll like her?’

Aphrodite turned away.
‘I’m not afraid.’

‘You’ll need to let go of him sooner or later.’

‘And if she proves herself worthy, then it will be sooner.
There are still three more tasks to go.
We’ll see whether she can really come up with the goods or not.
Besides, I’m hardly the only one around here who has to deal with problematic children.’

‘Apollo’s not a child.’

‘Neither is Coop.
It doesn’t mean the pair of them don’t act like three year olds sometimes.’

‘You’re changing the subject.’

The goddess didn’t answer.
Instead, without even turning, she snapped her fingers and vanished.
Zeus remained where he was for another moment, his gaze thoughtful.
Then he too disappeared.

Outside the barn, Skye was pacing up and down.
She’d been too afraid to look inside to see whether her plan had worked and the wind tunnel she’d created had done its job.
The thought of going back home without seeing Coop ever again was too painful to consider.
She
had
to have passed.

‘You did it.’

Skye closed her eyes in relief for a moment, then turned to face Hermes.

‘Good,’ she answered briskly.
‘What’s next?’

‘When was the last time you got some sleep?’

‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’ Skye snapped.
‘What’s next?’

Hermes eyed her warily.
‘You’re a lot more … angry than you used to be.’

‘Well, I’ve got a lot more reason to be, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t let them change you, Skye.
Don’t let all this,’ he gestured vaguely towards the barn, ‘change you.’

‘I’m still the same person.
I’m just getting mightily tired of being treated like a toy.’

For once it was Hermes who looked embarrassed.
‘The gods are fickle.
And jealous.
And often slightly unbalanced.
Being immortal does that to you.’

‘You’re not like that,’ she pointed out.
‘Coop’s not like that.’

Hermes smiled faintly.
‘Not since he met you anyway.’

Skye blushed ever so slightly.

He grinned at her.
‘Now that’s the Skye I know.’

She squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye.
‘Stop delaying and take me to the next task.’

He sighed.
‘Okay.
Just be careful with this one.
Not everything is what it seems.’

Skye opened her mouth to ask him what he meant but before the words could form she was standing alone in a different location.
There was no sign of the barn and no sign of Hermes.
Instead, she was facing a gushing river and several fields, all cordoned off with barbed-wire fencing.
The gods of Olympus clearly had a thing for farming.

Looking around for another note to tell her what she was supposed to do, Skye felt buoyed by her earlier success.
As long as she kept her wits about her, these stupid tasks would be a piece of cake.
Hermes was right that the gods were fickle, jealous and unbalanced; what he’d failed to mention was that they’d obviously underestimated her.
Maybe she wasn’t Hercules, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t pass these tests.

‘Roar,’ she whispered.
Then louder, ‘Roar!’

‘I had been told to expect a young human woman,’ came a voice seemingly from nowhere, ‘not a lion hybrid.’

Startled, Skye whipped round her head.
She was still alone,
so where the hell had the voice come from?

‘Hello?’

‘Hello!’ came the cheerful rejoinder.

Skye looked upwards at clear blue sky.
There was nothing there other than a few fluffy white clouds.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m here, of course.’

Skye couldn’t pinpoint where the voice was coming from over the sound of the river. ‘Where’s here?’ she asked, exasperated.

‘Right in front of you.
Can’t you see me?
See me!
See! Get it?’ The voice’s owner laughed.

Skye frowned and took a step towards the river.

‘There you go.’

She wrinkled her nose.
‘You’re the river?’

‘The river is the river.’

What on earth was that supposed to mean?
‘And the sky is the sky,’ she responded.
‘Except when Skye is me.’

‘You’re a sky god?’

‘No,’ she answered slowly, ‘but you’re a river god?’
She tried and failed to keep the question out of her voice.

‘Well done!
My name is Asterion.’

‘Hi.’

‘We’ve already done this part,’ Asterion said solemnly.

‘I suppose we have.
So?’

‘So what?’

‘Are you going to tell me what my task is?’

‘Oh, that.
You need to collect the wool from the sheep in the field up ahead.
There’s only one.
You’ll know the wool when you see it.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it,’ he replied breezily.

‘How much am I supposed to get?’

‘An armful will do.’

That was remarkably vague, Skye thought to herself.
Then she remembered what Hermes had said. ‘Is there anything else I should be aware of?’

‘Ah!
This one’s no fool,’ laughed Asterion.

Getting impatient, Skye folded her arms.
‘Well?’

‘I’m a river god,
not a well god.
They’re dank and smelly.
Surely even a human can tell the difference?’

Asterion brought new meaning to the phrase ‘babbling brook’.
Skye sighed inwardly. ‘Of course I can,’ she said, trying a different tack.
‘You’re fresh and fast.
I truly admire your stunning crystal swell.
And even in winter, the song of spring is evident in your river shallows.’

‘Why, thank you,’ Asterion said.

Thank you John Keats for writing so many poems which featured rivers in them, Skye thought.

‘You’re welcome.’
She leaned down towards the water and lowered her voice.
‘Can you tell me what I need to watch out for?’

‘Sadly no.
I am forbidden from revealing anything about this task by command of Zeus himself.’

Skye rolled her eyes.
Typical.

‘But I can tell you my sister Lethe has a very sweet tooth.’

‘Eh?’

‘E, I, O, U.’

Skye blinked.
This was getting too weird. ‘Alright,’ she said finally.
‘Thank you for your help, Asterion.’
Such as it was.

‘My pleasure, fair lady.’

Skye smiled overly brightly in the vague direction of the river, then bent down and took off her socks and shoes,
rolled her jeans up to her knees and started wading across.
The water was icy cold and made her gasp aloud while the stones on the river bed were slippery. More than once, she had to pause to regain her balance. But
it was nothing more than a river.

Hermes had said not everything was what it seemed.
Had he meant that in relation to Asterion?
Skye shook her head:
she really had no idea.
And considering she’d just held a conversation with a river, she was probably the crazy one.

Pulling herself out, she shook her legs and rubbed them down to dry them off as best she could, then padded to the edge of the field, carefully scanning every inch of it while she put her socks and shoes back on.
She couldn’t see a sheep anywhere.
There seemed to be plenty of cows, placidly chewing the grass and ignoring her, but she couldn’t see anything else.
Skye walked down the length of the fence, searching the entire expanse.

A flicker of movement caught her peripheral vision and she turned to glance at it, before being forced to shield her eyes suddenly as whatever it was glinted brightly in the morning sun.
Skye squinted towards the glare, trying to work out what it was.
Her mouth dropped open in astonishment: it was indeed a sheep.
Sort of.
It was the same size as a sheep and to all intents and purposes it was the same shape as a sheep.
This animal, however, wasn’t covered in a white fleece; its coat was a rich, burnished gold.
The glare from the sun bouncing off it made it painful to look at.
Then the sheep trotted back behind the tree it had been hiding behind and Skye’s vision returned to normal.

‘A golden sheep,’ she murmured to herself.
‘Unbelievable.’

No wonder she’d been tasked with collecting its wool; a cardigan made of that material would be a sight to behold.
She smirked at the thought of Coop’s glamorous mother with a pair of knitting needles.
Perhaps not.

Without pausing further, Skye carefully pushed down the barbed wire fence so she could clamber over it.
Sheep were hardly vicious creatures – but then sheep didn’t usually have such valuable fleeces so it was entirely possible this was some kind of man-eater.
She could just make out the gleaming edge of its coat from behind the oak so she made a beeline straight for it, her eyes searching the ground for something to coax it into submission long enough for her to pull off what she needed.
The least Aphrodite could have done was to supply her with some shears, she thought ruefully.
She didn’t want to hurt the animal.

A thought occurred to her.
Her skin was scratching where a few grains were trapped in her clothes.
Surely a sheep, even a golden one, would appreciate some wheat and oats.
Grinning to herself, Skye paused and began to shake out her jeans and t-shirt.
Several grains fell onto the grass under her feet.
She reached under her t-shirt to grab the flakes of oat which were still trapped in the fabric of her bra, taking a quick glance around in case anyone happened to be watching.
Then she bent down to scoop up her meagre findings.

Suddenly, there was a tremendous bellow.
Skye looked up, her insides transforming into jelly as she realised where the sound was coming from.
The cows, which had been contentedly chewing away while she was safely on the other side of the fence, were bearing down upon her.
She had just enough time to spot gleaming white fangs protruding from the beasts’ large, cavernous mouths before she dropped everything, turned and ran.

Her heart was hammering against her ribcage as she pumped her legs as fast as she could.
She covered the distance back to the fence in a time which any sprinter would have been proud of but, when she was barely an arm’s reach away, her toe connected with a stone and she went flying flat on her face.
Skye had only just registered what had happened when a sharp pain, worse than anything she’d ever felt before, tore into her. One of the smaller cows, which was clearly faster than the others, had sunk its jaws into her calf.

Skye shrieked, desperately trying to get back to her feet and safety beyond the fence.
The beast’s teeth tore through her flesh while the remainder of the herd thundered towards her.
With an inarticulate yell, she yanked hard, freed herself from the cow’s jaws and vaulted over the barbed wire.
The denim of her jeans caught on the wire and ripped and Skye fell forward.
She turned quickly to make sure the fence would hold the monstrous cows.
As one they had stopped, frozen like statues, and watched her with huge limpid brown eyes.
Then they turned and slowly trotted away.