The Cult of Dionysus

Callida

Since we're sitting tight, I figure we can at least be helpful guests. I get up to start washing dishes, and Calypso and Leo follow behind me. Apollo gets up last, clearly annoyed that he has to help too. He scrubs, Calypso rinses, Leo dries, and I put things away.

"So," Calypso says, "what's this throne Emmie mentioned?"

Apollo scowls at his foamy stack of bread pans.

"The Throne of Memory, right?" I remember reading something about it a long time ago. "It's a chair carved by the goddess Mnemosyne herself."

Leo leers over at Apollo from the top of a steaming salad plate. "You forgot the throne of Memory? Isn't that a mortal sin or something?"

"The only mortal sin," Apollo says, "would be failing to incinerate you as soon as I become a god again."

"You could try." Leo shrugs.

I can't help but chime in. "But then how would you learn those secret scales on your Valdezinator?"

Leo chuckles and high-fives me.

Apollo accidentally sprays himself in the face. "What secret scales?"

"Stop, you guys." Calypso orders. "Apollo, why is this Throne of Memory important?"

Apollo wipes the water from his face. "Before a petitioner went into the Cave of Trophonius," he says, "he or she was supposed to drink from two magical springs: Forgetfulness and Memory."

Leo picks up another plate. Steam curls from the porcelain. "Wouldn't those two springs, like, cancel each other out?"

Apollo shakes his head. "Assuming the experience didn't kill you, it would prepare your mind for the Oracle. You would then descend into the cave and experience...untold horrors."

"Such as?" I ask.

"I just said they were untold. I do know that Trophonius would fill your mind with bits of nightmarish verse that, if assembled properly, became a prophecy. Once you stumbled out of the cave, assuming you lived and weren't driven permanently insane, the priests would sit you down on the Throne of Memory. The verses would come spilling out of your mouth. A priest would write them down, and voila! There's your prophecy. With any luck, your mind would return to normal."

Leo whistles. "That is one messed up Oracle. I like the singing trees better."

Calypso takes a bread pan from Apollo and begins to wash it. "What if the petitioner couldn't use the throne?"

I snicker. "Use the throne."

Leo elbows me and laughs

Calypso glares at us.

"Sorry." Leo and I glance at each other and suppress another laugh. For once, I don't feel like looking away in anger.

"If the petitioner couldn't use the throne," Apollo says, "there would be no way to extract the bits of verse from his or her mind. The petitioner would be stuck with those horrors from the cave forever."

Calypso rinses the pan. "Georgina...that poor child. What do you think happened to her?"

I don't want to think about that. The possibilities make my skin crawl.

Apollo speaks, though he doesn't sound like he's having much happier thoughts than I am. "Somehow she must have made it into the cave. She survived the Oracle. She made it back here, but...not in good shape."

I remember the frowny-faced knife-wielding stick figures on her bedroom wall.

"My guess is that the emperor subsequently seized control of the Throne of Memory. Without that, Georgina would never be able to recover fully. Perhaps she left again and went looking for it...and was captured."

Leo mutters a curse in Spanish. "I keep thinking about my little bro Harley back at camp. If somebody tried to hurt him..." He shakes his head.

My gut wrenches. "Yeah. Same with Gio and Amber. If anything happened to them..." My grip tightens on the bread pan that Calypso handed me to put away. Not only do I miss them like crazy, but I'm incredibly worried about them. I lost contact on our radio station when I passed West Palm Beach. I haven't heard anything since. "Who is this emperor and how soon can we stop him?"

Leo puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder, clearly seeing my distress. The gesture is so gentle, that my eyes well up, and I find myself smiling warmly at him.

Apollo scrubs the last of the pans. "I have a pretty good idea who the emperor is," He admits. "Josephine started to say his name. But Emmie is right- it's best not to speak it aloud. The New Hercules..." Apollo swallows. "He was not a nice person."

Leo puts away the dinner plates. His eyes scan side to side, as if reading invisible equations. "This project Josephine is working on...She's building some kind of tracking device. I didn't ask, but...she must be trying to find Georgina."

"Of course." Calypso's voice has taken on a sharper edge. "Can you imagine losing your child?"

Leo's ears redden and he glances over at me. "Yeah. My own child." He clears his throat uncomfortably. "But I was thinking, if we can get back to Festus, I could run some numbers, maybe reprogram his Archimedes sphere-"

"If you put in the right algorithm..." I note, locking eyes with Leo. He grins at me, and I find myself grinning back. "The Archimedes sphere could probably-"

Calypso throws in the towel, literally. It lands in the sink with a damp flop. "Guys, you can't reduce everything to a program."

Leo and I look away from each other and instead at Calypso. "We're not. We're just-"

"You're trying to fix it." Calypso says. "As if every problem is a machine. Jo and Emmie are in serious pain. Emmie told me they're thinking of abandoning the Waystation, giving themselves up to the emperor if it'll save their daughter. They don't need gadgets or jokes or fixes. Try listening."

Leo holds out his hands. For once, he doesn't seem to know what to do with them. "Look-"

I scowl and hold out my hand to stop him. "Oh, trust me. I'm great at listening. I'm also great at reading people. I know better than you do how Emmie and Jo are feeling. I can't look into their eyes without feeling it. Don't you dare try and lecture me on feeling."

Calypso puts her hands on her hips, returning my scowl, and I can read her too. She's not just mad at us for trying to find a mechanical solution. She's mad at us because we're getting along, and she's jealous. "You think you're an expert on feeling, don't you? How can you be an expert when you don't even know what you're feeling?"

"Look, girls-" Leo tries.

"Shut it." Calypso and I interrupt him simultaneously.

"I know what you're feeling." I spit back, the air in the room growing heavy with the scent of grapes. "And it's childish. You're supposed to be thousands of years old, aren't you? So why don't you act like it instead of throwing a tantrum just because you don't like that I'm actually starting to have feel-"

"APOLLO?" Josephine's voice booms from the main hall. She doesn't sound panicked, exactly, but definitely tense- like the atmosphere in the kitchen.

Apollo steps away from the three of us. "I think I'll just, uh..."

He leaves the kitchen.

Calypso and I glare at each other, but we both quickly decide to follow Apollo and see what's going on, rather than continue to argue.

The three of us step out into the doorway just in time to see Apollo fly up into the air, before bouncing down in an intricately woven net.

"You." Apollo snarls at the figure sitting on a molding ledge.

"Hello, Apollo." The girl says. "I hear you're human now. This is going to be fun."