The Weight of The Moon

Chapter Seven

Being in the chariot can be reclusive. Sometimes that’s a good thing. And sometimes it’s not such a good thing. Like that night. 

I willed to be on Earth, eating chocolate, and watching movies with Peyton, sobbing over guys, but instead, I was three-hundred-and-eighty-four-thousand,-four-hundred kilometres up, and feeling particularly lonesome.

And I think that’s why the cloud of dread that I had expected didn’t overcome my stomach when I heard the fluttering noise, sounding from Hermes’s winged sandals. I remained much calmer than I had expected, for the last time Hermes visited me, it was to bear bad news. This time, I hoped he was just up there for a chat. I needed company. 

Once he landed on his personal heli-pad, also known as my chariot, he sat back in the passenger seat, kicking off his sandals, identical to the way he had just two nights ago.

“I hope you don’t bring bad news, Hermes.” I said, finally becoming as nervous as I had expected.

He smirked and shook his head, throwing his large rucksack to the floor of the chariot. “Nope, not today. Just here for company.” Good. “So, what is wrong?”

My recently plucked brows furrowed in confusion. 

“I’m a god Selena, of course I can tell.” Hermes clutched his heart in an overly melodramatic attempt at appearing offended. “Fill me in.”

I sighed. Hermes, being the god of mischief, reminded me of Peyton a little. He’d always find out, whether he heard it from me, or from someone else. “I met a guy.”

The messenger god gasped rather loudly. “Despite Selene’s warnings?” He asked, mockingly, in a high pitched voice. “No, Selena, I already knew that - tell me more!”

I decided against questioning the god’s knowledge because, well, he was a god. 

“Well, this guy, I really like him, and we went on a sort-of date,  but some girl randomly appeared and kissed him and then he went off with her.” I blurted out. I guessed I really needed to get it all off my chest.

“Hang on, he left with a stranger?” Even for Hermes and his mischievous ways, that was strange.

I shook my head no. “No, they definitely knew each other, but I don’t know how. They looked like they were dating.” Now that I’d said it aloud, it sounded a lot more real. I’d just been dumped. Sort of. Strictly speaking, Marlie and I weren’t together in the first place, but that didn’t stop it from hurting. Oh, why did I have to be a girl?!

“Then he isn’t worth it.” Exactly what Buddy had said. “In that case, I have something for you.” 

From his rucksack he had discarded, he pulled a box of chocolates.

‘Remember what I said, my dear. Love from Selene.’, read the attached label. 

“Yes, Selene knows all about you and Marlie.” Hermes added.

Once again, I didn’t question how Hermes knew Marlie’s name, despite the fact that I hadn’t mentioned it.

It hurt even more, knowing that Selene was probably extremely disappointed in me. Within three nights, I had been lectured by Zeus, and gone against her word. I definitely wasn’t expecting a card that Christmas. 

And yet, with each time I’d disappointed her, I felt strangely closer to her. For she had been late, many times, when she was a naïve teenager like me, and similarly to myself, she had fallen for a mortal boy.

But you haven’t fallen for a mortal boy, Selena, I told myself. And I hadn’t. I had just met a boy. So why did it hurt so much?

When I drifted away from my own dangerous thoughts, Hermes was sat back in the passenger’s seat, reading a newspaper. I glanced at the headline. 

It read, ‘ΚΥΝΗΓΙ ΓΙΑ ΤΟ ΝΕΟ PHYTONESS ΑΡΧΙΖΕΙ’. Not that it made much difference to me, for I couldn’t read Greek.

“Hunt for new Pythoness begins.” Hermes translated for me, as he had caught me trying to decipher it. 

“Pythoness? What’s one of those?” I vaguely recognized the word, but couldn’t put my finger on where from. It was clearly Greek mythology related, so I assumed my mother used to tell me bedtime stories about them. 

Hermes looked at me a little strangely, as if I’d asked him who Zeus was.

“Let me start from the beginning. Apollo, the sun god, and major fool,” I definitely remembered Hermes’s millennia-long feud with Apollo. “hunted down the Python that had killed his mother, and when he finally found it at Delphi, he brutally killed it. And, in that very spot, in his honour, the mortals built him a temple. Of course, that wasn’t enough for the egotistical sun god, and he decided to create the oracles. The oracles were the future, spoken through his priestesses, who were also known as the Phythonesses. They wouldn’t just say the oracles, though, oh no, that was too normal for our good old friend Apollo. They would freeze and go a little weird. They went into a kind of trance, and it was enough to give a grown man nightmares for years. I saw it once. It’s not the kind of thing you forget.” He shuddered.

That still didn’t make sense though. “So why are they hunting for a Pythoness?” I asked.

“Ah.” Hermes said, as if he had forgotten the original question, and I had just reminded him. And that, seemed very likely. “After a few hundred years, women stopped wanting to be Phytonesses. I guess they finally realized the whole weirdness of it. And, to Apollo’s disappointment, and my sheer delight, he could no longer have plenty of Pythonesses. Fortunately for him, the ability to speak the future is inherited, so now and again, a brand new Pythoness pops up somewhere in the world. Unfortunately, Greek mythology is becoming less and less important to people, and so, people don’t wonder why they can tell the future, if they can.” I noticed that he spoke the word ‘mythology’, with a certain distaste, as is the word itself made him feel sick to his stomach. “People turn to science, or just write it off as a bad dream or something, and try to forget about it.

“Trouble is, as much as I hate to admit it, we need Apollo and his Phytonesses. They tell us the future, and whether it’s unclear or not, we can use it as a guide. Times were much simpler before people stopped listening to the oracles. But they began to question everything, and sometimes that’s not such a good idea. So, we Olympians decided that we need to find a new Phytoness, someone who can guide us safely into the future.”

“You think that knowing the future is a good thing?” I questioned, despite Hermes just informing me that questioning things is bad.

The messenger god frowned. “No, no, not necessarily. See, you have to use it right, and with the god’s help, people will use it right. People understand that as much as you try to, you can’t change an oracle. So instead, we use it as guidance, something to live by. It helps us to accept our fortunes much earlier.”

Hermes said it as if he were correct, but I didn’t agree. 

It did make me think though. 

“Anyway, I’d best be off. I don’t want to be late for my scheduled game of extreme ping-pong with Dionysus.” Hermes said, re-lacing his winged sandals.

I said goodbye, and with that, he was gone.

And, as I was up there, alone, I thought about the future. Could I be a Pythoness? I had predicted the future with my drawings, I suppose you could have described my drawing mood as a trance. 

I shuddered, and tried to shove the thought out of my mind. I didn’t want to be a Pythoness. I didn’t even want to think about it.