Destined. Part 1

DESTINED.

by Jessie Harrell.

Chapter 1 - Psyche.

My stomach churned as the smell of ground charcoal and nearly-rancid oil smeared across my eyelids. Whoever decided that greasy anything should be part of a daily beauty routine deserved permanent exile.

The stink never seemed to bother Maia though. She hummed quietly while layering on the goop - and it was driving me nuts. My teeth ground into my cheek until I managed to shred another piece of skin.

"Will you stop fidgeting? I'm going to have eye paste all over your face if you don't hold still."

Servant or no, Maia was good at keeping me in my place. "Sorry." I stopped chomping my cheek in favor of twitching my foot.

Maia placed her weathered hand against my forehead; her eyes wrinkled around the edges with concern. "You don't seem yourself today. Are you sure you're well?"

My eyes darted to the bird sitting on my bookshelf. Maia followed my gaze and gasped.

"Good heavens, Psyche. How'd a pigeon get in here?"

She dropped the makeup onto my vanity and made as if to shoo the bird away. Instinctively, I s.n.a.t.c.hed her wrist.

"No, don't. I let her in." I paused, debating whether it was worth correcting her that the bird was actually a dove, and not a pigeon. Or noting that the dove would turn into Aphrodite as soon as Maia left.

Better just to let it go.

"I like having her here. I'm just worried Father will make me get rid of her." I met Maia's eyes and plastered on my best smile - the one Aphrodite helped me master when she wasn't a bird.

Maia's shoulders relaxed and she started in on phase II of my beautification regimen: crushed mulberry blush. But there was no relaxing for me.

Something was up. This was the fifth day in a row Aphrodite had come to visit. Sure, she'd shown up a couple of months ago, just after I started getting daily admirers at my window. She'd said she liked watching beauty get the attention it deserved. It was part of her domain, after all. And then she'd dropped in randomly after that, but not daily.

Even though I pretended like nothing was different, I knew she wanted something. Something more. G.o.ddesses don't just hang out with mortals for the fun of it. But what?

Was she somehow soaking up the energy from the crowd outside? If so, would she want me to stand at this window every morning for the rest of my life? And then what would happen when I wasn't young enough, or pretty enough for her anymore?

I gulped when I was struck by an even worse thought: what if she was spying on me, watching how I reacted each morning. Would she call me out for Hubris after being the one who encouraged me to really pan to the crowd?

My chest constricted under the weight of my worry; my nerves felt frayed, like the end of rope that's been snapping in the Aegean breeze too long.

Maia has got to stop humming!

I started to turn my head so I could ask her to knock it off, but she just brushed at my tangle of curls harder when I moved. "Maia, please," I moaned, "can you quit with the humming right now?"

With Maia now silent, I was left with only the rhythmic brus.h.i.+ng of my hair and the dove-made tapping. Her nails clicked against the wooden shelf where she paced. As honored as I was by her presence, I almost wished I could reverse the past few months. I wouldn't have sat for the portrait at the art academy. The artist wouldn't have gotten famous by drawing my face. My face wouldn't have ended up floating around Greece. And Greeks wouldn't have started showing up at my door to see if the real thing looked as good as the paintings.

Even the tokens of admiration they brought with them were inadequate to pay for all I'd lost. My parents' coffers were robust and juicy, but my life was sucked dry. I wanted shopping trips to the Agora with Mother, jaunts to the Baths with my sister, gallops through the fields on my horse - all things I'd been denied in the name of safety.

As Maia finished looping my favorite silver headband into my hair, Aphrodite-the-bird fluttered down to the vanity for a closer inspection.

"Shoo." Maia flicked her hand at Aphrodite before I could stop her. "Get off, you dirty, old thing."

"Stop." Leaping to my feet, I scooped the bird G.o.ddess into my palms. The feathers around her neck stuck straight out and her head bobbed frantically as she gurgled up a strangled coo sound.

"There, there," I crooned as I stroked her with my fingertip. "Maia didn't mean that."

Maia huffed. "Don't know why I bother trying to help you sometimes."

"Maia," I said, dragging out her name and giving her my best pout. "You know I love you. Don't go away mad, okay?"

She sighed. "I know. Just go away." As she moved to the mahogany door, Maia gave a pointed look over her shoulder at my window. "Your admirers are waiting. Wouldn't want to disappoint them."

"What's that supposed to -" I started before the door clicked closed. "Mean?"

When I turned around, Aphrodite sat sprawled across my marble vanity, her legs crossed at the knee as she reclined.

"She," Aphrodite nodded her head at the door before flicking a golden tendril over her shoulder, "is no fun."

I eased down onto the stool beside her, glad to see she didn't look as angry as I'd feared. "Maia's not that bad. I just don't think she likes all the people hanging around outside. It's gotten a lot worse lately."

Aphrodite raised a narrow eyebrow. "Worse? You've got admirers flocking from every corner of Greece to lay gifts at your feet in exchange for one glimpse of your face. That's not a bad thing."

I nodded, but had no response. G.o.ddesses might enjoy collecting tributes, but for me, it felt wrong.

Aphrodite plucked a bottle of lily-scented almond oil off my vanity and rubbed it into her arms. "You heard what she said, didn't you?" Aphrodite asked.

"About me disappointing the admirers?"

She shook her head. "Not that. She said I was old."

"Don't be... silly." I almost said *ridiculous,' but then remembered who I was talking to. "You're the most beautiful G.o.ddess in Greece. And you're not old."

She set aside the oil and clasped my face in her palms. "No, she's right. I have a son your age. You're the new beauty in Greece, Psyche. It's you now."

Whoa. I was pretty sure accepting that compliment would earn me unending torture in Tartarus one day. While I was still stammering for something to say, Aphrodite nimbly hopped to her feet and circled the room. "I can feel it. Today's the day."

Her crystalline eyes were wide and wild and I didn't like the direction this conversation was headed.

With more drama than any actor, she flung her arms toward the wooden shutters still barring my window. "Go to your people. They're waiting."

"What?" It came out more a stammer than an actual question. They weren't my people. They were subjects of their own cities; devotees of the G.o.ds. But mine? Never.

When her eyes locked back on me, a radiant smile spread across her face. In a quick movement, she scooped up my hands. Her touch sank into me like a sun-warmed stone. "This is what I've been waiting for. This day. I learned from my mistakes with Helen. But you?" She shook her head and smiled. "Oh, Psyche, you're going to make me proud."

Maybe Maia'd been right and I was sick after all, because I was pretty sure I had a disease that made my tongue swell and my jaw lock closed. Was she really comparing me to Helen? The face that launched a thousand s.h.i.+ps? The s.l.u.t who started the Trojan war with her affair?

I couldn't compare to Helen. I didn't want to compare to Helen. That wasn't me.

Racking my brain, I tried to remember what role Aphrodite played in the war. What lessons she might have learned. But I drew a blank. My brain was a dog chasing its tail, never quite getting what it's after.

With a gentle turn, Aphrodite planted me in front of the window and then stood clear as she flung apart the shutters. Sunlight and deafening cheers drenched my room before the sky began to rain jewels. Pearls and gold, diamonds and coins. Anything to show the mob wors.h.i.+pped at the idol of beauty.

"Catch me," Aphrodite whispered before morphing back into her bird form. Her white feathers carried her in a wide arc outside my window and then back in again. Obediently, I held out my cupped hands for her to land.

If the mob was cheering before, now it was undergoing an eruption. I seemed to be the only one who didn't know what was going on. Sure, I knew doves were Aphrodite's sacred bird, but my dove had been coming and going for a solid week and this reaction was a first.

Maybe there was something special about them seeing us together?

Then one name cut through the voices, taking shape slowly, little by little, until all those below me were chanting the same thing: Aphrodite. I looked down at my feathered mentor and she winked back before fluttering away.

Too many thoughts raced through my brain for any one to become clear. Do they think I'm her? Does she want them to think I'm her? Or do they know the dove is her? Oh G.o.ds, what does this mean?

"Come back," I screamed, desperate for answers and figuring no one would hear me over the deafening crowd.

Frantically I scanned for any trace of the dove - raking over faces, casting aside flesh in my search for feathers. But I halted when a pair of eyes from the back of the group caught mine. The woman made her way forward and the mob parted to let her pa.s.s, like she was a magnet pus.h.i.+ng away an opposing force. Almost hypnotically, the chanting died down and attention focused on her.

As she stood directly under my window, a sharp breeze rustled her robes, carrying up the unmistakable fragrance of lily-scented almond oil. Her crystalline eyes met mine and I knew it was her.

Aphrodite.

She just stood there, letting the glamour of her mystic's disguise settle over the crowd. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought she was one of the fortune-telling gypsies myself.

"Finally, she makes her daughter known to us." Aphrodite reached up a now-wrinkled hand and pushed back the hood of her burgundy robe. Silver hair tumbled down her back in a thick braid. "Our attentions have not been in vain. Aphrodite has finally sent us a child to spread mortal beauty through the world!"

I'd never heard such roars in all my life. The crowd around her jumped and surged, yet she remained rooted in an island of calm. In the din, Aphrodite mouthed three words to me before vanis.h.i.+ng unnoticed.

I'll explain later.

Chapter 2 - Psyche.

Before I could fully process what was happening outside my window, my name erupted from down the hall like a Santorini volcano. "PsyCHE!" Father always emphasized the "K" part of my name when he was angry or excited, and I wasn't sure which way this was going.

After a quick goodbye wave to the crowd, I slammed my shutters closed and pressed my back against them. Sucking in a deep breath, I put on my best serious face and marched from my room and into the scroll-lined walls of the library. As always, my parents were there, waiting to count the treasures I received that morning. The cold sweat trickling down my spine evaporated when I saw their faces.

Ebullient.

Aphrodite'd taught me that word earlier this week. She thinks beauty is even more powerful when it's backed with knowledge. And she insisted that I "certainly ought to know a word that described a cheerful and energetic person like myself." Today, the word fit my parents' expressions. Their eyes shone like a thousand candles blazed inside their heads and their smiles threatened to permanently engrave laugh lines into their cheeks.

"Today. At the window..." Mother covered her mouth with her tiny hands.

"Well, you know what this means?" Father cut in. "Aphrodite has spoken." He crushed me against his chest in a spine-crunching hug. He released me when my bones actually popped.

"Sorry, baby," he said. "It's just - we've waited so long for this news. All the signs were there, the crowds, the tokens. Still, we were starting to think you weren't going to be chosen."

Mother reached out her hand. Taking it, I sunk down next to her on the couch. "Of course," she said, "we never doubted you. But it's only been two generations since Helen, so we thought perhaps she was still biding her time before picking another daughter."

"What do you mean - daughter? I'm not her daughter," I stammered.

Tears leaked from the corner of Mother's eyes. She rubbed them away while trying to smile. "It's a figure of speech. More symbolic than anything. Aphrodite has a history of picking a mortal girl to serve as her daughter. Kind of like how Apollo has the Pythia in Delphi." Her gaze settled on my face as she studied my features, so like hers.

"I'm surprised she didn't explain this to you already." As her emerald eyes s.h.i.+fted to Father, she bit her lip. "Is it a bad sign that she didn't come to Psyche before the announcement?"

Here we go - signs, omens, superst.i.tions. Mother was about to get on an unstoppable tangent unless I stepped in.

Father stroked his beard. "I'm not sure I'd call it a -"

"It's not a sign," I interrupted. "She's visited me before. She just made me promise not to tell anyone, and well..." I threw up my hands at their incredulous looks. "What'd you want me to do? She's a freaking G.o.ddess."

I'd read enough to know that crossing the G.o.ds was bad news. Do something they tell you not to? Game over. No way would I blab Aphrodite's secret, even if her visits were the coolest and most terrifying things I'd ever experienced.

Father smiled at Mom. "Well, I guess we didn't need to worry about the decision, now did we?"

Releasing my hands, Mother smoothed out the folds of her tunic before slowly rising and pacing over to the window. I thought she'd be relieved to hear there were no evil omens descending on our palace.

"Phoebe? Are you all right?" Father asked.

She sniffed as she waved him off. "I'm just...I'm worried. There'll be a lot expected of Psyche now. The mortal daughter of Aphrodite. It's a big responsibility."

Father gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "And the first pure mortal too." His gaze, so full of pride - the same expression he wore whenever he returned from a successful duel or a neighboring king came to pay homage - washed over his face. "Helen was so beautiful because she was half-immortal."

And I'm not.

I wondered if that made me more or less special.

"Wow." I tucked my legs in close to my chest and gave them a squeeze. "You guys should've told me. I had no idea. I don't even know what to say or do when she comes back." I looked up and met Mother's eyes. She was the one who always had answers for me. "Am I supposed to act like I'm part of the Olympian family now or something?"

Flinching, Mother spun into Father's arms and sobbed. Shudders wracked her tiny frame; all he could do was smooth her hair and whisper to her.

"What'd I say?"

Father looked over at me. "She's just upset because you'll be getting married so soon now. I'm sure she thought she had more time with you girls."

Wait. What? I'd just been adopted by a G.o.ddess today - wasn't that enough of a status change to last for awhile?

I rubbed at the bridge of my nose as the tinges of a headache started to bloom behind my forehead. "How does me being Aphrodite's adopted daughter require that I get a husband?"

"Honey, your Mother and I already talked about this. We decided that if Aphrodite did pick you, then both of you girls should be eligible for marriage immediately. She is the G.o.ddess of love, so naturally she'll want our family to represent that for her."