“No, she called him Son of Zeus. As in ‘Hey, Son of Zeus, time to get your jammies on!’ Or ‘Hey, Son of Zeus, it’s your turn to do the dishes!’ ‘Hey, Son of Zeus, could ya pipe down up there, I’m trying to take a nap!’ Son of Zeus.”
Riq shook his head. “Talk about spoiling your kid. I bet he had a ton of friends at the schoolyard when his mom came by to pick up the Son of Zeus every day.”
Sera had been leaning against a tree, but she straightened and held her hands up in a gesture that said she wasn’t quite connecting the dots. “The fact she treated him like some mythological hero only makes it more strange that she’d arrange to have him murdered. Right? Are we sure about this?”
“I don’t know,” Riq said. “Maybe it has something to do with all that Greek mythology. Those gods were all family, and they were constantly trying to kill one another.”
“We just need to find Aristotle,” Dak said, pointing off in a direction as if he knew exactly where they should go. “He’ll be at the League of Corinth, so I’m sure we’ll be able to find him with a little snooping around. I got a plaster bust of him for my kindergarten graduation, so I should be able to recognize his face when I see him.”
Sera tried to hold in the laugh, but it came out anyway, sounding like a burp mixed with a cough.
“What?” Dak said, his expression showing genuine offense. “It looked great next to the statue of Michelangelo’s David that I got for my preschool graduation. Duh.”
And with that, Sera started walking in the direction her friend had indicated a few seconds earlier. She didn’t care where it led.
Dak breathed in the salty air, enjoying the warm breeze as they exited the forest and walked out onto a bluff that overlooked the city of Corinth. He felt a little burst of pride at seeing the grand buildings of classic Greek design, knowing that it was in this very place that one of the best examples of early democratic government had existed. The famous League of Corinth boasted representatives from every city-state in the Macedonian Empire except Sparta, which had its own agenda.
Aristotle had been a key figure in organizing the League, which for many years ceased the infighting of the Greek states and helped lay the foundation for a force strong enough to counter the Persian Empire. That was, until their two best hopes at leading were murdered by a man named Pausanius.
“Uh, Dak?” Riq said, nudging his shoulder. “Looks like you checked out there for a sec, buddy.”
Dak realized he was staring, almost cross-eyed, at the fresco of famous Greek gods adorning one of the larger buildings. At Zeus himself. Son of Zeus . . . Could Olympias really have been behind the murders? It seemed crazy. He could barely keep straight all the things swirling in his head.
“Earth to Dak; come innnnnn, Dak,” Sera said, stepping right in front of him.
He snapped to his senses. “Sorry. It’s just amazing, sometimes, you know. Looking down on actual history.” This brought a pang of sadness. “And I still can’t bear the thought that everything is changing, getting all jumbled up by what we’re doing. I tell myself I’ll have the rest of my life to study it, kinda like reading a brand-new book with the same characters. I’ll just . . . miss the old book. Make sense? Or do I sound like one of Riq’s doofuseseses?”
“No comment,” Sera said with a very knowing grin. “It makes perfect sense. It does, trust me. We all feel different weird stuff when it comes to this Hystorian business, but that binds us. We’re all weirdos together.”
“And that’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said,” Riq added. “Come on: group hug.”
Dak knew it was weird. Awkward. Maybe the dumbest thing they’d done yet. But he, Sera, and Riq embraced one another in a tangle of arms and shoulders, and squeezed, crushing the breath out of their lungs. A group hug for the ages, right on top of the city of Corinth, Greece.
And it felt good.
THE HUG had helped Sera feel better.
As they picked their way down the sandy bluff, using weeds as handholds, she kept thinking how close they were. They didn’t have to do something so grand and amazing as prevent a mutiny or stop an entire war. This mission might be as easy as warning King Philip or Alexander the Third, making sure they were on their guard. All they had to do was prevent an assassination.
Her instinct tried to tell her it couldn’t possibly be that easy, but she held on to hope.
They reached the bottom of the slope and quickly made their way to the outskirts of the town, where some dwellings had laundry out to dry. It was a trick they’d become very accustomed to: good old-fashioned thievery.
“We should really be thankful the electric dryer wasn’t invented until 1938,” Dak whispered as he pulled on something that looked like a cross between a robe and a toga. He chuckled, that sound that always served as a warning to those who knew him well. “His name was J. Ross Moore, bless him. He hailed from North Dakota and had obviously gotten sick of hanging his undies on a wire. His prototype —”
“Dak.” Sera eyed him, then gestured at the dwellings, reminding her friend that they were standing on other people’s property, stealing their property, and could be spotted at any second. “Not the best time.”
He nodded, not bothering to hide his disappointment. “Remind me to tell you later, then.”
“Oh, we will,” Riq replied. “No doubt. Soon as possible.”
“You see any sandals anywhere?” Dak asked, obviously choosing to ignore the older boy’s sarcasm. “Sneakers will not go over well in 336 BC.”
“Let’s just wear what we’ve got until we find something better,” Sera offered. “These . . . clothes” — she gestured down at the loose-flowing material of the robe she’d pulled over her head — “should mostly hide them anyway. Man, the way these things drag on the ground, I’d hate to do laundry in this place. Dryer or no dryer.”
Riq huffed. “Let’s just get out of here before some crazy Greek-warrior-ninja comes out and chops our heads off with a scimitar.”
Dak shook his head. “I’ll pretend like I didn’t hear that. It was maybe the most historically inaccurate sentence in . . . history. Come on, follow me.”
“You know where to go?” Sera asked.
“I spotted the statue of the hegemon from the top of the bluff,” Dak answered, already on the move away from the humble dwellings. “That’s as good a place to start as any.”