John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

“ ‘Do you think to keep this hidden? Everyone heard the sonic boom.’

“ ‘Not if they are using ears that hear sounds carried by the air. Only my brother, Corus, would hear it. Go! And use your molecular engines to rebuild this wall, while you are at it. As soon as Grendel’s hound finds a scent, I’ll come out and help look. I can see this is going to be a late night.’

“Here’s the epilogue to my story. Headmaster Boggin got me off of that damn gurney, and brought me to the kitchen, and woke up the Cook. He sent Cook out with the search parties, and stood there at the stove in his ripped clothes (even his pants were ripped; he had to borrow some jeans from Cook), and made me some chicken soup himself.

“I started crying in earnest then. And he put his arm around me, and told me what a good boy I was. He said not to worry about what she had done, because trying to humiliate a man’s pride is simply another form of attack, as much as stabbing someone. Unlike a knife wound, this cuts only as deep as you let it.

“And he said he was proud of me, proud of how bravely I had stood up to Lamia, and he only regretted that I would forget all this in the morning. He sat there and comforted me while I cried on his shoulder and ate soup.”

As we continued to hike, my duffel bag got heavier and heavier with every step. The little white clouds of breath hanging before my lips began to turn into puffs. I asked for a break.

Victor called a halt for lunch. We sat in a circle on a patch of dry ground beneath an overhanging rock erected by some ancient peoples. We rummaged through our bags, trying to find the most perishable things to eat first. Unfortunately, the things every housewife knows, none of us knew, so we just sort of guessed that maybe the peaches should be eaten first, as well as some of the hors d’oeuvres, fish paté and caviar, and little spicy hot dog things.

“The most elegant escape ever,” commented Colin, passing me a cracker with caviar on it.

I bit into it. “Bleh. This might have gone bad already.”

“No, it’s supposed to taste that way,” Colin asserted.

Vanity said to Quentin, “So is Headmaster Boggin an enemy, or is he trying to help us, or what?”

Victor answered her: “He’s an enemy. An enemy who is nice and polite is a nice, polite enemy, not a friend. We have a tool to blackmail him, though: we can tell the other factions that Boggin intended to use us in the war against them.”

I said to Quentin: “What is your name?”

He smiled back at me. “Quentin Nemo.”

“No, I mean, you said Dr. Fell told you what your real name is.”

“If you promise not to tell anyone my real name, I’ll tell you. You all must promise.”

Four voices spoke at once: “Sure, I promise.” “I’ll do whatever you say, Quentin.” “I’ll never talk, Big Q. Bring on the naked torture girls!” “Not knowing what information is useful to the enemy, it is only logical to tell them nothing.”

Quentin said, “I was born Eidotheia, son of Proteus.”

Four faces stared at him blankly. Colin shrugged. “Are we supposed to recognize that name? Is it one of the women Zeus ravished or something? I lost track in class after the bull, the swan, and the shower of gold.”

“Proteus is a man. The Old Man of the Sea. The greatest of seers and magicians who ever lived. He could take any shape as pleased him, and his wisdom is as deep as the ocean.”

Vanity said, “Who is your mother?”

“Dr. Fell said I had three mothers. Do not ask me the biological arrangements, Dr. Fell did not go into details. Their names are Enyo, Deino, and Pemphredo.”

Colin said, “You are not honestly expecting us to recognize those names, are you?”

I said, “Isn’t Enyo a singer? I love her music.”

Colin said, “Yeah, and Dino is the dog on the Flintstones .”

Quentin looked a little miffed. We were talking about his mothers, after all. “We read about them in Hesiod’s Shield of Hercules and in the Pythian Odes of Pindar . You did those assignments, right? They were the Graeae, the three women, gray-haired from birth, the sisters to the Gorgons. Don’t you remember the Perseus myth? The three Gray Sisters had but one eye and one tooth to share between them, and they passed it back and forth between them to see and to chew. Perseus stole the eye until they told him the secret way to the cave of the Medusa, whom he slew.” He looked back and forth between us.

We returned blank stares.

“Well,” he muttered, “there is a constellation named after him, and one for Andromeda. We’re not exactly talking about the most obscure of Greek myths here. It’s in Hyginus, the Poetica Astronomica .”

I said, “We didn’t have to do the Hyginus. Mrs. Wren let us translate Sappho instead.”

“Well, I did that one on my own.”

Colin said, “And what myth is Proton from? I thought that was the name of a molecule or something.”

“Proteus is mentioned in the Odyssey of Homer. Menelaus tells Telemachos how he found his way home from the Trojan Wars. Menelaus hid under a seal skin, and when Proteus came by, Manelaus leapt from hiding. Proteus turned into a lion, a bull, running water, raging flame, but Menelaus kept hold of him, and he had to answer his questions. It was said Proteus knew the past and future, and all things.”

Colin asked in a lofty tone, “All things except the fact that there was this guy sitting under this seal skin waiting to jump out on him. I don’t remember that part of Homer at all. Was it before the Cyclops thing?”

Said Quentin, “The first part of the story where Telemachos is looking for his father, Odysseus. I think you skipped that part and went on to the sea adventure stuff in the middle. You paid me in honey bread to do your first four books of translation for you, remember? It was the thing we did right after the Iliad .”

“My first and worst don rag. I still have nightmares,” reported Colin. “What was I doing while you did my homework?”

“You were writing love letters to actresses in—Hey! Did I tell you? Those Hollywood girls wrote back. Virginia Madsen and whoever else you wrote to. Boggin intercepted them.”

“Well, well!” said Colin, looking as pleased as I ever have seen him, folding his arms behind his head with a look of infinite satisfaction. “I really do have psychic powers after all.”

Vanity said, “And a photographic memory like Victor! Hey, dodo, you don’t have to worry about grades ever again. It doesn’t matter what is on our permanent records. We’re all princesses and sons of kings from other dimensions or beyond the edge of space and time. No more lessons! No more books! No more Grendel’s dirty looks!”

We all sat in our circle on the ground, looking smug and well pleased.

I said, “You know, there is one thing that worries me.”

Colin said, “Oh, don’t spoil it. Britney! Tiffany! Natalie! Did they all write me back?”

I said, “However our home dimensions are run, they cannot be Democracies. There’s no point in holding the daughter of a Prime Minister hostage.”

Colin said, “Look, who cares how they run things? If our families have psychic powers, they’d end up running things. And now it’s clear we all have powers.”

Victor stood up. “I am not sure we do. Watch this.”

He stood up and dropped a fork on the snow.

Then he stooped, picked up the fork again, and dropped it again.

Colin said, “This is supposed to mean something to us, for what reason, again?”

“It didn’t float,” said Victor.

Colin said, “Forks don’t.”