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But I don’t have the patience for immortal grandstanding. I have a promise to keep, and it’s waited too long already. So, I drop my voice lower, trying to keep this just between me, my mother, and Adonis. The marble is kind of intended to project voices though, so who knows how successful I am.
“I don’t want to fight with you.” I won’t plead with her. But in her own way, I think she did try to help me, even if I’m also disgusted with her behavior with Ares. “I just want Janie back. This can all end here, between us, if you just restore her.”
Sure, I have Janie’s soul safely with me, cradled inside the relic. But I don’t want a sad ghost haunting my apartment. I want Janie to live, and for that, she’ll kind of need a body.
Aphrodite gives me a look that’s a little too haughty to be pitying, but it’s in the same neighborhood. “What you are asking is impossible, Penelope. Death only goes in one direction. No one can restore a soul to life. If you want her to live again, you should have allowed her soul to drink of the river Lethe, so that she might reincarnate.”
I stare at her. There’s a ringing sound in my ears, like someone running a damp finger over the rim of a water glass. It drowns out everything, even the murmuring of the gods and goddesses around us. I think Adonis says something, but his voice is muffled, like I’m hearing him through deep water. He lays a hand on my arm, and only then do I realize that I’m shaking.
I look at Aphrodite, at the face so like my own that she could have been my twin instead of my mother, and I want to scream. The hurt, and the grief, and the rage, it all swirls up inside me like a terrible storm. I feel like lightning should flash in my eyes to match the thunder rumbling through my veins.
“You lied to me.” My voice is rough, shaking. The words come out like glass shards torn from my throat, each one slick with pain. “You never thought I could do this. You were just humoring me, expecting me to give up and then come crawling home. This was all just another one of your ploys to get me under your thumb.”
Aphrodite draws herself up. Her face looks brittle. “Mortals die, Penelope. That is what theydo.”
Mortal.That’s all she sees. Humanity is just a herd for her, lovers and worshipers, idle amusements that pass quickly. But Janie isn’t just some mortal. She’s my sister. She’s my family. And she’s shown me more love, loyalty, and friendship in twenty-five short years than my own mother has in over two centuries.
I rip the Relic of the Second Garden from around my neck. The chain bites into my skin, threatening to wound, but then the necklace seems to understand my intent, and the links part seamlessly. The little filigree pendent feels hollow in my hand, far too light to be holding something so vitally important.
I cradle the bronze, clutching at it desperately. If I close my eyes, I can still feel Janie’s presence, like catching the ghost of her perfume from another room in my apartment. It can’t be over. She’s right here, in my hands, how can she be gone? This can’t be the end.
The aching void inside me carves a little deeper. I can still hear Christopher’s animal sound of pain when he called to give me the news.
“No.”
I mean for it to be a whisper, but the denial comes out like a gong, echoing through the acropolis. The grief inside me howls, years of love for the girl who was my sister, but now with no outlet, nowhere to go but in.
“No.”
Power fountains up inside me, filling the chasm. Grief and love and loss and hope. My mind is full of memories. Of Janie’s small, wrinkled infant face, with her little tufts of hair sticking up in all angles from her head. The gap-toothed grin when she begged me to have a snowball fight with her. How she called me to gush about her first crush in high school. The time I took her out to ice cream to cry about her first heart break. Her sitting on my bed, in her jeans and sweater and polka dot socks, telling me that she wanted me to be happy.
We might have been ancestor and descendant, but Janie would always be my sister.
Something inside me cracks open wide then, like a river damned for too long finally breaking free, and magic, irresistible, unstoppable, comes pouring out.
Every memory of Janie, her favorite ice cream, the way she cries at sappy commercials, the way she lights up when she talks about her studies, how she wants to help people, to change the world. All of my love, my pride in watching her grow into a fantastic and brilliant woman. All my hopes that she find love, succeed, and most importantly, that she knows joy. I turn it all into magic, and I funnel it into the relic.
Something tightens around me. It feels like barbed wire wrapped around my ribs, biting in, trying to keep me small and contained. Aphrodite’s curse doesn’t usually show its teeth so obviously. She prefers a cobra’s venom over a wolf’s fangs. But it’s digging in now, constricting around me.
Look at Pen, the curse whispers, each word dripping poison. Nothing more than a pretty face. A body without a soul. Just a bit of fluff, a bauble, good for looking at, but that’s all.
That’s all the world has seen for centuries. I never had a chance to make deeper connections, friends, real lovers. Until now.
No one has to listen to the curse anymore. Especially not me.
My power flexes, swelling, and the little barbs vanish in a flare of golden light. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I feel like I can take a full breath.
I’m not anyone’s toy. I’m a demi-goddess.
And I want my sister back.
The Relic of the Second Garden’s bronze pendant cracks open like a walnut, and Janie’s soul slips free in a wash of pale mist. The magic pours into her, light casting stark shadows on the floor as it fills every inch of her, piecing a body together from love and cherished memories. Flesh closes around her soul, a form to carry her through the mortal world.
And just like that, Janie stands in the center of Zeus’s acropolis in Olympus. She’s draped in pale silk that flutters around her ankles. Her hair is the same soft little blond cap she had when I saw her last. Her eyelashes are dark fans of lace against pale cheeks, like she’s sleeping peacefully.
For a long instant, everyone is still. There isn’t a single sound from the theater style seating. It’s like no one dares to even breathe, the wind still and silent between the columns. And then Janie draws a deep breath, the pale bloom of blood flooding into her cheeks as her heart stutters into motion. Her eyes blink open, confused, and a little sleepy, as though everything since we last parted has been nothing but a terrible dream.
Her eyes land on me and widen, and that’s as far as she gets because I’m throwing myself at her and she has to step back to catch my weight. A laugh bubbles out of her throat as her arms come around me, and I’m sobbing into her shoulder, broken apologies spilling out of me.
