Everworld #7

  Gateway To The Gods

  K.A. Applegate

  Chapter

  I

  Olympus.

  Let me just say this: After all the filth, the fleas, the mud, the hunger, the burning thirst, the never, never, never any decent sleep, this was all right.

  This was more than all right. This was the Everworld Ritz-Carlton.

  This was the Four Seasons Everworld. This was Club Everworld.

  And once you made it really clear, several times, that no, you really, actually, for sure did not want a glass of wine, or mead, or ale; and no, you honestly didn’t want the “services” Of a young handsome god, an old lecher god, an effeminate god, a macho god, a god disguised as a bull, an eagle, a ram, a horse, for crying out loud, or a goat, but would really, really, actually rather just sleep, it was quite enjoyable.

  They had beds that… how can I even describe these beds? To say that they were deep clouds of the softest down wrapped in some magical fabric that was as smooth and cool as silk but with the comfort of 300-count Egyptian cotton doesn’t begin to touch the profound, soul-soothing wonder of the experience.

  I had slept on the ground for a long time. To go from dirt, with a probable tree root stabbing me in the back, to this… I mean, it was only the Greek pagan version of heaven, not the real thing, but it would do. It would definitely do. Saint Peter would have to hustle to impress me after this.

  Breakfast was served by the inevitably under-clothed pretty young thing — male in this case. It was a silver platter roughly the length and depth of a library table, loaded with red-flesh oranges, green and pink and red apples, pale red cherries, split green and orange melons, and six different types of grapes.

  Then there were the breads: flat bread, braided bread, wheat bread, white bread in the shape of a mushroom with seeds on top. And, of course, the cakes: cakes made with honey and poppy seeds and currants, some shaped like crescents, some shaped like little shoes filled with cream cheese, some shaped like parts of the female anatomy you don’t normally expect to find staring up at you from your breakfast tray.

  Eggs? Of course there were eggs: from chickens, from ducks, from geese, from robins and eagles and hummingbirds — very tiny.

  Then there were the distinctly Mediterranean touches: olives, maybe six kinds, ranging from almost sweet to intensely salty; raw clams and raw oysters and steamed mussels and shrimp you could saddle up and ride and chunks of white fish sizzling hot on silver skewers.

  In addition to each of these dishes there were little pottery bowls filled with six different kinds of honey, two different butters, various creams, an array of cheeses made from goat’s milk, cow’s milk, sheep’s milk, and yes, unicorn’s milk.

  Unicorn-milk cheese. This is something you seldom see on even the finest menus in Chicagoland.

  Woven through and around the food itself were the garnishes and decorations: the flowers, the sprigs of herbs, the decorative swirls of gold thread wrapped into little pagan idols.

  And every single thing, every single cake, every single loaf of bread, every dollop of cream, every last grape on every last bunch was perfect. It wasn’t “a” strawberry, it was “the” strawberry. The oranges were so good I cried.

  It was enough food to feed me for three weeks. And it was just breakfast.

  We had spent the night before in Olympus. I had bathed in hot, hot, clean water in a marble bath so big I could have swum laps. I had traded my verminous, stiff-with-filth rags for an elegant dress that was slit up both sides but was otherwise pretty prim by Olympus’s standards. I had enjoyed a dinner so extravagant, so wonderful that Charlie Trotter and Wolfgang Puck and that Emeril guy on TV would have had to retire after witnessing its unattainable perfection. I had enjoyed a fabulous night’s fabulous sleep. And now I had eaten a breakfast that could have fueled the entire Chicago marathon.

  I wanted nothing more than to escape Everworld permanently.

  To get back home. But maybe not right this minute.

  A knock at my door.

  “Yes?” I said, filled to bubbling over with goodwill for all creatures big and small.

  The door opened. Christopher stood there, wearing a toga.

  “I just have one question for you,” he said. “Is this place cool or what?”

  “Did you get breakfast?” I asked eagerly.

  “No. No, I didn’t get breakfast. I got an entire brunch buffet table. You can’t even call it breakfast. That would be an insult. It was BREAKFAST in giant, flaming Hollywood-sign letters a hundred feet tall. Damn, these people run a great hotel.”

  I grinned. He grinned. Jalil poked his head around the corner and he was grinning. There are few pleasures in life deeper than the pleasure of a filthy, thirsty, hungry, tired human being who gets a hot bath, a cold drink, a great meal, and ten hours of deep untroubled sleep. (Although in truth I’d spent my “sleep” going to class, studying for a test, and heading for the old folks’ home where I read Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts books to a couple of the women.)

  “I just want to say this, right up front,” Jalil said. “I’m not leaving.

  I’m never leaving. They will have to chase me out of here with a baseball bat, and even then, I’m not leaving.”

  “Where’s David?” I asked.

  Christopher shrugged. “I don’t know, haven’t seen him since last night at dinner. But I have a bet for you: I bet five bucks he can find some downside to all this.”

  I laughed. “No bet. That’s too easy. You guys want some food?

  I have…” I looked at my breakfast tray, which looked as if it had never been touched. “… I think I have a few hundred thousand calories of goodies left.”

  “You have any of those poppy seed and honey cakes?” Jalil asked.

  “Oh, aren’t those good? Did you try them with that kind of off-white cream?”

  The three of us sat perched on the side of my bed and ate some more, despite the fact that not ten minutes earlier I’d sworn I could never eat again.

  David finally showed up after half an hour. He wore the standard-issue toga, his sword, and a look of dissatisfaction.

  Christopher and I both broke up and snorted our food.

  “What’s funny?” David demanded.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Want some food?”

  “I’ve had plenty of food,” he said. He sounded unhappy about that fact. “Plenty of food, plenty of juice, plenty of sleep. I’m even clean. But I can’t seem to get any answers around this place. The servants are all like, ‘I don’t know, I am only here for your pleasure.’

  All they care about is feeding me and bringing me something to drink, and would I like a massage, and how about some soothing balm for my wounds and… you know.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Would I like whatever with whoever?”

  “Damn them! That is intolerable!” Christopher mocked.

  “Cute,” David said.

  “Massage?” I asked, considering the fact that my back was still sore from dragging around my backpack with our few minuscule possessions.

  David nodded. “Yeah. Your choice of nymph or satyr. Or nymph and satyr. Or nymph, satyr, and a helot they call the Harsh Spartan. Don’t ask. I did, and trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  Christopher spread his hands wide, encompassing the marble and alabaster perfection of the room. “I am home. I mean, this place? Do you have any idea of the profit potential if we could book people from the real world in here? I mean, this is what, a five-thousand-dollar-a-night experience?”

  “Extra for the Harsh Spartan,” Jalil said.

  Suddenly the door flew open. We jerked into readiness. David’s sword was half drawn before we had a chance to see that it was a woman. Youngish, maybe thirty. Dark hair and dark eyes and both wild-looking. She stood still, rolled her eyes upward, like she was having a seizure, and in a low moan intoned:

  “Olympus by the Hetwan hordes besieged, Hellas’s gods Ka Anor shall feed Lest strangers bring the Witch to heed, The alien blacksmith’s secret need.” Having delivered that imperfect rhyme, she fluttered her eyes, then stared at us like we were the ones who had burst into her room.

  “Who are you?” David demanded.

  “I am Cassandra,” the woman said.

  “Oh, please,” Jalil said. “Cassandra was the prophet, the, um, what are they called, the oracle. Yeah, Cassandra was the oracle who always spoke the truth but was cursed never to be believed.”

  “Yes,” the woman said with an expression of petulant resignation replacing the wild-child look. “I know.”

  “So, wait,” David said, frowning. “So she always speaks the truth, but no one believes her? So… so we should believe her.

  Right?”

  “Do you believe her?” I asked.

  David shook his head. “No.”

  “She’s not Cassandra,” Jalil said.

  “How do you know?” Christopher demanded. “I mean, I know she isn’t, but how do you know?”

  That troubled Jalil. He scrunched his eyes and seemed to be trying to focus. “I don’t… okay, wait, if she is then she just told us something valuable, right? Only what she told us was… was…”

  “Was it haiku?” I wondered aloud. “Isn’t haiku, like, seventeen syllables? So, it wasn’t even haiku. Ha,” I announced triumphantly, as though I had just worked out the grand unifying theory.

  “What was it she said?” David asked. “I forget.”

  “What was it you said?” I asked the woman.

  “Never mind,” Cassandra said and walked away as abruptly as she had come.

  “I think we just had an Everworld moment,” Jalil said. “If we could remember what she said. And believe it…”

  “Not worth remembering,” Christopher said. “Because, you know, it was BS.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Chapter

  II

  Everworld.

  A different universe. Not a different planet or a different place

  — an entirely different universe. This was a universe where magic was real. Where mythological figures were actual people. Where time didn’t always plod along in the same old course. Where the laws of physics could be altered, if you had the power. Where everyone everywhere seemed to speak the same language.

  I lived in two universes. Simultaneously? Not exactly. Time in Everworld and time in the real world were not in sync. They both seemed to be running forward but, for the Everworld me, it was as if the gears of time in the real world were slipping, jerking, sometimes racing ahead, other times moving along normally.

  I April O’Brien - the Everworld April O’Brien — lived in Everworld. When I slept I, or at least my memories, slipped back across the universal divide and rejoined real-world April.

  There are two of me. Except when Everworld me is asleep. Then there’s only the real-world me. Although my Everworld body stays put in Everworld.

  Confusing? Yes. Yes, very confusing. Which is me? Both. All of the above. I live a full and active life in the real world, hang out with my friends, go to school, do volunteer work, talk to my mom, kiss my dad when he gets home from work, drive around doing errands, practice my part in a play, do my homework, sleep, shower, eat… I remain as I always was.

  Except for the fact that every now and then, at unpredictable moments, I get these sudden updates as the Everworld me comes crashing back in, filled with the latest news. News that is almost always bad.

  I can be sitting in Blind Faith enjoying an order of bibim bop or lemon seitan or just a vegan carrot cake or whatever, gabbing away happily with my friends, and all of a sudden it’s CNN: Breaking News! This just in: The other you, Everworld April, has just fallen asleep despite the fact that she’s spent the last eight hours in a state of rigid terror and will probably die shortly.

  Hi, April. How’s it going? The other April is on a Viking ship on her way to try to kill an Aztec god who eats people’s hearts. Have a nice day.

  The images of horror… I can be on a date, getting ready for the Big Kiss, and suddenly into my unprepared brain flood images, impossibly fresh, terrifyingly real, of men in agony, of monsters, of horrors that the most evil mind could not dream up. Not like watching a movie. Not like reading about it. These are memories of real events, real things that happened to a real me. I can feel the pain. I can feel the sick fear.

  It is eating away at real-world April, almost as much as it damages Everworld April. Maybe more. It’s the real-world April I want to save. That’s my life. That is my real life, and it is being poisoned by an onslaught of fear and rage.

  And, too, more subtle, but almost as destructive in their own way, are the seductions of Everworld. The memories of beauty. The memories of excitement, of mad thrills, of independence and self-reliance, of impossible things done, and near misses survived. So I get all that, too. In my everyday world I suddenly realize that another me has stood up to a dragon, defied a god, been bold and brave. Another me is Indiana Jones.

  I’m not one of those people who felt at odds with my world. I was comfortable in it. I was happy in it. Mostly. I have a place in the real world. I belong. I am happy belonging.

  But Everworld is more. Brighter, louder, sweeter, and more harsh, stranger, more interesting, more challenging, so insanely dangerous, so terrifying. Just… so.

  The friends I have in the real world are the core of my universe.

  My friends mean everything to me. I am of them, and they are part of me, and we will, I hope, be together forever, if not physically then emotionally, spiritually. We share hopes, we share interests, we share ambitions.

  The friends I have in Everworld? Well, are David and Christopher and Jalil friends, exactly?

  I sat watching them while they nibbled at my breakfast and argued over this and that. I was struck by how much I have come to know these three guys. How much I trusted them to varying degrees. And how sick of them I was, too. And how much they were shoving my own life aside.

  We’d never been friends before. We’d been connected, but we hadn’t known it. At school, back in the real world, my friends were mostly drama club. Mostly girls, some guys.

  David and Christopher were guys I knew to say hi to, but nothing more. Jalil I knew a bit better, not much. Christopher and later David had both dated my half sister. Senna, but that didn’t exactly recommend them to me. That didn’t make me think they were guys I should be close to. More the opposite. If they liked Senna there had to be something seriously wrong with them.

  And I was right. There was something wrong with David and with Christopher. But then, that’s life, isn’t it? Any interesting character has flaws. You learn that as an actor: It’s not just the virtues but the flaws and weaknesses, even the twists and sicknesses and evils, that make an interesting role.

  But knowing that didn’t necessarily make these guys easy to get along with.

  David was an attractive boy; I could see why Senna had chosen him. He wasn’t an especially big guy. Average, you’d have to say. He had a dark Dylan McDermott thing going on, but less simian, also less handsome.

  As far as I can judge, something went wrong in David’s life at a fairly early age that makes him feel he needs to constantly prove himself. Maybe it’s his dad, who is some kind of retired military officer. I don’t know, and David isn’t a person who talks about his feelings or his past.

  Truth is, whatever it is that made David insecure and so desperately determined to prove himself strong and courageous, whatever that thing was, it worked to our advantage here in Everworld. Maybe all heroes, or at least a lot, have that same

  “gotta be a manly man” thing. Maybe, I don’t know. Whatever. The fact is when things turn bad we turn to David and he accepts the burden.

  It’s unfair of us, especially me, because I know in my heart that David is trapped. He can’t let himself fail, can’t let himself run away and hide. He has to be brave and we all just kind of accept that and use that. There’s something there that makes me feel kind of squeamish. Like putting an anorexic in charge of protecting a food stash, or hiring an obsessive-compulsive to clean your house.

  It works, but is it right?

  Christopher is an easier person to like and an easier person to despise. He’s charming, funny, laid-back, and utterly honest about his emotions. When Christopher is scared, you know it. When he’s hungry or mad or resentful or horny or depressed, there’s no hiding it.

  He’s bigger than David, blond and somewhere right between dopey-sweet and swaggering bully, depending on what’s happening around him. Ninety percent of the time I like him.

  The other ten percent of the time he’s a sexist, racist, homophobic jerk.

  I don’t think he’s happy; comics rarely are. He is funny. I know his throwback attitudes come from some weakness in him, some dark, sad place. I mean, racism isn’t exactly a symptom of happiness and mental balance, is it?

  To make matters worse, I’m afraid Christopher is either an alcoholic or heading down that path. From remarks he’s made I know both his parents drink, probably too much.

  And yet, I like him. Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe I should just push him away, refuse to deal with his Crap. But I can’t. We’re together in this, the four of us. Besides, there is hope for him. I think maybe there’s real hope.

  He was hurt by the death of Ganymede, Zeus’s one boy toy among the many, many girl toys. Ganymede had saved Christopher’s life. And Christopher had failed to save Ganymede. I think this had a very profound impact on Christopher. Why? I don’t know for sure. Something about being stuck with a debt he could never repay. Anyway, that’s what I picked up from the mutterings of his multiday drunken bender.

 

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