• NOTICE! IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE PROLOGUE, LOOK UP MY STUFF AND READ IT FIRST!

    Fourteen-year-old Alameda gazed across the city of Athens. She held a long tree branch she had found and stood on the top of her little home. She was enjoying the beautiful sunrise as Apollo started his journey across the sky.
    She wondered what it would be like to every day make the same journey. She thought it would get sort of boring traveling the same sky over and over. Then again, he could see everything going on at all times during the day. His sister took over during the night.
    She held the branch like she was the brave Atalanta overseeing her mountain. She would have journeys some day. That was her dream.
    “Alameda!” her mother’s shrill voice broke into her daydreaming.
    “Yes mother?” she yelled back. She wasn’t ready to get off the roof yet.
    “You need to go make your offering to Queen Hera and go to the market!” she said. Alameda sighed. It was a Monday so of course, chores. Her mother was a huge worshipper of Hera.
    Alameda preferred Athena, the war and wisdom goddess, but her father said a woman’s place was in the home so he gave his daughter and wife a choice between Hestia and Hera. Alameda didn’t think that was fair and so whenever she could she snuck an offering to Athena.
    “Yes mother!” Alameda tucked her ‘spear’ safely under a rock that was on the roof and jumped down into the loft of their tiny house. She scrambled down the ladder forwards, like she was running down stairs and jumped off when there were five steps left. She bent her knees on impact and it took the pressure out of the landing. She straightened up and dusted herself off.
    She gazed around the room that doubled as her parent’s room and the living space. The loft is where she slept. She found her mother over the stove. She turned and looked at Alameda. She shook her head and clicked her tongue. She reached out a hand and pulled a piece of straw out of Alameda’s wavy brown hair.
    “You’re almost a woman. You need to start grooming yourself,”
    “What’s the point?” asked Alameda. “We’re just lower-folk and we are always dirty,” her mother looked at her, quite put out.
    “Please try more?” she said. Alameda looked down. She knew her older sister Gena had been very put together. When she had died of a fever, it had taken something out of her mother.
    “I’ll try mother,” she said. Her mother smiled her half smile and handed Alameda a drachma.
    “Get some cornmeal and try to get some meat too. See if you can get seeds for some vegetables, its time to start planting. If you can, try for basil too. I believe that honey will be sufficient for Hera,” Alameda drooped. She loved honey. Pouring it for an offering for a goddess seemed so useless. What had the gods ever done for them?
    “Yes mother,” said Alameda.
    “That’s a good girl. Go on,” Alameda tucked the drachma in the pocket of her dress and headed out the door.
    Alameda followed the stream of people to the marketplace. She put her hand in her pocket and felt the drachma. She went to the stall she usually went to. She could get things for dirt-cheap here. She went up to the table and banged her fist on the table. The shopkeeper came out of the back and eyed her. Alameda listed off the things her mother wanted her to get.
    “How much you got, sweet cake?” said the old man.
    “How much will you give it to me for?” she said.
    “Oh. So you’re gonna keep it sneaky. Oh, I’d say about three drachmas,”
    “Three! Sir this isn’t the upper market!” she said.
    “Ah, you’re schooled in the way of the barter, eh?” he scratched his short graying beard. “Two then. Two drachmas,”
    “Oh, but sir! Did I forget! I didn’t need that much cornmeal! Oh, take off a third of it,” she said. “How much now?”
    “One drachma,” he said with a sly grin. She grabbed her groceries and seeds off the table and gave him the drachma. Alameda had a strange feeling that he knew she only had one drachma all along. He bit it and nodded to her. “Have a good day, little lady,” he said. She left the line and started off towards the temple section of town. She shifted the bag of stuff to her other hand. No hero was strong in one hand and weak in the other. She fished the little jar of honey out from the bottom of the bag. She really wanted a taste of it but she had to resist. It was for the goddess.
    Alameda approached the white temple of the queen of the gods. She put the honey in the offering sack of the priestess and walked away. She hurried home so she could have some free time. She rushed through the doorway of her house.
    “Mom! I got everything you said. Can I go into the city now?” Alameda set the sack on the small family table.
    “Yes Alameda,” said her mother.
    “Thank you! Love you!” she said, planting a kiss on her mother’s sweaty cheek. She rushed out the door into the clean air. She ran out of the slums of the lower city and into the center of the city. She paused, wondering.
    “I could go to the sea, but I’d only have a few minutes until I had to go back. Maybe to the palace?” she hung on the matter for a short while and then decided to go to the palace. She set off running again. She was very small so she could weave through the market crowd easily. She started to get into the richer community and slowed down. She liked looking around at all the fancy houses and imagining her parents living in one while she was off adventuring. She looked at the white and gold ones, the white and bronze ones and there was even a white and blue-green one. She kept wandering through the streets until she reached the palace. It had always been one of her favorite places. With the hugeness of it, it dazzled her; with the elegance of it, it awed her. She wanted to live there when she wasn’t out fighting monsters.
    The palace, of course was bustling. She eyed the guards. They looked alert, not bored and tired. She wouldn’t try it. She would probably be able to get in if only she had a fancy dress.
    “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Alameda turned, startled by the voice next to her. Who in the upper community would talk to her?
    “Yes,” she said. Standing next to her was a woman with curly blonde hair and grayish eyes. Alameda thought she had seen her somewhere.
    “Ah, but compared to where I live, this is shabby,” said the lady.
    “Do I know you?” asked Alameda.
    “Oh, you might have seen me around,” said the lady, glancing at Alameda. Her strange gray eyes sparkled at Alameda and it looked like she had a storm cloud trapped inside them. Suddenly Alameda realized who she was.
    “You’re Lady Athena!” she said.
    “Hush child, but yes. I am,” Alameda looked at the goddess in utter astonishment. Only heroes and kings got to speak with gods! Why was the beautiful war and wisdom goddess talking to her?
    “Why are you speaking to me?” she asked straightforwardly. Alameda was totally bewildered.
    “You do make offerings to me even without your father’s approval,”
    “I prefer you to Hestia or Hera. They are boring,” said Alameda.
    “Do not say such things about my mother and sister,” she said sternly.
    “Mother? Sister? But milady you were born out of Lord Zeus’s skull!”
    “We are a family. What else would I call them even if that is not what they truly are?” Alameda looked down.
    “I suppose I should know better than to argue with a wisdom goddess,” she said.
    “That itself is wise. Wiser than most men are,” said the goddess smiling. “But there is another reason why I came, Alameda. A tragedy is happening at your home, right at this very moment. Don’t try and run home, it will not help anything. Know this, the trees are always your friends. If you are in doubt, which you probably will be, go to the trees. Do you understand?”
    “Yes,” said Alameda. She wanted to bolt home right then.
    “You may go home now Alameda. I am terribly sorry,” the goddess disappeared into the crowd and Alameda stared after her and then started to run. Alameda ran through the upper community and through the market. In the market she pushed past people instead of weaving through them.
    When she reached her home she screamed. It was on fire. Not a tiny little fire, but a roaring, unstoppable fire. There were people with buckets and buckets of water, but they were just trying to stop the blaze from spreading. There was no way her house could be saved. She started to weep and then sob uncontrollably. Her mother and father always took a short nap to get them through the day at this time. Always. But just in case, she went up to a neighbor that was watching.
    “My parents! Are they…”
    “Yes. I’m sorry. Two men dragged what was left of their bodies out of the blaze,” the woman turned away. Alameda wanted to do anything, anything but just stand there. She wanted to rush in and be brave and save her parents. She wanted to be the brave, Atalanta rushing in to save the day. But she knew that doing that would only slow down the people trying to stop the blaze. They would have to rush in and save her. It was horrible being so useless. She wanted to scream with the unfairness of it.
    Instead of joining the bucket line, she ran. She ran all the way down to the sea. She was exhausted by the time she got there. She sat on the beach with her head in her hands. She didn’t cry. Alameda thought that she had run out of tears. She looked up at the darkening sky. Where would she go now? She didn’t have anywhere to go. She looked to the forest that was beyond the farmland. ‘If you are in doubt, which you probably will be, go to the trees’ Athena’s directions rang in Alameda’s ears. She could hardly ignore a wisdom goddess’s advice.
    She stood up unsteadily in the sand. She looked to the city of Athens again. There were glowing spots of lamps everywhere. There was a trickle of smoke from where her house was.
    “I have no friends that will miss me and no family. I will go and live in the forest like Atalanta,” the small fourteen-year-old girl set off across the sand. She walked through the farmland and listened to the night sounds. An owl hooted in a tree to her right. Alameda looked up and saw a gray owl blink at her solemnly before flying away silently. Alameda reached the edge of the woods.
    “I do hope the animals aren’t hungry for people,” she said, entering the woods. There was a path winding through it. “I suppose I should find a place to sleep,” she murmured. She found the hollowed out base of a huge tree. After clearing out all the nutshells that squirrels had stored there, she climbed into her little ‘cave.’ She curled up for the night, pulling her ripped and dirty dress around her. It wasn’t that comfortable, but she fell asleep right away, being as tired as she was. She wasn’t aware that right then, a young hero was receiving a prophecy that would change her life.