“Maybe we should’ve brought Cassandra with us.”
“Ha,” Hermes said. “And risk her falling to a snakebite or a poisonous insect? Risk her tripping down a ravine?” He veered around the curve of a large trunk. “Athena would have your tongue just for suggesting it.”
“Maybe,” Odysseus said. “But she might’ve made this go a lot faster.”
*
They found a spot to camp when the light began to fade, and Odysseus channeled his inner Boy Scout to start a serviceable fire. Hermes disappeared into the trees to hunt but returned carrying a large, gutted fish.
“Cassandra’s speech about endangered animals get to you?” Odysseus asked while Hermes scaled the fish and put it on a spit.
“Shut up. Fish just cook faster.” He rinsed his hands with water from his canteen and rummaged in his bag for a can of potatoes, which he opened and shoved down into the coals. “Athena should’ve packed herbs and butter,” he grumbled, but it wasn’t long before the fish skin was crackling, and the savory smell made their mouths water.
They ate in relative quiet, just a few muttered comments about how surprisingly good the food was. Odysseus ate only a small portion of the nearly two-foot-long fillet, allowing Hermes to polish off the rest, along with most of the potatoes and a chocolate chip granola bar for dessert. Athena still would have wanted him to eat more.
“So,” Odysseus said. “Is there anything I should know about sleeping on the rain forest floor?”
“Hm?” Hermes asked, even though he’d probably heard. He’d been looking up through the canopy, catching a glimpse of stars above the smoky orange glow of the fire. “Oh, uh, not that I can think of. You might want to check yourself for leeches every once in a while.”
“Leeches.” Odysseus grimaced. “Fantastic. And then what? I just yank them off? I think I saw that in a movie once.” He glanced downward, trying to detect any movement or sliminess in his shorts.
Hermes laughed. “Right. Stand By Me. The leech in the kid’s tighty-whities. But don’t just yank it. I packed salt. They’ll drop off.” His smile faded, and he looked back up into the sky.
“Hey. You all right?”
“As all right as a dying god can be, I suppose.”
Odysseus prodded the coals with a stick and sent up a whirl of sparks. “You’re not going to die,” he said. “Athena’s going to win this war.”
The words came easily and sounded confident. But Odysseus couldn’t meet Hermes’ eyes, and he couldn’t stop his jaw from clenching. He needed to believe what he said, that they would win, and that Hermes would live, because it meant that she would live. But he didn’t really know.
“I don’t want to take that hope away from you,” said Hermes. “And I’ll admit, she seems pretty sure. Just in case, though … I don’t know how long I want to do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.” He kept his voice cheerful and gestured around to the trees and sky. “I mean, it’s scenic and everything. A once-in-a-millennium commune with nature. But that’s about how often I’d like to keep it. Even if I weren’t thin as a sack of sticks, I’m not cut out for all this … labor.”
Odysseus grinned. “Got someplace else you’d rather be? Leading a caravan of glitterati across the cities of Europe, maybe?”
Hermes lowered his eyes. “You have to admit, there are things … that one would wish to do once … or several more times, before dying.”
“Like what?” Odysseus asked softly. Hermes looked so tired. Let him daydream for a while. Let him out of the sweltering trees, and into someplace bright, and gilded, and marble.