Highlander Enchanted(83)
“You could try studying harder,” Herakles suggested.
“Right. Like that’s going to get me a boyfriend.”
“There is more to life than boys and whatever else it is your head is full of,” Herakles reminded me. “You don’t need a man anyway. You can take care of yourself. I’ve trained you to survive anything.”
“I know I don’t need one. I want one so the nymphs stop laughing at me. Just for a day, then I’d let him go like you free the rabbits I catch.”
“You noticed.”
I arched my eyebrow at him. “I figured it out after I caught the same one every day for a week when I was, like, sixteen. You know the nymphs don’t have to hunt rabbits, don’t you? They don’t have to run every day or build their own campfires and shelters on the weekends. They get to go to town, Herakles, and see movies!” I sighed, tortured by my miserable existence. “Can I be normal? Just for one weekend?”
“Normal people aren’t prepared for their world to change or to face the trials awaiting them.”
“The zombies apocalypse isn’t coming. The priests say the world has never known a time of greater peace and prosperity and the gods are happier than ever.”
“An apocalypse is not required to announce itself,” he stated.
I bit my tongue. I knew better than to argue with Herakles. He was of a singular mind and convinced the world was going to end any day. Nothing I’d ever said over the past twelve years had dented his obsession with self-reliance and survival. I learned to hunt game bigger than me, forage for berries, survive in extreme weather conditions and other skills the nymphs – and even my teachers – often ridiculed. Sometimes he blindfolded me or hobbled one leg or arm so I had to survive for a weekend alone in the forest with simulated physical impediments. He first dropped me off in part of the forest alone with no compass when I was nine. I bawled for a day until he came to get me. Instead of taking me back, we stayed in the forest, and he taught me to navigate by the stars.
No one understood why he made me do these things, least of all me. I obeyed him because, above all else, I loved my Herakles, as weird as he was. While we were accepted here, we didn’t fit in at the school filled with nymphs and priests. We had to stick together, two dented peas in a misshapen pod.
“The man you want will be able to outrun, outhunt and outsmart you. When you meet him, you can marry him. Until then, no man will do,” Herakles said.
“I don’t want to marry anyone,” I said. “I just want to kiss him.”
“Then you can kiss the man who catches you.”
His conditions for me seeing someone were impossibilities. Herakles alone was the only man who could keep up with me. It was his way of saying I’d never have a boyfriend as long as I lived under his roof.
I glanced up at the green canopy overhead. The blue sky resembled puzzle pieces from this angle, and not a cloud was in sight on this warm spring day. What torture did he have in store for me on such a beautiful Friday? I had to climb a rope or navigate whatever obstacle course he built before I was allowed to go to bed at night. Weekends were worse. I was exiled to the forest for more survival training until Sunday night.
He was conditioning and preparing me for something. I had no idea what, and I suspected he was just a little off. A former Olympian, Herakles was the toughest, most honorable person I had ever known. He swept the annual Olympics for three years in a row before he stumbled upon me, rescued me from the house fire that killed my parents and brought us here. He didn’t respect anything but physical prowess. He could barely read, and he had an almost allergic reaction to discussing anything regarding emotions.
But he was my hero in every sense of the word.
To this day, I was unable to recall what exactly happened the night I turned six except it involved Herakles catching me when I fell from the sky. Why or how I was flying, I didn’t know. I still occasionally dreamt of falling – but no fire. My life changed that night. Herakles was unwilling to talk about it even after I turned eighteen and was considered an adult by everyone but him.
Herakles tugged the sleeve I’d tucked under my bra strap back down over the strange birthmark on my bicep that looked eerily like a double omega. The omega was the final letter in the Greek alphabet, or, according to Herakles, a sign of Armageddon. “Keep this hidden,” he reminded me.
“I know.” I pulled both sleeves down so I didn’t look stupid with only one up.
Picking my way through the forest back towards the compound where we lived, I considered the topic I’d been meaning to broach to him but hadn’t quite figured out the best way yet.
“We haven’t talked about graduation,” I started. “It’s in three weeks.”
“The world might end tomorrow. You should not think too far beyond today.”
“Omigods, Herakles! I’m eighteen, and I’m graduating in three weeks! I want to go home!” Too late I realized I’d told him what I had hoped to discuss in a calmer manner. I didn’t look back at him but focused on the path at my feet.
“You know there is nothing for you there.”
“So you’ve told me every time I asked. But I have to go somewhere,” I pointed out. “College. Waitress at a fast food joint. Holy Zeus, I’d become an initiate at a temple.”
“No temple would have you.”