The ceiling of the councilroom seemed a mile overhead, and clean but ancient stone benches stretched to Jake's left and right and behind him like the endless pews of an austere church. Sunlight crisscrossed in through the high, clear windows surrounding the upper dome of the councilroom. The buzzing silence was soon broken by the echoing footsteps of the entering Council members.
Jake stood, handcuffed and still naked, at the front councilroom. If nothing else can be said in favor of the immortal world, Jake thought, at least their courts aren't backed up. Six months in a holding cell in this place would not be great.
Near Jake, a thin man with a legal pad stood. He announced, "Jake Foster, son of the god Zeus and the mortal Delilah Foster, accused by the goddess Aphrodite of breaking and entering, unsolicited exposure, attempted thievery of two articles of clothing and four accessories, seeks the justice of the Council." He took his seat.
Jake closed his eyes. He'd been exposed in the presence of Aphrodite. Part of his mind was shriveling with shame, part swearing that he would spend a lot of time working out before he was naked with a goddess again.
When he managed to open his eyes and meet the stares of the Council, he was surprised at how normal they seemed. They looked a great deal like the current Supreme Court Justices, except they wore sneakers and jeans and t-shirts, and they sat in their row chairs in casual positions, one even propping his feet up on the table. Zeus had said they were like characters from Kafka's Trial experiencing heroin withdrawals. Jake hoped he was wrong.
They stared at him for a few seconds, then leaned in together to whisper for no more than a minute. When they sat facing him again, the Council member in the middle, a grinning, wrinkly man who seemed to be the Head Councilman, banged his fluorescent green gavel once and said, "The Council finds Mr. Foster guilty."
The thin man with the legal pad stood again. "And the sentence?"
"Well," the Head Councilman began, but the woman to his right cut him off.
"Normally we would punish unsolicited exposure very harshly, not to mention the other crimes. However, certain members of the Council understand the appeal of the goddess," she made a disgusted face in the direction of the Head Councilman, "and other members just really don't like her."
The Head Councilman continued, "Thus, because of the Council's empathy and, uh, prejudice, Mr. Foster will suffer nothing worse than community service. Say, 8,766 hours. Oh, wait. You're mortal, aren't you? Two hundred hours. And five years of probation."
Jake took a deep breath.
"The consequences of breaking probation?" the thin man asked, scribbling on his legal pad.
"Immediate beheading, disemboweling, and a chair in Hades. Are these terms acceptable?"
The expressions on the Council members' faces told him that any answer other than "yes" would not be tolerated. One of the members had already fished his car keys out of his pocket.
"Yes," Jake said, and the Council was gone from the hall before the bailiff, who had been waiting out of sight behind the door through which the Council had entered, had removed Jake's handcuffs. The auditorium, nearly empty to begin with, was soon deserted. Jake said, "What now?" as the bailiff walked away, but neither he nor anyone else answered.
Jake found a used tennis outfit in a corner of the councilroom, in a stack with two cheerleader outfits, a pirate costume, and fourteen Kit-Kats. He slipped on the tennis outfit, complete with shoes, and grabbed a handful of Kit-Kats.
Past the doors of the auditorium, a wide, high-ceilinged hall stretched ahead. Jake couldn't see the end of it, but a block of sunlight to the right caught his attention, and Jake hurried in that direction, eager to find a way out of crazyland. But the view beyond the doors was more like a clip from any part of Lord of the Rings than anything in Jake's world. Men and women of incredible proportions walked the rustic stone-paved road, and among them were horned, winged, speckled, furry, and howling creatures, some pulling and pushing carts and rickshaw-like carriages, others meandering and conversing and, Jake couldn't be sure, but he had a strong suspicion, copulating.
The buildings along just the small stretch of road Jake could see represented twenty different architectural styles from twenty historical periods, in forty or more colors. Like The Lord of the Rings, Jake thought, set in Poland.
A man about Jake's own age leaned against a column just outside the door. "Excuse me," Jake said, "could you tell me how to get back to—" He paused. What was the term? The mortal world? The other side? Earth? The man walked away before Jake could decide.
He asked four more people before an elderly gypsy woman seemed to appear beside him, jangling with the objects pinned inside her shawls.
"Need a wristwatch, boy?" she asked.
"No, I need a way to get home."
"Need me to call you a cab?" she said, then snickered.
"I live…."
"You don't live on Olympus."
"Right," Jake said, but he realized for the first time that he was here again, this place he'd read so much about, dreamed of so many times since his only other visit, when he was a kid. He knew he was in the immortal world, of course, that had been obvious from the moment he'd seen Aphrodite, but that hadn't connected in his mind with the realization that he was on Olympus. Olympus. For a moment, he forgot what an awful mess he was in, staring around at the city of legend, the festival city, where the spirit of Mardi Gras and Oktoberfest lived year round. For a moment, he forgot that he hated this world and anything connected to it, that it had ruined his life, and he simply let the awe overtake him.
"You have any money?" the gypsy woman interrupted.
"No," Jake said, feeling a small degree of panic breaking through the awe. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been anywhere without cash or a credit card or his driver's license. The spark of anger at the Fates that had been kindled earlier burned with new energy, but at the same time, Jake wanted to laugh at himself for everything he was feeling, all these adolescent emotions jumbled up in him, struggling for domination. He took a long breath and looked out past the woman at the colorful crowd and the hodgepodge of buildings, listening to the different languages and the melody of the laughter and conversation mixture.
"You have gameroom tokens?" the gypsy woman said, taking as much of a step toward him as she could, robbing him of his personal space completely. "You have jewelry? Food?"
Jake looked at his hands, and there were the Kit-Kats. He'd almost forgotten them. He held them out, and the gypsy made them disappear, replacing them instantly with a tiny whistle on a thin silver ring. "What the hell is this?" he asked.
The gypsy shuffled away through the crowd, and Jake followed, intent on getting his Kit-Kats back, but she moved through the crowd easily, as though she were a part of each body on the street, and after a minute of forcing his way through and trying to see over carriages and heads, Jake could no longer see her.
He examined the whistle. It was small and unremarkable, even a little rusted in the edges, but Jake had seen enough of the immortal world to know that worthless pieces of junk were often powerful magical objects in disguise. He slipped the silver ring onto his little finger, the only one it would fit, and hesitated. Nothing had happened yet, but he was suddenly convinced that something would happen if he blew the whistle, and a large and growing part of him wanted a chance to look around the city. He might not have a chance like this again.
Jake picked a direction and walked down the street, feeling like an obvious tourist as he turned his head in every direction, looking in shop windows, reading every sign with words he could understand. He passed a bakery, an apothecary's shop, three movie theaters, a hot dog vendor, children playing hopscotch, an adult bookstore, several people on unicycles, and a women's clothing store for women with three or more arms. He was also pretty sure that he caught a glimpse of the Hindu elephant-head god, Ganesha, purchasing a pair of sunglasses.
Jake imagined the awe that a handful of others throughout history must have felt after being snatched out of their incredibly dull lives and dropped in the immortal world with nothing but a tennis outfit and a vague sense of panic that they might never get home again intermingling with the amazement and honor of actually walking, thinking, breathing in the home of the gods, or at least, the place where the gods do a lot of their shopping.
A small gold coin on the sidewalk caught Jake's eye, and he stopped to pick it up. On one side was unmistakably a griffon, with the words "Fifty Zloty" etched in a banner across the bottom. On the other side was a profile of a man who looked strikingly like Abraham Lincoln.
Jake wanted to buy a trip home, or at least get some normal clothes, but after browsing through a couple of shops, he realized that his coin was about the equivalent of a seaweed wrap filled with vegetables and rice and a Barq's, the only recognizable brand name in any of the stores he tried. He was feeling the absence of breakfast that morning, so he invested his fifty zloty as well as he could and continued down the street.
Some of the vendors boasted signs and shouted slogans like, "Keep your shoes safe from trickets!" and "De-manticore your hobbit-hole!" and "Unpixie your whiskey!" But Jake walked past, hardly glancing at their rows of charms and protective potions.
Rachel had been six months pregnant the first time she mentioned that Jake might find a way to protect the family. "I've already done everything I know to do," he said, surprised that she'd asked. Rachel never talked about the immortal world, though more than one of its emissaries had appeared since the cake batter footprints incident. She even refused to watch the SciFi channel with him. He admitted that the subjects of some of those shows were too familiar to be entertaining, but a little Star Trek Next Generation never hurt anyone.
She nodded but didn't say anything.
Jake knew she had to have noticed the charms and magical objects hidden throughout the house. He thought of mentioning them, but he knew she would say, "Things happen anyway."
And she was right. The charms, all the charms Jake had ever tried or heard of, were useless. Last week, Rachel had found seventeen newspapers on the welcome mat and seventeen smeared trails across the dusty porch, as though each paper had been dragged up and left there, one by one. The week before, all the canned goods had disappeared. Jake never found out what happened to them. Other happenings had been easier to hide from Rachel. Jake had begun waking up before dawn to walk through the inside of the house, being careful not to look into mirrors or to catch his reflection in windows or water glasses until the sun was fully in the sky. Jake would drop pieces of foil or buttons or coins behind the refrigerator, check the inside of the milk carton, the sinks, the shower, and the bathtub, and burn a sprig of peppermint near each doorway. When it was light, Jake walked around the outside of the house and shook pixies out of the rose bushes. He would continue this ritual throughout Rachel's pregnancy and until he moved out, not long after Lily's fifth birthday.
Now Rachel was asking for something he couldn't say he could give her. "I'll talk to Zeus," he said. "I don't know what else to do."
Zeus's suggestions all involved bringing protective magical creatures into the house. Jake couldn't imagine telling Rachel that the guest bedroom had to be converted into a stable for a young unicorn or that she had to wear a baby sloth in a pouch around her neck.
Around that time, Jake would catch Rachel eyeing him, and he knew she was thinking what he had often thought: he was the problem. If Jake went away, Rachel and their little baby would likely never be bothered by the immortal world.
But Rachel was there and the baby was coming. Rachel was there and the baby was coming, and Jake was just selfish enough to stay.