Chapter One:
Jessica shot another anxious glance out the window. A vast cornfield next to an empty road greeted her.
“He’s not coming today,” sneered Mikey, her younger brother. “You aren’t going to be getting that letter.”
“Oh, yes I am,” Jessica replied, her brother’s taunting only serving to redouble her anticipation. “I am going to get that letter, get accepted into college, and I’m going to get the hell out of Stapleton, Nebraska.”
“Fat chance,” Mikey said. “You got a big frown-face on your SAD test.”
“SAT test,” Jessica corrected him.
“Well, your score on it probably spelled SAD to them,” Mikey teased. “Stop hanging by that window already and accept it. You’re going to be stuck in Stapleton, just like the rest of us.”
Jessica sighed. Mikey was right: she hadn’t done as well as she had liked on her college placement test, and wasn’t sure if she was going to get in. Her brother’s constant teasing aside; Jessica didn’t mind family life too much. But the thought of being stuck on a farm in Nebraska for the rest of her life scared her to death. There had to be more out there than this.
“Come on, sis. Let’s watch some TV or something,” Mikey said as he yanked on Jessica’s blonde ponytail.
“Stop that!” Jessica cried out, but just then, she thought she heard something. Off in the distance, she heard a dull roar that could only mean one thing. She pulled on her shoes, flung the door open, and ran as fast as her legs could carry her through the path in the cornfield and onto the road.
Just as she suspected: the mail truck was finally coming into view. As the truck pulled closer, Jessica found herself unable to wait for the mailman to even deposit the mail into the box.
“Please, just let me have it,” she cried out, and the mailman smiled.
“Don’t worry, Jessica. I think there’s something from the University of Nebraska Lincoln with your name on it.”
Jessica frantically flipped through the envelopes until she found the one with the college’s seal. Her hands trembling, she tore it open, and found the first paper. “Dear applicant,” it began.
The next two words shattered Jessica’s world. “We regret…” Jessica let the letter drop from her hands, the wind causing it to flutter and fall facedown near the corn. Tears started to rundown her cheeks, a few of them falling onto her flowing, flaxen blonde hair. This was her last chance – the other ones had all come back negative too.
“I don’t believe it,” she thought to herself. “Mikey was right. I’m going to be stuck in Stapleton forever.”
“I’m…I’m sorry,” the mailman said awkwardly, as he got into his truck and started to pull away.
The dull roar of the truck pulling away lasted longer than it ought to have. As Jessica gazed into the setting sun, she realized why: another car was coming over the hill. For just a brief moment, she contemplated running in front of it.
The car had an unfamiliar shape, which was unusual to Jessica. With a population of fewer than 300, Stapleton was not the kind of place where one often runs into strangers.
The car was long, sleek, and black, somewhere between the shape of a stretch limousine and a hearse. It pulled up to Jessica and stopped very slowly. She was unable to make out who was inside of the vehicle due to heavily tinted windows. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the front window slowly rolled down.
Inside the luxury vehicle was an ancient looking woman wearing a black hood that partially obscured her face. Her nose was long and hooked and she had a rather large mole on one cheek. Her cheeks sagged significantly, and her lip sported a snaggle tooth. On the front seat next to her was a crate of apples, which Jessica found odd as there were no apple farmers in Stapleton.
“Jessica Morris?” The old woman’s voice creaked out.
“Yes?” Jessica replied, her voice full of surprise and fear.
“I’m here as a sort of…private courier. I have a letter and a gift for you,” she spoke in a rattling, aged, unsettling tone.
“A courier representing whom?” Jessica asked suspiciously.
“Olympia Academy in Greece,” the woman replied.
“I’m quite sure I never applied to anything like that,” Jessica said, her hands now on her hips. This entire interaction seemed off, as if there was some sort of obvious deception going on.
“Well, of course you didn’t apply. We don’t tend to advertise ourselves much. But we’ve decided you certainly could be Olympia material,” the old woman crooned.
“Look, I’m not entirely sure that you are who you appear to be,” Jessica replied.
The woman let out a long rattling cackle in response. “How right you are my dear, how right you are. What an observation. You’ve made me more confident than ever that we made the right choice. But please, take this letter, and this apple. You can decide for yourself what’s right for you.”
Jessica took the letter and the apple, if only to get the woman to be on her way.
“I think I’ll open it later, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“That’s fine, child. I hope I see you at orientation.” With that, the tinted window rolled back up, and the sleek black vehicle slowly peeled off into the distance.
“Who in Sam Hell was that?” Mikey asked, as he joined Jessica on the side of the road.
“An old woman, who told me I was being accepted to this school in Greece, but something didn’t quite seem right about the whole thing,” Jessica replied.
“Greece, huh? I don’t remember you applying for that,” Mike said.
“I didn’t!” Jessica said. “It’s totally bizarre, really.”
“Yeah, well, you won’t have to worry about it. You’ve got your heart set on Lincoln, right?” Mikey asked.
Jessica’s heart fell again. Her almost surreal encounter with the old woman had temporarily distracted her from her titanic disappointment.
“Mikey, I got the letter. I didn’t get in,” Jessica said at last.
“Darn. I’m sorry, sis,” Mikey said. “I’m sorry I teased you about it earlier,” he added.
“Don’t worry about it, Mikey. I know you didn’t mean to hurt my feelings,” she said with a tone of pain in her voice. “Let’s just go inside.”
~
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. When her parents arrived home from a trip into the city, she neglected to mention her rejection letter to them. Several times during dinner, her mother asked her “Jessica, are you alright? Anything on your mind?”
Finally, she could take no more prodding and asked to be excused from the table. She made her way upstairs and flopped onto her bed dejectedly. After a few tears had been shed, she noticed the letter and the apple on her pillow.
“It couldn’t hurt to open it,” she said to herself, more curious than interested. The front of the letter had her name hand written in spidery cursive, while the back of the letter was closed with a seal that contained four small figures.
“To Miss Jessica Adele Morris,” the letter began on yellowed parchment paper. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into Olympia Academy of Disguise. The Academy is a special place where young women learn ancient and forgotten arts. Should you wish to join us in Greece, all you need do is let your lips taste a bite of the apple provided with this letter. Sincerely, Sylvia, Headmistress.”
Jessica unwound the parchment a bit more and saw a “P.S.” It read “We understand you might have doubts. If you do, consider this: the woman that delivered you this letter is actually 21 years old.”
Chapter Two:
Jessica put the letter down, her mind spinning. Nothing made sense to her. Surely, this entire thing had to be some kind of practical joke.
She gazed at the apple for a moment. It was large and red, luscious looking, and probably quite delicious. Was it possible that it was poisoned, or drugged? That didn’t make sense at all. If someone wanted to poison her, why didn’t they just hand her an apple, without such a fantastical, unbelievable, and suspicious set up?
Was it possible that the school was real? It didn’t seem likely that the old woman who handed her the letter and the apple could have been 21…and yet, the idea did somehow seem intriguing. Was it really possible that she had been chosen to go to some elite institution in Greece?
~
Jessica awoke the next morning to the sound of her father rapping on her door.
“Rise and shine, Pumpkin. It’s half an hour past dawn. Time to get up,” her father said cheerfully.
Jessica groaned and reluctantly pulled her sleepy body out of bed. “Be out in a minute,” she mumbled as she pulled on a flannel shirt and her “messy’ jeans. If her dad was asking her to get up this early, it was only going to mean one thing: helping out with the farm, her least favorite task.
As Jessica finished changing, her noise picked up on her favorite scent, maple syrup. “I made you some pancakes,” her father said through the door. “Let’s go eat ‘em while they’re hot.”
Jessica flew down the stairs, eager for her favorite breakfast. She picked up large stack from the platter waiting her at the dinner table and drowned in an ocean of syrup.
“What’s the occasion, Dad?” She said with her mouth slightly full. “You don’t make pancakes too often.”
“Well, we were all wondering what was up with you last night, and your brother finally told us what’s up,” her father began. An awkward pause ensued, and Jessica returned to shoving her face full of flapjacks.
Jessica’s father shifted his substantial girth in his suspenders and fiddled with his bushy mustache with his left hand, causing it to become flecked with a few stray globules of syrup. “I know you must be real disappointed. Just wanted to help you start the day right.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Jessica responded as she wiped her mouth with a napkin, removing some butter from her lips. “We don’t have to spend a lot of time talking about that, though, ok?”
“Sure thing,” her father began, but Jessica doubted that she could prevent the subject from coming up again. “Hey, there, Pumpkin, slow down on those pancakes. You don’t want to end up like your old man, do you?” He slapped his large gut, causing it to jiggle as he let out a hearty belly laugh. Jessica sighed, letting her fork drop to the plate. She was always a thin girl, with pancakes being the only food she ever allowed herself to indulge in. She hated to feel shame infecting that one little pleasure she had portioned herself.
“Are you ready to come help me with the tractor?” he said after another long, painful silence in the conversation. Jessica nodded, a defeated look in her eye.
~
“You know,” her father began as Jessica measured the rubber for the tractor’s band, “you should be happy you didn’t get accepted into that school.”
“And why is that?” Jessica said, her hands starting to shake a little with frustration. She had asked him not to talk about it, but she knew he’d be harping on it all day. Perhaps the rest of her life, she thought with dread.
“Well, face it, Pumpkin. You’re a farm girl from Stapleton. Why do you want to go out to the city?” Her father asked. He had asked her this question many times.
“I want…well, wanted…to make a better life for myself, Dad.” Jessica said, the rubber slipping from her sweaty hands. “I wanted to really be somebody, to accomplish something…” she started again, but her father cut her off.
“What’s the matter, we’re not good enough for you?” He barked. Jessica, surprised by the bluntness of this sentiment, dropped the shears. They bit into her left arm as they fell, and Jessica howled in pain.
“Just can’t pay attention, can you?” Her father berated. “Just like that test that sunk your college dreams, huh? Always choking when it matters most. Face it, even if you had gotten accepted, you wouldn’t have made it out there.”
Tears streamed down Jessica’s face. Her arm hurt, and so did the humiliation, but what hurt most was that she knew her father was right. She refused to turn around and meet his gaze.
“Go upstairs and clean yourself up,” he said with little sympathy in his voice. “Come back down here when you’re ready to give 100%.”
~
Jessica, back in bed, clutched at her bandaged arm and pondered her father’s words. When would she be willing to give 100% to farming? She knew in her heart that she never would.
Her eyes lazily drifted her room and fell on the apple and the letter from yesterday. A crazy idea started to creep its way across her mind. Should she take a bite?
What was the worst thing that could happen, she asked herself. The apple was poison, but her life was already over. And if it did work maybe, just maybe, she’d have the chance to prove her father wrong.
She picked the apple up, feeling a mixture of nervousness and silliness. She knew that nothing would likely happen, but the uncertainty was almost crippling. After what seemed like an agony of indecision, her train of thought was interrupted by her father’s voice outside her door.
“Come on, we don’t have all day. Let’s fix that tractor!” He bellowed.
“Let’s not!” she shouted back, and with a sense of purpose, she lifted her lips to the apple and took a bite.
Almost immediately, her arms began to feel like lead weights. They flopped on her side as she dropped the apple on the ground. It rolled towards the door, the single white bite mark standing out conspicuously.
Jessica’s body started to feel heavier too, and she fell upon the bed. Every muscle seemed to have a mind of its own, and soon even her eyelids would not stay open. She heard her father slowly open her door, but before he arrived at the side of her bed, she was fast asleep.
Chapter Three:
Jessica’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of a foghorn. She was in a chair in an unfamiliar café, and the air smelled like saltwater. Jessica had only seen and smelled the ocean once before in her life, so the smell was unmistakable.
She turned away from the center of the café to face the window. Sure enough, she was on the edge of a harbor, though it wasn’t one she recognized.
The foghorn sounded again, and this time it was accompanied by a man shouting in a strange accent. “All aboard for Olympia Island,” he said. “Todos a bordo para Olympia Isla. Усе на борт Алімпія выспы,” he continued, saying the phrase in a variety of languages Jessica could not understand.
“You better get going,” an elderly looking barista said as she made her way over to Jessica. “That’s your ship, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jessica said, still not understanding exactly what was happening. “But how did you know?”
“All of you girls come through here,” she said with a laugh. “This is the Poison Apple Café, after all. You were the last to show up. If you don’t run, you aren’t going to make it!”
Jessica returned her gaze to the window, and stared at the ship again. It was a large vessel, similar to a cruise ship. The flag had a complicated symbol on it, which Jessica finally realized was a larger version of the seal on her letter. She hesitated for a moment, wanting to know more about how she got here but not wanting to miss her transport.
“How did this happen?” Jessica asked at last.
“No time to explain, just go!” Her blue haired waitress urged. “Come on, get.”
Reluctantly, Jessica pulled herself out the chair. Her body was still quite sleepy and prevented her from moving as quickly as she would have liked. By the time she pulled her groggy form to the edge of the dock, she could see the ship was already in motion.
“Wait!” she shouted, hoping the man who was present just a few moments ago would hear her.
It was no use. The engines of the ship drowned out her voice. The large ship to Olympia Island was leaving without her. If she didn’t get on that ship, Jessica thought, she’d be stuck in somewhere in Greece without luggage, a passport…without even a wallet, she realized as she felt her pockets.
Jessica gazed into the sea with a look of defeat. Her father was right. She couldn’t even get on the boat in time. If she hadn’t been so indecisive about when to bite that apple, or if she hadn’t tried to ask so many questions of the barista, or if she had somehow forced her legs to move faster…
As she gazed into the water with a sense of futility, she saw something. A chain near the back of the boat was being pulled. From talking to her cousin in the Navy, Jessica knew that meant the sailors had forgotten to raise the anchor and were doing it now while the engines were still in low gear. If she jumped into the water and grabbed onto the chain, they’d hoist her aboard.
It was a crazy idea. Jessica, having spent almost her entire life on a farm, could barely even swim. Perhaps she’d catch hypothermia, drown, or get attacked by a shark?
“Don’t hesitate,” she told herself as she started to debate it. “Don’t miss your chance.”
She took a parting glance at the sea, closed here eyes, and then dove into the water.
Chapter Four:
The Mediterranean Sea at first greeted Jessica’s body like a wall of ice, but the cold passed very quickly. After a few strokes in the water to warm up her body, it was even pleasant. She made her way for the chain, and gripped it tightly. Before long, her body was slowly being lifted out the water. The rising sun glanced off the water and bright lights danced in Jessica’s eyes as cold wind whipped her wet locks.
A strange clicking sound greeted Jessica as she neared the edge of the ship’s side. Her body, along with the chain collided with the port side in a few painful bumps as a mechanical pulley raised the anchor chain enough for her to grasp the ledge. She let go of the chain and grasped it, trying to pull herself over.
Her wet shoe slipped on the side, and Jessica took a tumble. Her wet torso slid and bounced on the edge, and she screamed fell back towards the ocean. Her left arm clutched at the edge desperately for a moment, until she felt something warm encompass it.
“I’ve got you,” a soft, female voice spoke. Jessica felt a tug on her arm, and before she knew it, she was on board.
“Thanks,” Jessica said to the slender brunette girl who had pulled her to safety. She was dressed conservatively, but emanated a lot of natural beauty. Jessica thought she was a bit reminiscent of Megan Fox. “How did you know…” Jessica started, but was cut off.
“I was looking out of my porthole and saw you jump. I figured you might need a hand,” the girl said. “I’m Sarah, by the way. And you?”
“I’m Jessica. Are you going to be a student as well?” She asked.
“Yes, I got my letter and my apple yesterday. It’s a pity you didn’t take a bite of yours a bit earlier, you missed the orientation explaining everything this morning,” Sarah said quietly.
“Do you think you could fill me in?” Jessica asked.
“Of course. This is just a theory, but I think we’ll be spending a lot of time together. Everyone is two to a cabin here, and the girl who was supposed to join my room last time never showed. That could be you, so you’d be my roommate,” Sarah conjectured.
“Is that why you were looking out the porthole?” Jessica asked, staring to shiver with cold.
“Yes, I figured something like this might happen if you were running late. They like to run a tight ship here in terms of the schedule. No pun intended,” Sarah said as she grinned.
Chapter Five:
“Is my family going to be worried about me? I don’t have my cell phone,” Jessica asked Sarah as they walked to the dining hall for their lunch meal.
“None of us do. The people who run the school aren’t big on technology. No distractions. But don’t worry about you family. They said they take care of all that, so your family won’t worry,” Sarah explained.
“They’ll never believe that I would do something like this,” Jessica said. “I’m hardly sure I believe it myself.”
“I don’t blame you. The more I learn about this place, the more fantastical it seems,” Sarah said, as the two entered the dining area and got their plates. About 100 girls were in the large hall, which had mock Greek pillars and other Greco-themed decorations.
Jessica placed some kalamata olives and feta cheese on her plate from the buffet, and her and Sarah set an empty table.
“And is it only Americans who go to this school?” Jessica asked.
“Not at all, there are young women from all over the world here,” Sarah said.
“Excuse me?” A platinum blonde girl wearing well coifed hair and a pink skirt said as she approached the two, “Apparently, I’m like, not welcome over there with those ladies who think they’re already in Aphrodite? So, can I sit here?” she asked, with a southern California “valley” inflection.
“Sure, but what’s Aphrodite?” Jessica asked.
“She missed orientation,” Sarah added helpfully. “Jessica, Aphrodite is one of the four houses of Olympia academy. It involves disguises that allow women to make any man fall in love with them, or so I’ve gathered. I’m sure getting sorted into that house would be very desirable for some women,” Sarah added.
“You mean the girls that are like catty little bitches?” Crystal asked. “Excuse my language, girlfriends, I’m sorry, that’s not me at all, I guess I’m just having a rough day?”
“It couldn’t have been rougher than what Jessica went through,” Sarah said after a while, clearly fazed by the swearing. “She had to jump into the ocean and grab the anchor to get on the boat, that’s why her hair is so wet.”
Jessica nodded in acknowledgement. “What did the other girls do that bothered you so much, Crystal?”
“I don’t even know? They were speaking French and they kept pointing and laughing at me,” she said. “Stupide pute américaine, what does that even mean?” Crystal wailed.
“Well, I speak French, but I hesitate to translate,” Sarah said. “Sufficed to say, that is indeed quite rude, but please feel welcome at our table, Crystal.”
“Those girls, how do they even know that they aren’t going to end up in, like Persephone or Athena?” Crystal added.
“Wait, Medusa, Athena?” Jessica asked.
“Those are other houses,” Sarah replied.
“Please, just tell me everything you remember from the orientation,” Jessica asked. “I hate being confused about everything like this.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk with my mouth full,” Sarah began. “Let’s finish up here and I’ll try to provide with you but as much detail as I can. Afterwards, I’ll take you to the admin section, and get you properly registered. We all had to do that this morning.”
“Hope you don’t mind if I go with?” Crystal asked. “Spending any more time with my room mate Claudette, with her laughing at me, does that sound fun to you?”
~
“There are four houses that you can be a part of at Olympia. We’ll get officially sorted once we reach the island, but of course, that hasn’t stopped lots of girls from immediately assuming they know which of the houses they will be placed in. You see, each one represents a different kind of disguise,” Sarah explained as the three girls left the dining hall together. “Athena is about the disguise of old age. Aphrodite is about loveliness, being disguised as what others find beautiful. Persephone house disguise is more masculine and dark, like a biker chick or a metal-head.”
“And what about the fourth house?” Jessica asked as they climbed some steps to the surface deck of the ship.
Sarah hesitated for a moment, and was about to start answering when a dull noise cut her off. A fair roar could be heard in the distance. Jessica looked off the bow of the vessel and saw a motorboat rapidly approaching. As she squinted, she could make out a pale skinned woman operating it, wearing a red beret and gold rimmed sunglasses. Her brown hair was whipped up by the wind, and her body was clad in what appeared to be a leather jumpsuit.
As the mysterious woman approached the boat, she pulled something from her belt and aimed it directly at where the three girls were standing. There was a loud whistling noise, and a metal hook shot into the hair, landing on the railing. She skillfully rappelled up the grappling hook, leading the girls to the impression that it wasn’t the first time she had used the tool.
At that moment, an older woman wearing a uniform ran up the stairs and entered the deck.
“I just got heard a report that someone hijacked a local’s motorboat from the harbor. Was that you?” She asked the mysterious guest as she retracted her rappelling tool.
“I was running late,” the woman replied with a think Eastern European accent.
“Be that as it may,” the older woman began, “That’s no excuse to commit a crime. I’m not going to report you, but consider this a warning.”
After a long, pregnant pause, Jessica spoke up. “I’m Jessica, and this is Sarah and Crystal. We were just on our way to Admin to get registered, since I showed up late too. You are welcome to come with us…” Jessica’s voice trailed off, expecting the newcomer to introduce herself.
“I’ll find my own way,” the woman replied.
“It’s no trouble,” Jessica said quickly. “It’s a big ship, easy to get lost. I was eager to find out about how they’d contact home and let my family know I was ok, and there are apparently different houses for…” But their new guest cut her off.
“I don’t need the help of some whiny, pancake tits little know it all,” she said, and stormed down the stairs.
The three girls stood in silence for a moment. Jessica finally spoke. “What was the fourth house, Sarah?”
“Medusa house,” Sarah replied. “For monsters.”
Chapter Six:
“Sarah?” Jessica asked softly, wondering if her cabin mate was asleep.
“Yeah? I’m still awake if that’s what you’re asking.” she replied a little groggily.
“What house do you think you’ll get in?” Jessica asked.
“I don’t know exactly. Not Medusa, that’s for sure. Three out of four chance, right?” Both girls giggled a little at this.
“You really think that Russian girl is going to end up in Medusa?” Jessica asked.
“Well, from talking with some of the other girls who know a bit more about the school than I do, Medusa does have a bit of a reputation for girls who are…well, to put it politely, very similar to that woman, yes. I’d like to think I’m not in that class of person,” Sarah replied.
“So that leaves the other three, Athena, Aphrodite, and Persephone. If Aphrodite is for snobby French girls, like the ones that were mean to Crystal, I don’t know if that’s for me either,” Jessica said.
“Well, I guess that leaves Athena and Persephone. I don’t know which of them would be better, but I’ll be happy if I don’t get into Medusa,” Sarah said.
“Do you really worry you might?” Jessica asked. “I mean, I would like us to end up in the same house.”
“As long as that house isn’t Medusa,” Sarah said. “Gives me the willies. I’d like to be in the same house as you too, but I won’t follow you down that road.”
“Well, do we really have a choice for what we see on our vision quest thing?” Jessica asked.
“It’s a vision quest, Jessica. I can’t imagine you see anything other than what you want to see, at least at an unconscious level…” Sarah’s voice trailed off.
“But what if we see something in our unconscious that’s unexpected? Something that we didn’t think we’d find? Something that propels us into the wrong house?” Jessica asked, sounding scared.
“Well, a better question, Jessica, is can you really say a house is wrong if you don’t know which house would be right?”
Jessica sighed. “I guess that’s so. Although I have to admit, all of the disguise ideas are interesting on some level. The idea of being able to become someone else is pretty fascinating.”
“Is that how you look at it, becoming someone else? I’d always assumed I was still me, just in disguise,” Sarah pointed out.
“Well, I just meant…everyone else will perceive you as a different person,” Jessica responded.
“Yeah, if they don’t know you are in a disguise. If you let them know, they’d still think you’re you. But I think I see your point. You’ll be projecting a different kind of persona out into the world,” Sarah said.
~
Olympia Island itself was a site to behold. A mammoth tower made of what looked like white marble jutted up from the center of the island. Jessica’s view of the tower was obscured as the ship maneuvered away, to a small harbor on the island’s edge.
“I’ll bet that’s the school,” Jessica remarked of the tower.
“Do you think the town sells clothes?” Crystal asked. “I didn’t bring anything from home, did you?”
“I have a feeling all of our things might be on the ship right now,” Sarah said, and as soon as they were secured, luggage was ferried out of a lower compartment of the ship.
“How did you know that?” Crystal asked as they regained their land legs.
“It was just logical. If they can bring us here like magic, why not our belongings? Besides, it makes sense that if they want us to shop, they’ll want us to shop for things for our alter egos, not our regular selves,” Sarah explained.
Sarah didn’t get a chance to see if her theory was valid. The girls were given their mysteriously packed bags, and then instructed to march onwards to Olympia Tower. The uniformed officers of the ship did not join them.
Chapter Seven:
After dragging their luggage about a mile on a roughly hewn gravel road from the village, the girls arrived at Olympia Tower. Many were tired and lagging behind the pack, but Jessica and Sarah were up at the front, eager to see the inside of the school as soon as possible. Alongside them was the mysterious woman with the Eastern European accent they had encountered. She sneered at Jessica as they stopped at a set of ominously large, wooden doors.
Seemingly of their own accord, the doors slowly began to creak open, and before long, the girls were facing a dark, foreboding passageway into the tower.
“First door on the right,” a woman’s voice called out, seemingly from nowhere. “Come on, first year students, come along.”
The girls proceeded as instructed, and they entered what appeared to be a large rotunda. Jessica’s first thought was that given its immense size, the entire first floor of the building must have been dedicated to nothing but this stage. Open air windows and candles built into indentations in the marble provided light. In the center, she saw a slightly raised stage and a modest, unassuming podium. Behind it was a small maple tree, growing out of the earthen floor of the hall.
Jessica and Sarah quickly took seats next to each other, and soon Crystal caught up with them. As she strained her eyes into the far area, Jessica thought she could see the far side of the rotunda decorated in four different flags.
“Those flags look a little familiar…” Jessica began.
“They are the same four symbols as the crest on our letters. They stand for the four houses of Olympia,” Sarah explained.
“Are we going to be sorted now?” Crystal asked.
“It would appear so,” Sarah replied.
“Well, I hope we all wind up in the same house, whatever it is,” Jessica said.
After a brief interval of waiting, all of the students had made their way into the hall. A few uncomfortable minutes of whispering and waiting ensued. Finally, a short, stout, blue haired matron wearing a flowing blue dress and a purple, regal looking cardigan waddled towards the podium.
“Girls, welcome to Olympia Academy,” she began in a warbled English accent. “I am Headmistress Silvia Hawthorne.”
“Here at Olympia, we study ancient arts of disguise. You will learn how to look differently, act differently, and think differently. Your perspective will be transformed as you begin to really wonder…what lies beneath?”
“As I’m sure you’ve already been told, today we are going to sort you into one of four houses: Athena, Persephone, Aphrodite, and Medusa. Your house is your family at Olympia. You will share living quarters, take classes together, and learn to disguise yourselves in a similar fashion to those in your house. In addition, we have something of a contest every year between the houses a little later on in the year, during which you can demonstrate your pride in your house and lead them to victory. Medusa house has wont his contest six years in a row. Will they continue their reign or will this be the year that breaks that streak? It is all up to you…”
“In order to be sorted into your houses, each of you will experience a vision quest. When the quest is completed, you can announce to us to which house you have been sorted, then take your seat in the gallery behind me, under the flag of your new home. Now,” Sylvia began as she pulled out a ream of parchment, “Let us begin. Vanessa Appleton?”
A small looking girl with honey colored hair and a soft, feminine looking ruffle dress slowly shuffled her way towards the podium. Sylvia instructed her to place her hand on the small maple tree behind her, and she did so and closed her eyes.
For a moment, the tree shook, and then it was still. Jessica began to notice after a while that the leaves were changing color. First, they were darkening, losing their natural green hue. Then, they were changing again – becoming redder. For a moment, they became almost pinkish, but then they quickly reverted back to red. Vanessa pulled back from the tree, her eyes suddenly wide.
“Persephone,” she said with a soft voice. Soft clapping soon followed. Jessica strained her eyes and identified small clusters of slightly older looking girls in the far side of the rotunda. She could tell that the students under Persephone’s bright red flag were the ones clapping, though Jessica couldn’t make out their faces.
“Tanya Voinna,” Sylvia read from the parchment as Vanessa slowly made her way towards Persephone’s flag. Jessica didn’t have to guess which student that was, or what house she was headed for.
The Eastern European girl who had insulted Jessica yesterday got to her feat and confidently strutted towards the podium. She placed her hands on the tree without any instruction, and the leaves immediately darkened. For a moment, they flashed pink, but the overall darkness continued, and soon, Jessica couldn’t see the leaves for the darkness that enveloped them.
“Medusa,” she said as she pulled herself back from the branches. Clapping ensued, but the girls at the Medusa section were far louder than those at Persephone.
“Jessica Morris,” Sylvia said, and Jessica practically jumped. She had been so transfixed on watching the ritual that she had almost forgotten that she could have been called at any time. She pulled herself to her feet and walked slowly towards the tree. Tanya was long gone. Jessica could see her exchange a high five with the older Medusa girls.
She was sure that wasn’t where she belonged. Yet, where was she to go? Elderliness, Masculinity, Seduction, or…Monstrosity? And what exactly was going to happen? If she was just watching the leaves, waiting for them to change color, why did the other girls all close their eyes? And why did Vanessa look so startled?
With trepidation, and some encouragement from Sylvia, Jessica placed her left hand onto the trunk of the maple tree.
The moment that her fingers touched the bark, Jessica felt her consciousness violently shift, as if she had been forcibly and unexpectedly been tossed into a freezing cold lake.
For a couple of seconds, her mind was spinning, but the image quickly came into somewhat clearer focus. Individual events still seemed to happen in an odd way, as though in a dream.
She was no longer in the hall, but instead, in a breakfast restaurant of some kind. A thin, blonde woman was at a table near the front, and was asking her waitress for extra maple syrup for her pancakes. Jessica hadn’t quite sat down, but was near one of the tables. She tried to walk closer, but her legs would not move on their own accord. She lumbered in an odd and unusual way. Had she become some kind of hulking, brutish beast? Was she destined for Medusa after all?
A small boy ran right in front of her, and as he stopped and stared directly at her, Jessica felt her worst fears confirmed. He looked up at her with a disconcerted look, and then ran off. Jessica figured that her monster guise must have scared him to death.
Jessica finally managed to pull herself onto one of the chairs, and after a few seconds, a waitress appeared. She boasted a large, toothy grin and a slicked back ponytail.
“Do you know what you’ll be having, Ma’am?” she asked. To Jessica, her voice seemed fair away and muffled. She looked at the menu, but it was hopelessly blurry.
“What’s that?” she tried to ask, her voice full of rattles and wobbles.
“I said, do you know what you want to order. We do offer a senior citizen’s discount,” the waitress added helpfully.
Everything suddenly came into focus. So, she was in Athena! She was surprised it was this easy. Feeling a bit more oriented, she looked down and saw she was in a grey cardigan, hugging a far plumper body than she was used to. She felt around the collar, and she realized she had a band for her glasses.
“I’ll come back in a few minutes,” the waitress said, clearly tired of waiting for Jessica to reply.
Jessica got her glasses on, and the room was suddenly sharp. She looked around at the room, and felt a bit more comfortable. So this was what it was like to be an old lady? And, did her destiny then truly lie with Athena house?
She noticed the blonde woman at the table closest to the door. She was making loud groans of pleasure and smacking her lips loudly as she shoveled in her pancakes, which had been drowned in a bathtub of syrup. So fast was her devouring of her breakfast, stray bits of syrup had made their way unto her cheeks. With a bit of surprise, she noticed the woman wasn’t as thin as she had remembered her being when she first entered the dream.
Was that because her glasses weren’t on? Perhaps that was the case. Jessica was about to write off the change, when she saw the woman change again. She seemed to be gaining weight right before her eyes. Her cheeks, flecked with syrup, were getting rounder, like the shape of an apple. Her lips were smeared with a little butter, and below them, the girl was sporting a small double chin. Her upper arms, now making rapid motions cutting the pancakes, were now jiggling violently. Her breasts were straining against a top now far too small for them, creating some obscene looking cleavage.
Jessica tried to make sense of what she was seeing. The girl looked a lot like herself, or at least, herself not in a disguise. But it wasn’t exactly her. The hair was too blonde, for one thing. But was it a representation of her? Was this some sort of anxiety instilled by her father, expressed in the most graphic form?
The dream suddenly started to fade rapidly. Jessica’s vision went white, and then she was back in the rotunda, her hand letting go of the maple trunk.
A sickening thought occurred to her. Was this all too easy? She didn’t have a mirror. She had only a single comment to go by. What if that woman was wrong – or intentionally trying to deceive her? Nobody else had spoken to her in the breakfast diner. The little boy had only reacted by showing fear. That’s the kind of response she’d expect from just about all of the houses…aside from Aphrodite, she supposed. Another thought occurred to her: would anybody else be able to know what she saw? Couldn’t she just place herself into any house she liked?
Jessica then remembered the changing leaves. They all pointed to a specific house’s color. Surely they’d know if she had picked the wrong one. What would happen to her then?
Aphrodite had the disguise that would please others, that was for certain. But is that what she wanted to do, please others? That wasn’t her at all. Persephone was interesting, but it wasn’t what intrigued her when she got her letter.
Athena it was, then. It had the distinct advantage of almost certainly being the one she had been chosen for, too.
“Athena,” Jessica said at last. Clapping issued from the girls in the appropriate section, and Jessica turned and made her way towards the blue flag.
Chapter Eight:
Before Jessica could take her seat, she heard Sarah’s name called. Jessica didn’t introduce herself to the other Athena girls as she quickly sat – she was intently watching the tree, hoping it would send her to Athena, too.
The leaves seemed to flash red for a moment, but quickly changed to blue. After a short time, Sarah released her hand from the tree, and answered “Athena.”
When Sarah made her way over to Jessica in the stands, she smiled.
“We have to talk about what just happened!” Jessica whispered.
“I’m not sure I want to,” Sarah began, “but I’m happy indeed that we are in the same house. Someone from Athena delivered both of our letters, so I suppose it is only appropriate that we got sorted into that house.”
“Do you think they knew in advance which house we’d be sorted into?” Jessica whispered.
“I doubt that, because if so, why go through this elaborate demonstration?” Sarah asked in reply.
Jessica pondered that question as a few more girls went through the ritual, none of them ending up in Athena. A tall looking redhead with a black headband and a large nose ring named Angela, who looked as though she was already in a Persephone disguise, was sorted into Medusa. A pair of French twin sisters was sorted into Aphrodite. Finally, the moment they were waiting for: Crystal’s name was called.
The maple leaves turned bright pink, and Jessica and Crystal sighed in unison. So, Crystal was going to end up in Aphrodite after all. Jessica had given up almost all hope when the leaves started to turn blue. They turned pink again rapidly, and then for a few seconds, they seemed to flash bright pink and bright blue alternatively. Jessica couldn’t tell which color the tree had ended on when it stopped flashing as Crystal pulled her hand away.
“I don’t know if I’m sure?” Crystal asked Sylvia.
“My child, what did the vision suggest to you?” The headmistress replied.
“I don’t know, what if there are, like, two ways of looking at it?” Crystal asked.
“I can’t tell you what you saw,” was Sylvia’s only reply. Crystal turned around and scanned the back of the rotunda, her eyes finally landing on Jessica and Sarah.
“Athena?” she said, her voice raise as if she still doubted herself. Jessica and Crystal rose to their feet and applauded, and Crystal ran as fast as her high heeled shoes would carry her. When she arrived, the three girls shared an embrace.
“Wow, so weird, what was that?” Crystal asked.
“I’m not sure at all,” Jessica said. “But thank goodness it’s over with.”
~
After the rest of the students were sorted, Jessica, Sarah and Crystal were led to the Athena dormitories by the older members of their house. Athena house was up a flight of marble stairs, the door decked with two blue flags emblazoned with Athena’s crest.
Old fashioned wallpaper covered up the marble, and a plaid couch that looked like it was out of the 1950s was in the main hall. All of the furniture seemed new but very old in style, as if someone went shopping 50 years go. The room smelt of musty dry flowers and cellophane, reminding Jessica of the smell of her grandmother’s home in Kansas.
Jessica wondered if all of the houses were similarly furnished, or if this was a setup specific to Athena. That question seemed to be answered by the discovery of the wardrobe rooms.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Crystal asked as she opened the large doors to colossal walk in closet. Inside the giant wardrobe, Jessica saw rows upon rows of different sized and colored cardigans, alongside different styles of paisley dresses. There were hundreds of old fashioned hats on a giant hat rack that nearly reached the ceiling. There was a bin full of granny panties and endless stacks of boxes with frumpy old lady shoes. Shelves with gaudy old jewelry boxes were filled to the brim with pearl necklaces and gold rimmed glasses on chains.
“No, I haven’t,” Jessica began as she surveyed the mountain of old woman clothes and paraphernalia. “But it can’t be as simple as just putting this stuff on. They are going to have to teach us something special to make these disguises really work.
Chapter Nine:
“Your first class is going to be introduction to potion making. All the first year girls from each house are required to attend that one. After that, you’ll go onto house specific classes with less overlap,” explained Jordan, a third year Athena girl from England, to Jessica during breakfast the next day.
“Overlap?” Jessica asked, as she enjoyed her breakfast of melon, pineapple, and blueberries.
“Yes, you see, all houses use potions. But some houses have…let’s just say, more similarities than others,” Jordan said with a coy look.
“I think I get it,” Sarah chimed in. “Medusa house doesn’t have as many similarities because it is the only house that isn’t human.”
“You’d be surprised, actually,” Jordan said. “Medusa is scary, and Persephone could be seen as scary to a certain type of person, for example.”
“Will they teach us what to do?” Crystal said. “I mean, this all seems pretty complicated, don’t you girls think?”
“They will, in a way. It’s often more about trial and error. They will give you the tools to figure out what success means to you,” Jordan offered cryptically as she flipped her straight brown hair. “Just out of curiosity, do any of you recognize me?” she asked.
When silence was here only reply, Jordan smiled. “That’s brilliant. I’m glad my disguise is so good. I was the one that delivered your letters! Being the ‘ambassador,’ as it’s called, was my summer job for the school.”
“No way, you were the old lady?” Crystal asked.
“I sure was,” Jordan said, smiling with pride. “Right, then. Off you three go, or you’ll be tardy for your first class. Wouldn’t want to be the cause of that.”
The girls made their way downstairs, and filed into the rotunda. This time, they all made their way directly to the sections of the stands marked by the flag of their new house.
“Just yesterday, we were all the same, but today, we are on different teams,” Jessica remarked pessimistically.
“I’m sure it’s for the best,” Sarah replied. “It wouldn’t do for us all to learn the exact same things and live in the same place. Besides, isn’t it good to get a little distance from Tanya over there?” Jessica glanced over at the Medusa section and found Tanya glaring at her.
At last, a vivacious, red haired woman in her early 30s took the podium, and the class began. “Greetings, students, and welcome to your first day of a new you. I’m Professor Selene, and believe it or not, I can still clearly remember my first day as a young entrant of Aphrodite house…50 years ago,” she paused for dramatic effect, clearly taking great pride in her disguise.
They say beauty is only skin deep,” she started, “So, it is only fitting that today, we learn how to remake your skin. Each of you will have one hour to attempt to brew a potion to create a new skin for your disguise. At the end of that hour, your house will confer and select the best of you to be their representative. I’ll judge those four and give the winner a special prize.” The woman pressed a button under the podium, and the marble under the girls feet shifted and rose as if by magic. It formed into a facsimile of a desk, complete with an instruction book and a tray of herbs, a few beakers, mixing bowels, and a mortar and pestle.
“Your hour begins…now! Good luck,” she said with a wink.
~
“I guess Jordan wasn’t kidding when she said we’d be doing trial and error,” Jessica said with exasperation, after the girls had nearly exhausted the hour trying to follow the cryptic brewing instructions. “She just shoved this book in her face, and we’re supposed to figure it out on our own?”
“Trial and error, right?” Crystal asked. “Here goes nothing, maybe it will work?” She chugged her potion, a black, thick gooey mixture. She coughed and spat, cursing the taste.
For a moment, Sarah and Jessica did nothing but stare. Soon, though, changes began to occur rapidly. Her face became paler, losing its tan. Soon the pigment drained from her skin completely, rendering her albino.
“How do I look?” Crystal asked with optimism. Jessica and Sarah did not answer, only scrunching up their faces in dismay. “That bad huh? Ok, Sarah, why don’t you try?”
Sarah lifted her mixture to her lips, and drank. Age spots appeared to appear on her skin, but aside from that, no other change was visible.
“That’s pretty good,” Jessica said. Sarah pulled out a hand mirror from her purse and surveyed her work herself. “Yeah, but not good enough.” She turned around to look at the other Athena girls behind her. Most of them had also miscalculated, with generally circus like strange skin tones as the result. “Jessica, I guess this one is up to you, if you want Athena to win that prize,” Sarah said with trepidation.
“I wonder what it is?” Crystal asked.
“I bet something really good,” Jessica replied. “I hope I don’t blow it.” Feeling cautious, she allowed only the smallest sip of her blue hued mixture to touch her lips.
Jessica couldn’t see herself, but she saw the eyes of Sarah and Crystal grow wide. “You did it!” Sarah shouted after a moment of silent disbelief. She thrust her hand mirror into Jessica’s palm.
Jessica saw her face full of wrinkles, as well as age spots. Crows feet had sprouted under her eyes, and her neck as wrinkled and sagging. Her forehead was lined and small blue veins were visible under her slightly translucent skin.
“Wow,” she gasped in amazement. “I don’t even know how I did it!”
“You must be a natural,” Sarah said supportively. “But Athena’s got a real shot, now, thanks to you.”
“I agree, well done,” a deep voice intoned from behind Jessica. She jumped and turned around to see her face to face with Tanya, whose face bore a smirk and whose fingers were stained in dark blue.
“Tanya, what are you doing over here?” Jessica asked.
“I’m just surveying my competition. It appears, much to my surprise, that you could be my main contender for the prize,” Tanya quickly grabbed the beaker from Jessica’s desk.
“Hey, that’s mine,” she said.
“Just having a look,” Tanya responded, turning around and holding the flask up the light. “Impressive. But the fire seed prize is mine.”
“How do you know what the prize is?” Sarah said. Tanya looked a little flushed and quickly put the beaker down.
“None of your business. We Medusa girls are just…better informed,” she said in her thick accent. “I’ll be leaving now.”
“You do that,” Jessica replied, and her adversary made a hasty retreat.
“What was that all about?” Crystal asked. Before anyone could answer, Seline walked back into the rotunda and shouted “Time!”
“Please, select your representative for demonstration to the class. Persephone?”
Vanessa walked into the middle of the rotunda, her skin emblazoned with some tough looking tattoos of dragons and knives on her arms.
“I love the body art,” Seline began, “but you’ve only got the sleeves…but perhaps I’m just being a perfectionist. Alright, you can take a seat. Aphrodite?”
One of the twin French girls rose. Her skin had a gaudy coat of makeup on it.
“This is all very well done, Claudette, but I can’t just let you win because you’re part of my house. Makeup isn’t part of your skin, so I can’t give you the top marks…” Seline said with a sigh. “Medusa?”
Tanya strutted towards the center of the rotunda. Unlike the first two girls, she hadn’t drank her potion quite yet. Once she was at the center, she drank a swig with dramatic emphasis.
Her pink skin melted into a greenish, somewhat leathery form. The change was a subtle, smooth shift over several seconds, and Jessica had no doubt that she had mixed her potion well. The Medusa table cheered.
“Excellent job, Tanya. Very uniform distribution. If Athena can’t beat that, you’re the champion. Athena?”
“Take this. Your sip from a few minutes ago is wearing off,” Sarah said as she handed Jessica the flask. “Good luck.”
Jessica took her place at the center of the rotunda and downed another sip of her potion, but instead of cheering from the Athena section, gasps could be heard. The other three houses were laughing. Jessica quickly pulled out Sarah’s hand mirror from her pocket and saw why.
Her face had started to swell up, and was flat and blue. It looked like a huge blueberry! Jessica, mortified, tried to cover her eyes.
“I’m sorry that didn’t work so well, though for the life of me I don’t know why your house selected you to represent them! Here, drink this, it’ll counteract the effects,” Seline said, administering a clear liquid from a small bottle in her purse.
“It was working a few minutes ago, I don’t know what happened,” Jessica said with exasperation as her face returned to normal. Seline merely shrugged and Jessica slunk back to her place next to Crystal and Sarah.
“I believe we have our winner,” Seline said as she produced a small bag from the breast pocket of her pink pantsuit. “Congratulations are in order for Tanya and Medusa house.” The house’s section erupted in more cheers, and Tanya repeated her strut to the center of the room. She grabbed the seeds out of Seline’s hand and clutched them triumphantly for a moment, before raising them above her head, her hand clenched into a first.
Chapter Ten:
“Weight gain, in some form or another, can be a part of every house here at Olympia,” began their second professor, an appropriately plump older lady in a billowy purple dress. The girls were in their next class, in a smaller room upstairs ensconced in wood and decked out like a cabin.
“In Persephone, it can represent the loss of a strict diet, or the consumption of heavy foods, but it is often accompanied by muscle growth as well. In Medusa, some of the monsters are a bit larger than their human counterparts,” the professor, named Tiffany, intoned in a heavy Texas drawl. “You girls may be surprised that even Aphrodite girls learn about weight gain. And not just focused weight gain in specific areas, such as the buttocks or the breasts, but in some cases, they learn to do it all over. Remember, that house is about fulfilling images of beauty, and for some, a curvy form is the image of beauty.”
“Most women experience a slowing of their metabolism with age, and their natural body shape can also change. That is why it is important to emphasize for our house. In this Athena only class, you girls will not only learn how to brew a potion that gain cause weight gain, but you’ll also learn the much more subtle art of how to apply that weight gain in a way that creates the look of a heavy, older lady,” she continued. “Now, this obviously is going to require a great deal of calories, so there’s no better place to start then sugar. Any sugar based liquid, such as molasses or corn syrup, once properly enchanted, can function to effect weight gain…although, you can’t count out milk or ice cream…” she droned.
“I’ve figured it out!” Sarah whispered to Jessica, startling her. “I know why the potion didn’t work.”
“Sarah, please. First, I want to listen to this, and second, I don’t want to think about that anymore,” Jessica whispered back in protest.
“Wait, you need to know you were cheated! Tanya sabotaged your potion!” Sarah exclaimed. Jessica’s ears perked up.
“Go on…” she urged, feeling furious.
“I think she must have dropped some blueberry juice in your flask. We had blueberries for breakfast, she could have smuggled some into class. And her fingers were stained with something bluish. And now the weight gain on the face – the sugar in the berries! She could have dipped her finger into the potion just as you turned around and spoiled it.
“Do you really think she’d do something like that?” asked Crystal, who was listening it.
“It’s not about what I think she’s capable of,” Sarah explained, “it’s about the evidence. How else could Jessica’s potion work one minute and stop working the next? Nobody else touched it except Tanya.”
Her words hung in the air for a moment, and nobody said a word. Apparently, the lecture was over as well, because at that moment, desks pushed their way out of the floor, along with instructions on how to start experimenting with potions and a plethora of sugary substances to work with as bases.
“At least there isn’t a contest with this one,” Jessica grumbled as she got to work mixing chocolate sauce, soda pop, taffy and gummy worms in a large bowl.
~
“Wow, girls. We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Tiffany exclaimed with a sigh as she surveyed the classroom an hour later. Their experimentation at creating sugary weight gain had been a comical and dismal failure. The first year Athena girls were now a misshapen lot, with out of proportion body parts. Linda, a tall athletic girl, had a pair of oversized breasts that hung down to her waist. Josephina, a girl from Mexico, had a belly that looked as though she was 10 months pregnant with triplets. Tamika, who was from New Orleans, had a but that stuck out three feet from her body and seemed to be completely immune from the effects of gravity.
Crystal’s body was hopefully top heavy, with puffy chipmunk cheeks, rounded shoulders and a massive bosom, but otherwise thin. Sarah was the opposite, sporting heavy legs, saddlebags, thick thighs, and a ponderous but retaining her slender physique elsewhere on her body.
“Well, it looks like we have one success story,” Tiffany said as she surveyed Jessica. Her sugary mix had created a balanced, plump, and heavy look to her body. Her legs were thick and wobbly, her waist was lined with rolls, and her arms were very pudgy.
“Good use of the gummy worms. They work wonders for creating that old lady arms effect,” she remarks and she gave Jessica’s arm a gentle slap, causing the fat to jiggle for several seconds. “And I like how you mashed up the taffy beforehand. That created the nice look of a matronly, large, fallen bosom,” she said, pointing to Jessica’s chest. “Crystal over here has big knockers, but they are just defying gravity over there.”
“Well, it looks like you succeed again,” Sarah said.
“Yeah, but when it didn’t count,” Jessica complained.
“Why can’t they just tell us what to do?” Crystal whined. “Why do we have to figure it out for ourselves?” Tiffany just smiled knowingly and moved on to the next group of students.
“It does appear to be quite confusing…there doesn’t appear to be a logical reason to have us all re-learn how to do something the professors, and presumably the older girls, have already deduced how to do…unless…” Sarah began.
“Unless that’s the whole point,” Jessica finished for her. “We’re learning how to do it so that we each learn how to do it a little differently, so that we each create our own disguise alter ego. If we each learned the exact same technique, we’d come out looking like a row of clones.”
~
Their next class was introduced by a hunchbacked, ancient looking woman. She wore a dark black skirt with frilly white blouse and black cardigan, with a pince nez on her long, thin nose.
She stared at the class with cold, stoic grey eyes, with similarly colored hair swept back loosely into a loose bun. She was easily in her seventies.
The professor announced in an elderly, severe voice, "My name is Brittany, and I am a very attractive blonde in her mid-twenties. In this class, you may call me Ms. Critchleigh. I was sitting where you are sitting right now five years ago. But thanks to good potion making skills and the right wardrobe choices, I am disguised as the woman you see me as today. With a little luck, you can be, too.”
“It is important to balance two distinct needs: First, the need to dress modestly and conservatively, and second, two select clothing that will showcase your new body. Of course, some of you will find your balance leaning towards one end of that spectrum, while others will find it on the opposite…”
“Make sure your clothes reflect your new, older body and find a balance of that spectrum. I enjoy wearing cardigans, because they can show off my larger, heavier assets while still maintaining a modest look. Accessories are important as well. Shoes can really make an outfit, as can old fashioned jewelry.”
Jessica leaned over to Sarah and began to whisper. “I can’t let Tanya get away with this. I think the only way to teach her a lesson is to master this stuff. They said Medusa had won the house competition six years in a row, right? If we can win it for Athena, that’ll show her.”
Chapter Eleven:
“Do you two have your disguise clothing ready?” Jessica asked Crystal and Sarah. “And your potions already brewed? We have no idea what they are going to do. They could ask us to do another one of those disguise competitions right there. We have to be ready for anything.”
“You’re right,” exclaimed Jordan. “Every year I’ve been here, they’ve changed it. I saw a non traditional beauty pageant my first year, and a song and dance bit last year.”
“Hold on a minute,” Sarah started. “How did Medusa manage to win a beauty contest?”
“Ursula Diuqs,” Jordan said as she rolled her eyes. “Had a mermaid get up or something like that, what have you.”
“A mermaid? Does that sound scary to you?” Crystal asked.
“I’m sure she made it scary somehow,” Jessica said. “But they aren’t winning this time.”
It had been several months since their start at Olympia, and Jessica, Crystal, and Sarah had all but perfected their disguises. They had been waiting for an announcement about the contest for weeks, and now it was finally here.
They grabbed their bags of disguise clothing and made their way downstairs to the main rotunda lecture hall. Sylvia was already at the center podium waiting for them.
“Students of Olympia, I have an announcement to make,” she began in her signature wobbly voice once everyone had taken their seats. “The traditional house contest has been cancelled this year.”
Groans and boos erupted from the girls, most loudly in the Medusa section. Jessica saw Tanya rise to her feet and shout what Jessica surmised was a curse word in a foreign language.
“Settle down girls, settle down,” she remanded. “It is very important that you pay attention. The traditional contest has been cancelled because we are doing a very different type of contest this year. Call it a treasure hunt, if you will…”
“The artifact is ring which we call ‘The Opal of Zues.’ Whichever girl can find and recover it will win the house contest. And we’ve decided that the prize will be the ring itself.”
A hushed silence fell over the room. It was broken by Tanya, who took to her feet.
“What does the ring do?” She asked. “Is it magic?”
“It is indeed,” Sylvia said, resting her arm on the maple tree for a moment. “Whoever wears it will experience the arc of fate bending towards them. This school itself was founded by a woman who wore the ring. I doubt that this institution would have come into existence without it.”
Tanya took her seat. Even from across the large room, Jessica could see the greedy lust for power in her eyes. She dreaded what someone like her would be capable of with such a device, and mentally redoubled her commitment to win the contest and the ring.
“All I can tell you is that the ring is still on Olympia Island,” Sylvia concluded. “Neither I nor the rest of the staff will assist you further than that. I can say, however…that your first clues may be closer than you think.”
Chapter Twelve:
Back at Athena hall, Sarah, Crystal and Jessica sat with their heads in their hands. “How are we going to find it?” Crystal moaned. The other Athena girls had left the common, wandering around the grounds or other parts of the island in search of the treasure.
“This island is ten square miles,” Sarah said. “I’m not sure there’s any way to effectively search for an object so small in such a vast area.”
“But she did say the first clues were closer than we think,” Jessica said. “If only we could figure out what that meant…”
“That could be just to throw us off. Let’s just go with what we know about the ring. I don’t think they’d bury it in the ground somewhere. It means finding it would be random, and it wouldn’t have very much security…I think it must be in a vault somewhere…” Sarah theorized.
“That, or maybe someone is wearing it?” Crystal asked. “A ring that cool, it’s got to be a pretty big fashion statement.”
“But if they gave it to someone to wear, or to hide, it must be someone they trust,” Jessica said. “Which means…it has to be a member of the faculty, or more likely, since they said that faculty wouldn’t assist us, someone who the faculty trusts…who shares their goals…”
“Magic would be bouncing around everywhere if they were wearing it, wouldn’t we notice that?” Sarah asked.
“Wait…I have noticed it. Closer than we think! It’s brilliant,” Jessica exclaimed.
“What? What is it?” Crystal asked.
“What was closer to us at the time of that announcement than the maple tree? My vision quest, I think it was a clue. I was at some kind of breakfast place, and I saw a girl gain weight from eating pancakes,” Jessica said.
“Pancakes can be pretty fattening, you know that, right?” Crystal asked.
“Yes, Crystal,” Jessica said. “But the girl asked for extra maple syrup, if I remember right, and…”
“Maple syrup – a sugary liquid. Perfect base for a weight gain potion,” Sarah chimed in. “I didn’t really want to talk about my vision quest much, but I suppose this is relevant. I think the name of the place is Magic Waffles, and I spoke with the owner in mine.”
“Why didn’t you want to talk about it?” Crystal asked.
“It made me a bit uncomfortable at the time, to be honest,” Sarah said. “Intrigued, but, also scared. I’m a good Mormon girl from Utah. I always try to be polite and I never use foul language. But in my vision quest, well…” She closed her eyes and remembered and recounted it as best as she could.
~
“I’d like to make a withdrawal,” the short man at the front counter said anxiously. “I want to withdraw an item placed into a safety deposit box…”
“Hold your damn horses,” Sarah heard herself say in a gruff, older sounding voice. “Let me pull up your account information first…alright, Mr. Trull. Do you have two forms of ID?”
“Here’s my passport,” the man said as he handed over the blue document. The red headed, grinning faced clearly matched his, but Sarah wasn’t satisfied.
“This is just one document, are you going to pull another one out of your ass or are you just wasting my time?” she heard herself bark out.
“Passports count as two in most banks, don’t they?” the man asked nervously.
“Count my fingers!” Sarah demanded, giving him the bird with both index fingers. “One, two. You need two forms, or you aren’t getting anything from me.”
“Well, there’s no need to be rude,” he said. “Look, I’m Daniel, I own the Magic Waffles breakfast place, and I need…”
“Who cares what the hell you need, you bastard. You haven’t given me what I need. Two forms of ID!” Sarah bellowed, her voice sounding scratchy and deep, as if it had gone through decades of smoking and menopause.
“There’s something very important in that box,” the man insisted. “I need it.”
Sarah let out a loud, rattling cackle. “I’m sure you do. But that’s not my problem.”
~
“Wait, did you say his name was Daniel Trull?” Crystal asked. “Short guy with red hair, late 20s?”
“Yes, why?” Sarah asked.
“Because he was in my quest as well, so do you think that he might be the key to finding the ring?” Crystal said.
“Tell us everything you remember,” said Jessica.
~
Crystal was in a nightclub of some kind, but it wasn’t familiar to her. Colored lights flashed sporadically on an otherwise dimly lit dance floor, and the bodies were densely stacked.
A short, red haired man in his 20s was dancing and grinding uncomfortably close to Crystal, and as the music stopped between songs, he spoke to her.
“Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven, baby? I’m Daniel Trull. Why don’t we get out of here and go back to my place,” he said with a drunken slur to his voice.
At the time, Crystal was eager for some clue as to which house she’d been sorted into. At this point, she was afraid it was Aphrodite. She ran to the bathroom and found a mirror, though for some reason the lights gave off only the dimmest possible light. Still, she could see enough of herself: she was a middle aged woman with an exaggerated hourglass figure, and ridiculous, jutting breasts. Was the young man she had talked to too busy ogling them to notice how old she was? She made her way to the dance floor again, and he was waiting for her.
“Don’t you think I’m a little old for you?” Crystal asked nervously.
“Nonsense, you’re just my type,” Daniel insisted. “Come by my place sometime. I keep the back door unlocked.” He paused for a moment, and then leaned right into Crystal’s ear. “I’ve got something special that could be just for you/”
~
“Don’t you see?” Jessica exclaimed when Crystal had finished recounting the story. “He has the ring. That’s what the something special is. That’s what wanted from the bank deposit box.”
“So should be go back to the bank?” Sarah asked.
“Or the waffle house?” asked Crystal.
“No, his home! That’s where he told Crystal to go. Sarah, I’m guessing when you pulled up the information on the computer, it gave you an address? Right here on the Island, huh?”
Sarah nodded.
“Well, what are we waiting for? If the other girls had similar vision quests, it’s only a matter of time before they figure it out too. There’s no time to lose.”
Chapter Twelve:
The girls ran as fast as they could to Daniel’s house. Few residential buildings existed on Olympia Island, so it wasn’t too difficult to locate.
Daniel’s home turned out to be easily the largest home on the island. A mini mansion that contained four visible floors, it was tucked away at the end of a dirt road as if to avoid attention.
They were relieved to not run into any other girls on the way, and they quickly beat a path to the back door. When they tried to open it, however, they found that it was locked.
“What do we do now?” Crystal asked. “Try the front door?”
“He told you to try the back…” Sarah began.
“That’s it,” Jessica said. “He didn’t tell you to try the back, Crystal. He told you in disguise to try the back. You need to get your disguise on.”
“What if he hits on me again? Are you making me go in there all alone?” Crystal asked.
“No, we are doing this together. Tell you what, we’ll change too. I could pose as your mom and Sarah could be your aunt!” Jessica said excitedly. “Come on, let’s go for it,” she added, and the girls started changing.
Crystal, though always a very fashion conscious girl, didn’t change her outfit much for her alter ego, whom she’d named Sheryl. Mini skirts, hot pants, tube tops, and similar teen garb were happened to be what both Crystal and Sheryl wore. She had once explained this conundrum by asking “Why does a middle aged woman have to dress her age? Why can’t she dress my age instead?” Her refusal to acknowledge her advancing years was one of Sheryl’s main personality characteristics.
The one aspect of the clothing that did need changing, of course, was the size. Crystal was very thin, but Sheryl wasn’t quite so trim, and so Crystal had to have clothing she wasn’t going to burst out of. After putting on some hot pants and a tube top in a much larger size, she pulled out a purple, swirling potion from her purse, uncorked it, and chugged.
Her thighs expanded in girth as she greedily swallowed down the liquid, growing rounder and slightly more dimpled with cellulite. Crystal’s butt grew larger, becoming a large bubble, while her hips widened. Her modest bust grew outwards, turning into two massive, though slightly fallen torpedoes. Her shoulders expanded as well, and her arms became a bit thicker and more muscular. She grew taller, and overall frame grew much bigger, making her something of a middle aged Amazon.
Some wrinkles etched their way into Crystal’s skin, although she retained the distinct look of a woman who had worn her years well. Tiny laugh lines and some small crow’s feet were visible, but somewhat hidden by an overdone makeup job. Her platinum blonde hair looked a tad artificial and brittle in an overdone hairdo, as if the woman who was now Sheryl was going to fight her age until the end of time.
“Let’s go,” Sheryl said in her deeper, more seductive voice. “I don’t want to keep Daniel waiting.”
“I thought that you were scared of him hitting on you,” Sarah replied.
“Crystal was scared. I’m eager,” Sheryl said. “Remember, I’m a Puma. I want cub meat,” she said with a glint in her eye and a greedy smile on her lips.
“It is weird how easy it is for us to slip into character when we take these things,” Jessica said worriedly. “Perhaps the potion brings out our repressed desires.”
“Speaking of that,” Sarah began. “Crystal, er, I mean Sheryl, how did you know you weren’t in Aphrodite, based on your vision quest?”
“I do remember the tree kept flashing between colors,” Jessica added.
“Oh, it really could have gone either way,” Sheryl said. “It’s like the teachers said, it’s all about the overlap, and there was a lot of that in me. It just came down to a choice I guess. I wanted to be with my friends.” All three girls smiled.
Sarah was next. Her clothes, unlike Sheryl’s, were the epitome of fashion-less. She put on an ill fitting, dark, sack of a dress, with gnarled looking leather shoes and some frayed gloves. She pulled out her dark blue potion and quickly gulped it down.
Sarah’s face started to get more wrinkled and dotted with age spots. Her nose became longer and hooked downwards, as her forehead became a mess of wrinkles. Her eyebrows became bushy and mangy, and a few veins started to show through her leathery, translucent, wrinkled skin. Big bags formed under her eyes and her lips became thin and her mouth became puckered. Her hair lost its luster and became tangled, white, and stringy.
Sarah’s body became shorter as she leaned over and became more hunchbacked. Her breasts didn’t become larger, so much as they became longer and more saggy, dragging and drooping across her new pot belly. Her butt became wider and hung over her new cottage cheese thighs.
“So, are we going to take this bastard’s ring or not?” barked Mildred, Sarah’s alter ego. Mildred walked with a crooked gait, cursed, grinded her teeth, and violently cackled and coughed often. Thanks to a quick of Sarah’s potion making skills, Mildred also skimped on most forms of hygiene, leaving her smelly as well as scary.
Finally, it was Jessica’s turn. She had the most elaborate outfit of any of the girls, and had taken her time getting her costume just right. The grey skirt, white blouse and grey cardigan suggested a woman who was sensible and professional, perhaps the clothing of a friendly, but serious and hardworking grandmotherly figure. She had a string of large pears for a necklace and frumpy grandma shoes. She ran behind a tree for a moment to change into her granny panties, which looked decidedly odd on the body of a teenage girl.
Jessica pulled out her cloudy, bright blue potion and quickly gulped it down. Her face became fleshy, complete with large, dark eye bags. She grew hoods of flesh over her eyes; thin, grey eyebrows, with the corners of her mouth turned down at both ends, as if to suggest permanent disappointment or dissatisfaction. Her skin became leathery and full of age spots, tiny wrinkles, and spider veins.
Her small, farm girl’s nose faded away, or rather grew, into a long, pointed beak. Her deep blue eyes became flinty grey and piercing cold. Jessica rearranged her hair, which was quickly turning an iron-grey color, into a bun.
Jessica’s breast grew as well, becoming a large, fallen, matronly bosom and stretching and indenting the front of her grey cardigan. She tried to pull and re-adjust it, but to no avail. Her massive, fallen chest simply would not fit into it without leaving very little to the imagination. Under those breasts, rested several massive rolls of belly flab, which hung over the sides of her body in large, saggy love handles. Her hips were wide and caused a definite waddle in her step, which was already slowed down by slightly arthritic joints. Her legs were thick and round, and they jiggled with every shuffling step.
“It is time,” said Dorothy, her alter ego, in her signature creaky voice. It was always a serious tone, one that implied Dorothy wouldn’t be taking nonsense from anyone. Jessica's insecurities about her ability to accomplish things, to lead, seemed to fade quickly when she was Dorothy.
The three women walked to the back door of the mansion. Sheryl tried the door, and it was now unlocked.
Chapter Thirteen:
Dorothy, Sheryl, and Mildred found themselves in a den of some kind. A large, red velvet chair was in the middle of the room, and Daniel was sitting in it.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said knowingly. “You’ve come for the ring?”
“Yes,” Dorothy said with an anxious tone. “Hand it over. We got here first.”
“That is true, and I congratulate you on your hard work. But…am I going to get a kiss?” he asked.
“Hell no, you horn dog. Just hand over the damn ring and…” Mildred cried out.
“Wait just a minute,” Sheryl interrupted. “If the man wants a kiss, let me give him a kiss.” She strutted across the floor, leaned down, and planted her lips upon his. She put her arm behind his neck and caressed his curly red hair as she ran her tongue across his lips. Her left arm made its way under his shirt and her fingers gently played across his chest as her tongue entered and explored his mouth. As he moaned into the kiss, Sheryl suddenly tightened her other around round his neck, putting him into a headlock.
“Where is the ring?” Sheryl demanded, yelling right into his year. Daniel’s face contorted and he looked as if he was about to answer, but suddenly there was a sound at the back door. A clicking, as if someone was trying to open the door only to find it locked.
“It’s probably one of the others,” Dorothy said. “We only have a few moments until they change and find their way in. You’ve got hand us the ring!” Dorothy demanded.
Dorothy’s worst fears were realized as she heard a low roar from outside. “I think we all know what house would roar upon changing. Odds are, that’s Tanya out there. We’ve got to hurry.”
“Fine, fine, here’s the ring,” Daniel said as he fished into his pocket. “But please,” he began as he turned to Sheryl, “come by later? We could have some real fun, you and I.”
“I’ll think about it,” Sheryl said, he eyes on Daniel’s hand. Soon, it returned from his pocket, and he had the ring.
Sheryl stared at it for a moment, transfixed. The thick gold band was ornately carved with ancient symbols and studded with rhinestones. The large opal was the largest precious stone she had ever seen adorn a piece of jewelry, and as she stared into its deep darkness, it seemed to swirl.
As she began to reach for it, the back door came crashing down, and a hulking, monstrous form entered the room. Dorothy recognized her to be Tanya’s disguise from the green leathery skin she had used to win the contest during their first class. Her clothing now consisted of tattered rags, and her hair was red, flowing mane. Her body was hulking and massive, and appeared to be both corpulent and muscular at the same time. Her arms were massive and solid looking, while her bosom and belly distorted and stretched out the rags barely covering the front of her body.
“Sheryl, put the ring on, now!” Dorothy shouted, hoping the ring would lend her the magical prowess to defeat their rival. Sheryl reached for the ring, but the Tanya monster lunged, and landed right on Daniel and Sheryl. The red chair tipped over, and the ring flew out of Daniel’s hand.
Sheryl, tall and built somewhat powerfully in her own right, quickly rose to her feet, prepared to try and stop Tanya. But she proved no match, as the green beast tackled her and pinned her to floor with ease. Dorothy and Mildred hobbled towards them, each of them pulling umbrellas from their purses to use as a weapon.
Tanya, keeping her weight on Sheryl, partially turned around and batted the umbrellas out of both of their arms with one powerful stroke of her fist. The would be weapons clattered to the floor. Mildred hopped on top of Tanya’s back and dug her sharp, dirty fingernails into her skin, and the green monstrosity roared with rage.
Dorothy saw her chance. While Tanya was distracted, she moved as fast as her joints could carry to towards the ring on the floor. She tried to bend over to reach it, but her back wouldn’t let her. She was about to try to crouch to get it, but at that moment, she heard the sound of a gun cocking.
Dorothy turned around and was face to face with a scary looking biker chick holding a Desert Eagle pistol. Her hair was short, spiky and dyed bright red. She wore leather tube top, and had several gnarly looking piercings all over her face. Her face was painted with overdone gothic makeup, and her body was slightly overweight and heavy looking. Dorothy finally recognized her by the frightening sleeve tattoos on her arms.
“Vanessa?” Dorothy croaked out.
“The name is Morrigan, and that ring is mine. Everyone put their hands in the air,” she shouted. Tanya rose to her feet, seemingly undeterred by the handgun. She charged directly at Morrigan, but she lurched out of the way at the last moment and avoided the attack. She produced something metallic from her pocket, and a moment later, a horrific electric noise could be heard.
“You like my Taser?” Morrigan asked, as the Tanya monster writhed in pain on the ground. With one swift motion, she brought the butt of her pistol against Tanya’s face, and she fell to the floor. She strutted towards the ring that Dorothy had been about to pick up, and snatched it from the ground, putting it on her ring finger.
“All of you are coming with me into my helicopter,” Morrigan shouted in her harsh, masculine voice as she waved the gun around. “I don’t want to shoot you here like dogs, but I will.”
Morrigan forced Sheryl and Daniel to carry Tanya’s unconscious body into the waiting Chinook helicopter outside. The pilot, a man in a dark jumpsuit, helped her tie Tanya up. Everyone else was handcuffed to a rail inside the main compartment.
“What are you doing?” Dorothy asked. “If you want to win so badly, why didn’t you just take the ring and leave us be?”
Morrigan let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “My father is a defense contractor. He knows people who would be willing to pay billions for this ring.”
“That’s not what Sylvia would have wanted!” Mildred cried.
“So what? I’m done with this school now,” Morrigan said dismissively.
“They’ll come after you!” Dorothy warned.
“How will they even know who took the ring? Five girls have gone missing. It could have been any of us, as far as they know. Why do you think I didn’t want to shoot you back in the house?”
“Please,” Mildred begged. “You’re letting the disguise go to your head. I know how easy it is to allow yourself to get in character, as it were. But you’ve let it overwhelm you. This isn’t what Vanessa would want.
“Who cares what she would want? Vanessa originally went to this school to get away from her father, from his life. But that’s only because she was afraid to really live, to do what needs to be done. I am not so inhibited. Besides, I’ve been working on a potion that’s not as temporary as the ones the school teaches us to make.”
“No, you can’t mean…” Daniel began.
“Yes, that’s right. Soon I’ll be able to be Morrigan forever. And then I’ll never have to worry about her fears, her inhibitions, and her sense of right and wrong interfering with my plans.” Morrigan shut the partition between the main compartment and the cockpit, where she and the pilot were sitting.
“When do you want to do it?” the pilot asked in a low voice. Despite the partition, and the quiet tone, Dorothy could still hear.
“Wait until we are in international waters. Then we’ll dump ‘em,” Morrigan answered back.
Chapter Fourteen:
Nobody had on a watch, so there was no way for any of them to measure how long it was. But for an imperceptibly long interval, all of them were silent.
Finally, the silence was broken when Tanya opened her eyes. Tied up and in a heap on the floor of the chopper, she signaled her consciousness to the others with a low groan.
“You’re awake?” Dorothy asked.
“Yes, although I imagine that it won’t do me much good. We’re headed to our death, yes?” she asked. Dorothy nodded in reply. “I thought as much. I always imagined I might die like this.”
“What do you mean?” Dorothy asked.
“You assumed I was from Russia, right? Wrong. I’m from Belarus: Europe’s last dictatorship. It’s so authoritarian, that the film ‘V for Vendetta’ was actually banned because the dictator worried people would draw a connection between the evil mastermind in the film and himself. My family disappeared in helicopters when I was a child. Dissidents are not tolerated,” she said, with pain in her voice.
“The first time I met you, you mentioned your family, and so I thought of mine and lashed out at you,” she said. “But I felt so guilty about it afterwards. The reason why I came to this school, the reason why I sabotaged your potion on our first day of classes, and the reason why I wanted the ring are all the same: I thought I could take something with me when I go home. Something powerful enough to help bring freedom to my people. I felt guilty again when I made you lose that contest, but I wanted to win that prize so badly. My first thought, upon realizing the location of the ring, was to hope you weren’t there. So that I didn’t have to hurt you again.” Tears streamed down Tanya’s face. “And it the worst part is that it was all for nothing, now.”
“She’s right, it’s hopeless…” Sheryl said, tears falling down her face as well. Daniel leaned into her chest and started crying too.
“Wait…” Dorothy said as she looked at her hands. They blue veins were receding, and there were less wrinkles than she remembered. Not wanting to Morrigan to hear, she leaned as low as she could and whispered. “You’re changing back, Tanya. We all are. As you do, those ropes are going to slip a bit, because you’re smaller than your alter ego.”
“So?” Tanya said. “She took us all by herself. How can I stop her now?”
“When you won that contest for those seeds, what did you do with them?” Dorothy asked.
Tanya’s dark eyes lit up. “Pouch around my neck…”
“Wait, what about the ring? She’s wearing it!” Mildred said. “Won’t fate twist to her advantage?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Daniel said in a whisper, and then he lowered his voice even further. “It’s a fake!
“You’re just telling us this now?” Mildred asked angrily.
“If she knew it, she might have got mad and killed us earlier!” Daniel insisted.
After a few minutes, Tanya had shrunk enough to pull herself free of the ropes, and had the seed back ready. Dorothy hit the partition and shouted at Morrigan, “There’s something you need to know about how that ring works.”
“What?” she shouted back through the partition.
“It’s a fake,” she shouted back.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Morrigan said, as she opened the partition.
“Now,” Dorothy shouted, and Tanya opened the seed back, titled her head back ,and emptied it down her throat. She rushed to the partition, put her face towards the cockpit, and exhaled.
A deafening roar rocked the chopper, along with a bright flash of light. The cockpit was consumed with flame, and the chopper rapidly started losing attitude control. Unfortunately, the cockpit was still locked, and as the girls saw when the smoke cleared, the controls were fried, along with the pilots.
“We should have thought of that,” Mildred said as the aircraft started to descend rapidly.
“Fortunately, we’ve got the ring,” Daniel said with a smile.
“I can’t reach it!” Tanya said as she stuck her hand into the partition. “Besides, you said it was a fake.”
“Yes, that ring was a fake,” Daniel said, as he reached into his other pocket. “This one is real,” he said with a grin as he put on the real Opal of Zeus.
“You little bastard,” Mildred said with exasperation. “You had that the whole time?”
“So played along, wanted to have a little fun. What’s the harm?” Daniel said with a shrug.
“The harm is we are going to crash into the hillside and die,” Tanya shouted.
“Relax. I’m wearing the ring, remember? We’ll be fine. We were never really in danger,” he promised.
As he said that, the Chinook helicopter’s descent ended in a thundering crash.
Chapter Fifteen:
“What about that?” Sylvia asked to the crowd gathered in the rotunda. “Girls from Medusa and Athena working together. I can’t remember the last time the house contest was shared by two houses. And just between us, that’s saying something. Give all four of these girls a round of applause!” Jessica, Sarah, Crystal and Tanya were cheered, with the loudest cheers coming from Athena and Medusa house sections.
It had been a week since that fateful afternoon, and since then they had been the talk of the school. None of them had been hurt in the cash, and even Vanessa had somehow survived, though she’d been expelled from Olympia.
“I also want to thank someone else very special for helping out with this contest. Please give a round of applause to my son, Daniel Trull.” Everyone was shocked, but as Daniel rose from the stands, he got an ovation from crowd. He looked at Crystal and gave her a little wink before he returned to his seat.
“This has been an interesting semester for us all. I sincerely hope you enjoy your winter holiday, and that you feel you learned something valuable here at Olympia,” Sylvia concluded, and the girls made their way off of the stage.
As soon as they were out of the hall, Tanya, who had been holding the ring, placed it in Jessica’s hand.
“I owe you my life. You deserve the ring,” she said at last. Jessica did not take it.
“Tanya, I think I have learned something really important. It’s not about what we are entitled to, what we need. And I believe you, and your nation, need that ring more than I do,” Jessica said.
“You mean that?” Tanya said, looking confused.
“When they announced the contest, I’ll admit, one of my big motivations for finding that ring was to stop you from getting it. But…I know you’ll make better use of it than me. You have to avenge your family…I have to put up with mine.”
“Jessica, just because I have challenges, doesn’t mean I’ll use the ring the right way. I’m worried, what if I become like Morrigan?” Tanya asked, with emotion in her voice.
“The fact that you’re willing to ask that question means your heart is in the right place,” Jessica said. “Now, please, keep the ring, and stay true to yourself.”
“It’s…it’s a shame you weren’t in Medusa,” she said at last. “We might have been friends.”
“I still intend to be your friend, Tanya,” Jessica said with a smile, and the two parted ways.
“What do you intend to do when you get back?” Sarah asked when Jessica had rejoined them.
“Apart from catching up with family, obviously,” Crystal chimed in.
“Well, maybe I’m over interpreting things here,” Jessica said. “But I think I know what I’m meant to do.”
“What’s that?” Crystal asked.
“I’m going to go home and enjoy a huge pancake breakfast. With extra maple syrup,” she said. “And no matter what anyone says, I’m not going to feel bad about it.”
Jessica shot another anxious glance out the window. A vast cornfield next to an empty road greeted her.
“He’s not coming today,” sneered Mikey, her younger brother. “You aren’t going to be getting that letter.”
“Oh, yes I am,” Jessica replied, her brother’s taunting only serving to redouble her anticipation. “I am going to get that letter, get accepted into college, and I’m going to get the hell out of Stapleton, Nebraska.”
“Fat chance,” Mikey said. “You got a big frown-face on your SAD test.”
“SAT test,” Jessica corrected him.
“Well, your score on it probably spelled SAD to them,” Mikey teased. “Stop hanging by that window already and accept it. You’re going to be stuck in Stapleton, just like the rest of us.”
Jessica sighed. Mikey was right: she hadn’t done as well as she had liked on her college placement test, and wasn’t sure if she was going to get in. Her brother’s constant teasing aside; Jessica didn’t mind family life too much. But the thought of being stuck on a farm in Nebraska for the rest of her life scared her to death. There had to be more out there than this.
“Come on, sis. Let’s watch some TV or something,” Mikey said as he yanked on Jessica’s blonde ponytail.
“Stop that!” Jessica cried out, but just then, she thought she heard something. Off in the distance, she heard a dull roar that could only mean one thing. She pulled on her shoes, flung the door open, and ran as fast as her legs could carry her through the path in the cornfield and onto the road.
Just as she suspected: the mail truck was finally coming into view. As the truck pulled closer, Jessica found herself unable to wait for the mailman to even deposit the mail into the box.
“Please, just let me have it,” she cried out, and the mailman smiled.
“Don’t worry, Jessica. I think there’s something from the University of Nebraska Lincoln with your name on it.”
Jessica frantically flipped through the envelopes until she found the one with the college’s seal. Her hands trembling, she tore it open, and found the first paper. “Dear applicant,” it began.
The next two words shattered Jessica’s world. “We regret…” Jessica let the letter drop from her hands, the wind causing it to flutter and fall facedown near the corn. Tears started to rundown her cheeks, a few of them falling onto her flowing, flaxen blonde hair. This was her last chance – the other ones had all come back negative too.
“I don’t believe it,” she thought to herself. “Mikey was right. I’m going to be stuck in Stapleton forever.”
“I’m…I’m sorry,” the mailman said awkwardly, as he got into his truck and started to pull away.
The dull roar of the truck pulling away lasted longer than it ought to have. As Jessica gazed into the setting sun, she realized why: another car was coming over the hill. For just a brief moment, she contemplated running in front of it.
The car had an unfamiliar shape, which was unusual to Jessica. With a population of fewer than 300, Stapleton was not the kind of place where one often runs into strangers.
The car was long, sleek, and black, somewhere between the shape of a stretch limousine and a hearse. It pulled up to Jessica and stopped very slowly. She was unable to make out who was inside of the vehicle due to heavily tinted windows. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the front window slowly rolled down.
Inside the luxury vehicle was an ancient looking woman wearing a black hood that partially obscured her face. Her nose was long and hooked and she had a rather large mole on one cheek. Her cheeks sagged significantly, and her lip sported a snaggle tooth. On the front seat next to her was a crate of apples, which Jessica found odd as there were no apple farmers in Stapleton.
“Jessica Morris?” The old woman’s voice creaked out.
“Yes?” Jessica replied, her voice full of surprise and fear.
“I’m here as a sort of…private courier. I have a letter and a gift for you,” she spoke in a rattling, aged, unsettling tone.
“A courier representing whom?” Jessica asked suspiciously.
“Olympia Academy in Greece,” the woman replied.
“I’m quite sure I never applied to anything like that,” Jessica said, her hands now on her hips. This entire interaction seemed off, as if there was some sort of obvious deception going on.
“Well, of course you didn’t apply. We don’t tend to advertise ourselves much. But we’ve decided you certainly could be Olympia material,” the old woman crooned.
“Look, I’m not entirely sure that you are who you appear to be,” Jessica replied.
The woman let out a long rattling cackle in response. “How right you are my dear, how right you are. What an observation. You’ve made me more confident than ever that we made the right choice. But please, take this letter, and this apple. You can decide for yourself what’s right for you.”
Jessica took the letter and the apple, if only to get the woman to be on her way.
“I think I’ll open it later, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“That’s fine, child. I hope I see you at orientation.” With that, the tinted window rolled back up, and the sleek black vehicle slowly peeled off into the distance.
“Who in Sam Hell was that?” Mikey asked, as he joined Jessica on the side of the road.
“An old woman, who told me I was being accepted to this school in Greece, but something didn’t quite seem right about the whole thing,” Jessica replied.
“Greece, huh? I don’t remember you applying for that,” Mike said.
“I didn’t!” Jessica said. “It’s totally bizarre, really.”
“Yeah, well, you won’t have to worry about it. You’ve got your heart set on Lincoln, right?” Mikey asked.
Jessica’s heart fell again. Her almost surreal encounter with the old woman had temporarily distracted her from her titanic disappointment.
“Mikey, I got the letter. I didn’t get in,” Jessica said at last.
“Darn. I’m sorry, sis,” Mikey said. “I’m sorry I teased you about it earlier,” he added.
“Don’t worry about it, Mikey. I know you didn’t mean to hurt my feelings,” she said with a tone of pain in her voice. “Let’s just go inside.”
~
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. When her parents arrived home from a trip into the city, she neglected to mention her rejection letter to them. Several times during dinner, her mother asked her “Jessica, are you alright? Anything on your mind?”
Finally, she could take no more prodding and asked to be excused from the table. She made her way upstairs and flopped onto her bed dejectedly. After a few tears had been shed, she noticed the letter and the apple on her pillow.
“It couldn’t hurt to open it,” she said to herself, more curious than interested. The front of the letter had her name hand written in spidery cursive, while the back of the letter was closed with a seal that contained four small figures.
“To Miss Jessica Adele Morris,” the letter began on yellowed parchment paper. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into Olympia Academy of Disguise. The Academy is a special place where young women learn ancient and forgotten arts. Should you wish to join us in Greece, all you need do is let your lips taste a bite of the apple provided with this letter. Sincerely, Sylvia, Headmistress.”
Jessica unwound the parchment a bit more and saw a “P.S.” It read “We understand you might have doubts. If you do, consider this: the woman that delivered you this letter is actually 21 years old.”
Chapter Two:
Jessica put the letter down, her mind spinning. Nothing made sense to her. Surely, this entire thing had to be some kind of practical joke.
She gazed at the apple for a moment. It was large and red, luscious looking, and probably quite delicious. Was it possible that it was poisoned, or drugged? That didn’t make sense at all. If someone wanted to poison her, why didn’t they just hand her an apple, without such a fantastical, unbelievable, and suspicious set up?
Was it possible that the school was real? It didn’t seem likely that the old woman who handed her the letter and the apple could have been 21…and yet, the idea did somehow seem intriguing. Was it really possible that she had been chosen to go to some elite institution in Greece?
~
Jessica awoke the next morning to the sound of her father rapping on her door.
“Rise and shine, Pumpkin. It’s half an hour past dawn. Time to get up,” her father said cheerfully.
Jessica groaned and reluctantly pulled her sleepy body out of bed. “Be out in a minute,” she mumbled as she pulled on a flannel shirt and her “messy’ jeans. If her dad was asking her to get up this early, it was only going to mean one thing: helping out with the farm, her least favorite task.
As Jessica finished changing, her noise picked up on her favorite scent, maple syrup. “I made you some pancakes,” her father said through the door. “Let’s go eat ‘em while they’re hot.”
Jessica flew down the stairs, eager for her favorite breakfast. She picked up large stack from the platter waiting her at the dinner table and drowned in an ocean of syrup.
“What’s the occasion, Dad?” She said with her mouth slightly full. “You don’t make pancakes too often.”
“Well, we were all wondering what was up with you last night, and your brother finally told us what’s up,” her father began. An awkward pause ensued, and Jessica returned to shoving her face full of flapjacks.
Jessica’s father shifted his substantial girth in his suspenders and fiddled with his bushy mustache with his left hand, causing it to become flecked with a few stray globules of syrup. “I know you must be real disappointed. Just wanted to help you start the day right.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Jessica responded as she wiped her mouth with a napkin, removing some butter from her lips. “We don’t have to spend a lot of time talking about that, though, ok?”
“Sure thing,” her father began, but Jessica doubted that she could prevent the subject from coming up again. “Hey, there, Pumpkin, slow down on those pancakes. You don’t want to end up like your old man, do you?” He slapped his large gut, causing it to jiggle as he let out a hearty belly laugh. Jessica sighed, letting her fork drop to the plate. She was always a thin girl, with pancakes being the only food she ever allowed herself to indulge in. She hated to feel shame infecting that one little pleasure she had portioned herself.
“Are you ready to come help me with the tractor?” he said after another long, painful silence in the conversation. Jessica nodded, a defeated look in her eye.
~
“You know,” her father began as Jessica measured the rubber for the tractor’s band, “you should be happy you didn’t get accepted into that school.”
“And why is that?” Jessica said, her hands starting to shake a little with frustration. She had asked him not to talk about it, but she knew he’d be harping on it all day. Perhaps the rest of her life, she thought with dread.
“Well, face it, Pumpkin. You’re a farm girl from Stapleton. Why do you want to go out to the city?” Her father asked. He had asked her this question many times.
“I want…well, wanted…to make a better life for myself, Dad.” Jessica said, the rubber slipping from her sweaty hands. “I wanted to really be somebody, to accomplish something…” she started again, but her father cut her off.
“What’s the matter, we’re not good enough for you?” He barked. Jessica, surprised by the bluntness of this sentiment, dropped the shears. They bit into her left arm as they fell, and Jessica howled in pain.
“Just can’t pay attention, can you?” Her father berated. “Just like that test that sunk your college dreams, huh? Always choking when it matters most. Face it, even if you had gotten accepted, you wouldn’t have made it out there.”
Tears streamed down Jessica’s face. Her arm hurt, and so did the humiliation, but what hurt most was that she knew her father was right. She refused to turn around and meet his gaze.
“Go upstairs and clean yourself up,” he said with little sympathy in his voice. “Come back down here when you’re ready to give 100%.”
~
Jessica, back in bed, clutched at her bandaged arm and pondered her father’s words. When would she be willing to give 100% to farming? She knew in her heart that she never would.
Her eyes lazily drifted her room and fell on the apple and the letter from yesterday. A crazy idea started to creep its way across her mind. Should she take a bite?
What was the worst thing that could happen, she asked herself. The apple was poison, but her life was already over. And if it did work maybe, just maybe, she’d have the chance to prove her father wrong.
She picked the apple up, feeling a mixture of nervousness and silliness. She knew that nothing would likely happen, but the uncertainty was almost crippling. After what seemed like an agony of indecision, her train of thought was interrupted by her father’s voice outside her door.
“Come on, we don’t have all day. Let’s fix that tractor!” He bellowed.
“Let’s not!” she shouted back, and with a sense of purpose, she lifted her lips to the apple and took a bite.
Almost immediately, her arms began to feel like lead weights. They flopped on her side as she dropped the apple on the ground. It rolled towards the door, the single white bite mark standing out conspicuously.
Jessica’s body started to feel heavier too, and she fell upon the bed. Every muscle seemed to have a mind of its own, and soon even her eyelids would not stay open. She heard her father slowly open her door, but before he arrived at the side of her bed, she was fast asleep.
Chapter Three:
Jessica’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of a foghorn. She was in a chair in an unfamiliar café, and the air smelled like saltwater. Jessica had only seen and smelled the ocean once before in her life, so the smell was unmistakable.
She turned away from the center of the café to face the window. Sure enough, she was on the edge of a harbor, though it wasn’t one she recognized.
The foghorn sounded again, and this time it was accompanied by a man shouting in a strange accent. “All aboard for Olympia Island,” he said. “Todos a bordo para Olympia Isla. Усе на борт Алімпія выспы,” he continued, saying the phrase in a variety of languages Jessica could not understand.
“You better get going,” an elderly looking barista said as she made her way over to Jessica. “That’s your ship, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jessica said, still not understanding exactly what was happening. “But how did you know?”
“All of you girls come through here,” she said with a laugh. “This is the Poison Apple Café, after all. You were the last to show up. If you don’t run, you aren’t going to make it!”
Jessica returned her gaze to the window, and stared at the ship again. It was a large vessel, similar to a cruise ship. The flag had a complicated symbol on it, which Jessica finally realized was a larger version of the seal on her letter. She hesitated for a moment, wanting to know more about how she got here but not wanting to miss her transport.
“How did this happen?” Jessica asked at last.
“No time to explain, just go!” Her blue haired waitress urged. “Come on, get.”
Reluctantly, Jessica pulled herself out the chair. Her body was still quite sleepy and prevented her from moving as quickly as she would have liked. By the time she pulled her groggy form to the edge of the dock, she could see the ship was already in motion.
“Wait!” she shouted, hoping the man who was present just a few moments ago would hear her.
It was no use. The engines of the ship drowned out her voice. The large ship to Olympia Island was leaving without her. If she didn’t get on that ship, Jessica thought, she’d be stuck in somewhere in Greece without luggage, a passport…without even a wallet, she realized as she felt her pockets.
Jessica gazed into the sea with a look of defeat. Her father was right. She couldn’t even get on the boat in time. If she hadn’t been so indecisive about when to bite that apple, or if she hadn’t tried to ask so many questions of the barista, or if she had somehow forced her legs to move faster…
As she gazed into the water with a sense of futility, she saw something. A chain near the back of the boat was being pulled. From talking to her cousin in the Navy, Jessica knew that meant the sailors had forgotten to raise the anchor and were doing it now while the engines were still in low gear. If she jumped into the water and grabbed onto the chain, they’d hoist her aboard.
It was a crazy idea. Jessica, having spent almost her entire life on a farm, could barely even swim. Perhaps she’d catch hypothermia, drown, or get attacked by a shark?
“Don’t hesitate,” she told herself as she started to debate it. “Don’t miss your chance.”
She took a parting glance at the sea, closed here eyes, and then dove into the water.
Chapter Four:
The Mediterranean Sea at first greeted Jessica’s body like a wall of ice, but the cold passed very quickly. After a few strokes in the water to warm up her body, it was even pleasant. She made her way for the chain, and gripped it tightly. Before long, her body was slowly being lifted out the water. The rising sun glanced off the water and bright lights danced in Jessica’s eyes as cold wind whipped her wet locks.
A strange clicking sound greeted Jessica as she neared the edge of the ship’s side. Her body, along with the chain collided with the port side in a few painful bumps as a mechanical pulley raised the anchor chain enough for her to grasp the ledge. She let go of the chain and grasped it, trying to pull herself over.
Her wet shoe slipped on the side, and Jessica took a tumble. Her wet torso slid and bounced on the edge, and she screamed fell back towards the ocean. Her left arm clutched at the edge desperately for a moment, until she felt something warm encompass it.
“I’ve got you,” a soft, female voice spoke. Jessica felt a tug on her arm, and before she knew it, she was on board.
“Thanks,” Jessica said to the slender brunette girl who had pulled her to safety. She was dressed conservatively, but emanated a lot of natural beauty. Jessica thought she was a bit reminiscent of Megan Fox. “How did you know…” Jessica started, but was cut off.
“I was looking out of my porthole and saw you jump. I figured you might need a hand,” the girl said. “I’m Sarah, by the way. And you?”
“I’m Jessica. Are you going to be a student as well?” She asked.
“Yes, I got my letter and my apple yesterday. It’s a pity you didn’t take a bite of yours a bit earlier, you missed the orientation explaining everything this morning,” Sarah said quietly.
“Do you think you could fill me in?” Jessica asked.
“Of course. This is just a theory, but I think we’ll be spending a lot of time together. Everyone is two to a cabin here, and the girl who was supposed to join my room last time never showed. That could be you, so you’d be my roommate,” Sarah conjectured.
“Is that why you were looking out the porthole?” Jessica asked, staring to shiver with cold.
“Yes, I figured something like this might happen if you were running late. They like to run a tight ship here in terms of the schedule. No pun intended,” Sarah said as she grinned.
Chapter Five:
“Is my family going to be worried about me? I don’t have my cell phone,” Jessica asked Sarah as they walked to the dining hall for their lunch meal.
“None of us do. The people who run the school aren’t big on technology. No distractions. But don’t worry about you family. They said they take care of all that, so your family won’t worry,” Sarah explained.
“They’ll never believe that I would do something like this,” Jessica said. “I’m hardly sure I believe it myself.”
“I don’t blame you. The more I learn about this place, the more fantastical it seems,” Sarah said, as the two entered the dining area and got their plates. About 100 girls were in the large hall, which had mock Greek pillars and other Greco-themed decorations.
Jessica placed some kalamata olives and feta cheese on her plate from the buffet, and her and Sarah set an empty table.
“And is it only Americans who go to this school?” Jessica asked.
“Not at all, there are young women from all over the world here,” Sarah said.
“Excuse me?” A platinum blonde girl wearing well coifed hair and a pink skirt said as she approached the two, “Apparently, I’m like, not welcome over there with those ladies who think they’re already in Aphrodite? So, can I sit here?” she asked, with a southern California “valley” inflection.
“Sure, but what’s Aphrodite?” Jessica asked.
“She missed orientation,” Sarah added helpfully. “Jessica, Aphrodite is one of the four houses of Olympia academy. It involves disguises that allow women to make any man fall in love with them, or so I’ve gathered. I’m sure getting sorted into that house would be very desirable for some women,” Sarah added.
“You mean the girls that are like catty little bitches?” Crystal asked. “Excuse my language, girlfriends, I’m sorry, that’s not me at all, I guess I’m just having a rough day?”
“It couldn’t have been rougher than what Jessica went through,” Sarah said after a while, clearly fazed by the swearing. “She had to jump into the ocean and grab the anchor to get on the boat, that’s why her hair is so wet.”
Jessica nodded in acknowledgement. “What did the other girls do that bothered you so much, Crystal?”
“I don’t even know? They were speaking French and they kept pointing and laughing at me,” she said. “Stupide pute américaine, what does that even mean?” Crystal wailed.
“Well, I speak French, but I hesitate to translate,” Sarah said. “Sufficed to say, that is indeed quite rude, but please feel welcome at our table, Crystal.”
“Those girls, how do they even know that they aren’t going to end up in, like Persephone or Athena?” Crystal added.
“Wait, Medusa, Athena?” Jessica asked.
“Those are other houses,” Sarah replied.
“Please, just tell me everything you remember from the orientation,” Jessica asked. “I hate being confused about everything like this.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk with my mouth full,” Sarah began. “Let’s finish up here and I’ll try to provide with you but as much detail as I can. Afterwards, I’ll take you to the admin section, and get you properly registered. We all had to do that this morning.”
“Hope you don’t mind if I go with?” Crystal asked. “Spending any more time with my room mate Claudette, with her laughing at me, does that sound fun to you?”
~
“There are four houses that you can be a part of at Olympia. We’ll get officially sorted once we reach the island, but of course, that hasn’t stopped lots of girls from immediately assuming they know which of the houses they will be placed in. You see, each one represents a different kind of disguise,” Sarah explained as the three girls left the dining hall together. “Athena is about the disguise of old age. Aphrodite is about loveliness, being disguised as what others find beautiful. Persephone house disguise is more masculine and dark, like a biker chick or a metal-head.”
“And what about the fourth house?” Jessica asked as they climbed some steps to the surface deck of the ship.
Sarah hesitated for a moment, and was about to start answering when a dull noise cut her off. A fair roar could be heard in the distance. Jessica looked off the bow of the vessel and saw a motorboat rapidly approaching. As she squinted, she could make out a pale skinned woman operating it, wearing a red beret and gold rimmed sunglasses. Her brown hair was whipped up by the wind, and her body was clad in what appeared to be a leather jumpsuit.
As the mysterious woman approached the boat, she pulled something from her belt and aimed it directly at where the three girls were standing. There was a loud whistling noise, and a metal hook shot into the hair, landing on the railing. She skillfully rappelled up the grappling hook, leading the girls to the impression that it wasn’t the first time she had used the tool.
At that moment, an older woman wearing a uniform ran up the stairs and entered the deck.
“I just got heard a report that someone hijacked a local’s motorboat from the harbor. Was that you?” She asked the mysterious guest as she retracted her rappelling tool.
“I was running late,” the woman replied with a think Eastern European accent.
“Be that as it may,” the older woman began, “That’s no excuse to commit a crime. I’m not going to report you, but consider this a warning.”
After a long, pregnant pause, Jessica spoke up. “I’m Jessica, and this is Sarah and Crystal. We were just on our way to Admin to get registered, since I showed up late too. You are welcome to come with us…” Jessica’s voice trailed off, expecting the newcomer to introduce herself.
“I’ll find my own way,” the woman replied.
“It’s no trouble,” Jessica said quickly. “It’s a big ship, easy to get lost. I was eager to find out about how they’d contact home and let my family know I was ok, and there are apparently different houses for…” But their new guest cut her off.
“I don’t need the help of some whiny, pancake tits little know it all,” she said, and stormed down the stairs.
The three girls stood in silence for a moment. Jessica finally spoke. “What was the fourth house, Sarah?”
“Medusa house,” Sarah replied. “For monsters.”
Chapter Six:
“Sarah?” Jessica asked softly, wondering if her cabin mate was asleep.
“Yeah? I’m still awake if that’s what you’re asking.” she replied a little groggily.
“What house do you think you’ll get in?” Jessica asked.
“I don’t know exactly. Not Medusa, that’s for sure. Three out of four chance, right?” Both girls giggled a little at this.
“You really think that Russian girl is going to end up in Medusa?” Jessica asked.
“Well, from talking with some of the other girls who know a bit more about the school than I do, Medusa does have a bit of a reputation for girls who are…well, to put it politely, very similar to that woman, yes. I’d like to think I’m not in that class of person,” Sarah replied.
“So that leaves the other three, Athena, Aphrodite, and Persephone. If Aphrodite is for snobby French girls, like the ones that were mean to Crystal, I don’t know if that’s for me either,” Jessica said.
“Well, I guess that leaves Athena and Persephone. I don’t know which of them would be better, but I’ll be happy if I don’t get into Medusa,” Sarah said.
“Do you really worry you might?” Jessica asked. “I mean, I would like us to end up in the same house.”
“As long as that house isn’t Medusa,” Sarah said. “Gives me the willies. I’d like to be in the same house as you too, but I won’t follow you down that road.”
“Well, do we really have a choice for what we see on our vision quest thing?” Jessica asked.
“It’s a vision quest, Jessica. I can’t imagine you see anything other than what you want to see, at least at an unconscious level…” Sarah’s voice trailed off.
“But what if we see something in our unconscious that’s unexpected? Something that we didn’t think we’d find? Something that propels us into the wrong house?” Jessica asked, sounding scared.
“Well, a better question, Jessica, is can you really say a house is wrong if you don’t know which house would be right?”
Jessica sighed. “I guess that’s so. Although I have to admit, all of the disguise ideas are interesting on some level. The idea of being able to become someone else is pretty fascinating.”
“Is that how you look at it, becoming someone else? I’d always assumed I was still me, just in disguise,” Sarah pointed out.
“Well, I just meant…everyone else will perceive you as a different person,” Jessica responded.
“Yeah, if they don’t know you are in a disguise. If you let them know, they’d still think you’re you. But I think I see your point. You’ll be projecting a different kind of persona out into the world,” Sarah said.
~
Olympia Island itself was a site to behold. A mammoth tower made of what looked like white marble jutted up from the center of the island. Jessica’s view of the tower was obscured as the ship maneuvered away, to a small harbor on the island’s edge.
“I’ll bet that’s the school,” Jessica remarked of the tower.
“Do you think the town sells clothes?” Crystal asked. “I didn’t bring anything from home, did you?”
“I have a feeling all of our things might be on the ship right now,” Sarah said, and as soon as they were secured, luggage was ferried out of a lower compartment of the ship.
“How did you know that?” Crystal asked as they regained their land legs.
“It was just logical. If they can bring us here like magic, why not our belongings? Besides, it makes sense that if they want us to shop, they’ll want us to shop for things for our alter egos, not our regular selves,” Sarah explained.
Sarah didn’t get a chance to see if her theory was valid. The girls were given their mysteriously packed bags, and then instructed to march onwards to Olympia Tower. The uniformed officers of the ship did not join them.
Chapter Seven:
After dragging their luggage about a mile on a roughly hewn gravel road from the village, the girls arrived at Olympia Tower. Many were tired and lagging behind the pack, but Jessica and Sarah were up at the front, eager to see the inside of the school as soon as possible. Alongside them was the mysterious woman with the Eastern European accent they had encountered. She sneered at Jessica as they stopped at a set of ominously large, wooden doors.
Seemingly of their own accord, the doors slowly began to creak open, and before long, the girls were facing a dark, foreboding passageway into the tower.
“First door on the right,” a woman’s voice called out, seemingly from nowhere. “Come on, first year students, come along.”
The girls proceeded as instructed, and they entered what appeared to be a large rotunda. Jessica’s first thought was that given its immense size, the entire first floor of the building must have been dedicated to nothing but this stage. Open air windows and candles built into indentations in the marble provided light. In the center, she saw a slightly raised stage and a modest, unassuming podium. Behind it was a small maple tree, growing out of the earthen floor of the hall.
Jessica and Sarah quickly took seats next to each other, and soon Crystal caught up with them. As she strained her eyes into the far area, Jessica thought she could see the far side of the rotunda decorated in four different flags.
“Those flags look a little familiar…” Jessica began.
“They are the same four symbols as the crest on our letters. They stand for the four houses of Olympia,” Sarah explained.
“Are we going to be sorted now?” Crystal asked.
“It would appear so,” Sarah replied.
“Well, I hope we all wind up in the same house, whatever it is,” Jessica said.
After a brief interval of waiting, all of the students had made their way into the hall. A few uncomfortable minutes of whispering and waiting ensued. Finally, a short, stout, blue haired matron wearing a flowing blue dress and a purple, regal looking cardigan waddled towards the podium.
“Girls, welcome to Olympia Academy,” she began in a warbled English accent. “I am Headmistress Silvia Hawthorne.”
“Here at Olympia, we study ancient arts of disguise. You will learn how to look differently, act differently, and think differently. Your perspective will be transformed as you begin to really wonder…what lies beneath?”
“As I’m sure you’ve already been told, today we are going to sort you into one of four houses: Athena, Persephone, Aphrodite, and Medusa. Your house is your family at Olympia. You will share living quarters, take classes together, and learn to disguise yourselves in a similar fashion to those in your house. In addition, we have something of a contest every year between the houses a little later on in the year, during which you can demonstrate your pride in your house and lead them to victory. Medusa house has wont his contest six years in a row. Will they continue their reign or will this be the year that breaks that streak? It is all up to you…”
“In order to be sorted into your houses, each of you will experience a vision quest. When the quest is completed, you can announce to us to which house you have been sorted, then take your seat in the gallery behind me, under the flag of your new home. Now,” Sylvia began as she pulled out a ream of parchment, “Let us begin. Vanessa Appleton?”
A small looking girl with honey colored hair and a soft, feminine looking ruffle dress slowly shuffled her way towards the podium. Sylvia instructed her to place her hand on the small maple tree behind her, and she did so and closed her eyes.
For a moment, the tree shook, and then it was still. Jessica began to notice after a while that the leaves were changing color. First, they were darkening, losing their natural green hue. Then, they were changing again – becoming redder. For a moment, they became almost pinkish, but then they quickly reverted back to red. Vanessa pulled back from the tree, her eyes suddenly wide.
“Persephone,” she said with a soft voice. Soft clapping soon followed. Jessica strained her eyes and identified small clusters of slightly older looking girls in the far side of the rotunda. She could tell that the students under Persephone’s bright red flag were the ones clapping, though Jessica couldn’t make out their faces.
“Tanya Voinna,” Sylvia read from the parchment as Vanessa slowly made her way towards Persephone’s flag. Jessica didn’t have to guess which student that was, or what house she was headed for.
The Eastern European girl who had insulted Jessica yesterday got to her feat and confidently strutted towards the podium. She placed her hands on the tree without any instruction, and the leaves immediately darkened. For a moment, they flashed pink, but the overall darkness continued, and soon, Jessica couldn’t see the leaves for the darkness that enveloped them.
“Medusa,” she said as she pulled herself back from the branches. Clapping ensued, but the girls at the Medusa section were far louder than those at Persephone.
“Jessica Morris,” Sylvia said, and Jessica practically jumped. She had been so transfixed on watching the ritual that she had almost forgotten that she could have been called at any time. She pulled herself to her feet and walked slowly towards the tree. Tanya was long gone. Jessica could see her exchange a high five with the older Medusa girls.
She was sure that wasn’t where she belonged. Yet, where was she to go? Elderliness, Masculinity, Seduction, or…Monstrosity? And what exactly was going to happen? If she was just watching the leaves, waiting for them to change color, why did the other girls all close their eyes? And why did Vanessa look so startled?
With trepidation, and some encouragement from Sylvia, Jessica placed her left hand onto the trunk of the maple tree.
The moment that her fingers touched the bark, Jessica felt her consciousness violently shift, as if she had been forcibly and unexpectedly been tossed into a freezing cold lake.
For a couple of seconds, her mind was spinning, but the image quickly came into somewhat clearer focus. Individual events still seemed to happen in an odd way, as though in a dream.
She was no longer in the hall, but instead, in a breakfast restaurant of some kind. A thin, blonde woman was at a table near the front, and was asking her waitress for extra maple syrup for her pancakes. Jessica hadn’t quite sat down, but was near one of the tables. She tried to walk closer, but her legs would not move on their own accord. She lumbered in an odd and unusual way. Had she become some kind of hulking, brutish beast? Was she destined for Medusa after all?
A small boy ran right in front of her, and as he stopped and stared directly at her, Jessica felt her worst fears confirmed. He looked up at her with a disconcerted look, and then ran off. Jessica figured that her monster guise must have scared him to death.
Jessica finally managed to pull herself onto one of the chairs, and after a few seconds, a waitress appeared. She boasted a large, toothy grin and a slicked back ponytail.
“Do you know what you’ll be having, Ma’am?” she asked. To Jessica, her voice seemed fair away and muffled. She looked at the menu, but it was hopelessly blurry.
“What’s that?” she tried to ask, her voice full of rattles and wobbles.
“I said, do you know what you want to order. We do offer a senior citizen’s discount,” the waitress added helpfully.
Everything suddenly came into focus. So, she was in Athena! She was surprised it was this easy. Feeling a bit more oriented, she looked down and saw she was in a grey cardigan, hugging a far plumper body than she was used to. She felt around the collar, and she realized she had a band for her glasses.
“I’ll come back in a few minutes,” the waitress said, clearly tired of waiting for Jessica to reply.
Jessica got her glasses on, and the room was suddenly sharp. She looked around at the room, and felt a bit more comfortable. So this was what it was like to be an old lady? And, did her destiny then truly lie with Athena house?
She noticed the blonde woman at the table closest to the door. She was making loud groans of pleasure and smacking her lips loudly as she shoveled in her pancakes, which had been drowned in a bathtub of syrup. So fast was her devouring of her breakfast, stray bits of syrup had made their way unto her cheeks. With a bit of surprise, she noticed the woman wasn’t as thin as she had remembered her being when she first entered the dream.
Was that because her glasses weren’t on? Perhaps that was the case. Jessica was about to write off the change, when she saw the woman change again. She seemed to be gaining weight right before her eyes. Her cheeks, flecked with syrup, were getting rounder, like the shape of an apple. Her lips were smeared with a little butter, and below them, the girl was sporting a small double chin. Her upper arms, now making rapid motions cutting the pancakes, were now jiggling violently. Her breasts were straining against a top now far too small for them, creating some obscene looking cleavage.
Jessica tried to make sense of what she was seeing. The girl looked a lot like herself, or at least, herself not in a disguise. But it wasn’t exactly her. The hair was too blonde, for one thing. But was it a representation of her? Was this some sort of anxiety instilled by her father, expressed in the most graphic form?
The dream suddenly started to fade rapidly. Jessica’s vision went white, and then she was back in the rotunda, her hand letting go of the maple trunk.
A sickening thought occurred to her. Was this all too easy? She didn’t have a mirror. She had only a single comment to go by. What if that woman was wrong – or intentionally trying to deceive her? Nobody else had spoken to her in the breakfast diner. The little boy had only reacted by showing fear. That’s the kind of response she’d expect from just about all of the houses…aside from Aphrodite, she supposed. Another thought occurred to her: would anybody else be able to know what she saw? Couldn’t she just place herself into any house she liked?
Jessica then remembered the changing leaves. They all pointed to a specific house’s color. Surely they’d know if she had picked the wrong one. What would happen to her then?
Aphrodite had the disguise that would please others, that was for certain. But is that what she wanted to do, please others? That wasn’t her at all. Persephone was interesting, but it wasn’t what intrigued her when she got her letter.
Athena it was, then. It had the distinct advantage of almost certainly being the one she had been chosen for, too.
“Athena,” Jessica said at last. Clapping issued from the girls in the appropriate section, and Jessica turned and made her way towards the blue flag.
Chapter Eight:
Before Jessica could take her seat, she heard Sarah’s name called. Jessica didn’t introduce herself to the other Athena girls as she quickly sat – she was intently watching the tree, hoping it would send her to Athena, too.
The leaves seemed to flash red for a moment, but quickly changed to blue. After a short time, Sarah released her hand from the tree, and answered “Athena.”
When Sarah made her way over to Jessica in the stands, she smiled.
“We have to talk about what just happened!” Jessica whispered.
“I’m not sure I want to,” Sarah began, “but I’m happy indeed that we are in the same house. Someone from Athena delivered both of our letters, so I suppose it is only appropriate that we got sorted into that house.”
“Do you think they knew in advance which house we’d be sorted into?” Jessica whispered.
“I doubt that, because if so, why go through this elaborate demonstration?” Sarah asked in reply.
Jessica pondered that question as a few more girls went through the ritual, none of them ending up in Athena. A tall looking redhead with a black headband and a large nose ring named Angela, who looked as though she was already in a Persephone disguise, was sorted into Medusa. A pair of French twin sisters was sorted into Aphrodite. Finally, the moment they were waiting for: Crystal’s name was called.
The maple leaves turned bright pink, and Jessica and Crystal sighed in unison. So, Crystal was going to end up in Aphrodite after all. Jessica had given up almost all hope when the leaves started to turn blue. They turned pink again rapidly, and then for a few seconds, they seemed to flash bright pink and bright blue alternatively. Jessica couldn’t tell which color the tree had ended on when it stopped flashing as Crystal pulled her hand away.
“I don’t know if I’m sure?” Crystal asked Sylvia.
“My child, what did the vision suggest to you?” The headmistress replied.
“I don’t know, what if there are, like, two ways of looking at it?” Crystal asked.
“I can’t tell you what you saw,” was Sylvia’s only reply. Crystal turned around and scanned the back of the rotunda, her eyes finally landing on Jessica and Sarah.
“Athena?” she said, her voice raise as if she still doubted herself. Jessica and Crystal rose to their feet and applauded, and Crystal ran as fast as her high heeled shoes would carry her. When she arrived, the three girls shared an embrace.
“Wow, so weird, what was that?” Crystal asked.
“I’m not sure at all,” Jessica said. “But thank goodness it’s over with.”
~
After the rest of the students were sorted, Jessica, Sarah and Crystal were led to the Athena dormitories by the older members of their house. Athena house was up a flight of marble stairs, the door decked with two blue flags emblazoned with Athena’s crest.
Old fashioned wallpaper covered up the marble, and a plaid couch that looked like it was out of the 1950s was in the main hall. All of the furniture seemed new but very old in style, as if someone went shopping 50 years go. The room smelt of musty dry flowers and cellophane, reminding Jessica of the smell of her grandmother’s home in Kansas.
Jessica wondered if all of the houses were similarly furnished, or if this was a setup specific to Athena. That question seemed to be answered by the discovery of the wardrobe rooms.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Crystal asked as she opened the large doors to colossal walk in closet. Inside the giant wardrobe, Jessica saw rows upon rows of different sized and colored cardigans, alongside different styles of paisley dresses. There were hundreds of old fashioned hats on a giant hat rack that nearly reached the ceiling. There was a bin full of granny panties and endless stacks of boxes with frumpy old lady shoes. Shelves with gaudy old jewelry boxes were filled to the brim with pearl necklaces and gold rimmed glasses on chains.
“No, I haven’t,” Jessica began as she surveyed the mountain of old woman clothes and paraphernalia. “But it can’t be as simple as just putting this stuff on. They are going to have to teach us something special to make these disguises really work.
Chapter Nine:
“Your first class is going to be introduction to potion making. All the first year girls from each house are required to attend that one. After that, you’ll go onto house specific classes with less overlap,” explained Jordan, a third year Athena girl from England, to Jessica during breakfast the next day.
“Overlap?” Jessica asked, as she enjoyed her breakfast of melon, pineapple, and blueberries.
“Yes, you see, all houses use potions. But some houses have…let’s just say, more similarities than others,” Jordan said with a coy look.
“I think I get it,” Sarah chimed in. “Medusa house doesn’t have as many similarities because it is the only house that isn’t human.”
“You’d be surprised, actually,” Jordan said. “Medusa is scary, and Persephone could be seen as scary to a certain type of person, for example.”
“Will they teach us what to do?” Crystal said. “I mean, this all seems pretty complicated, don’t you girls think?”
“They will, in a way. It’s often more about trial and error. They will give you the tools to figure out what success means to you,” Jordan offered cryptically as she flipped her straight brown hair. “Just out of curiosity, do any of you recognize me?” she asked.
When silence was here only reply, Jordan smiled. “That’s brilliant. I’m glad my disguise is so good. I was the one that delivered your letters! Being the ‘ambassador,’ as it’s called, was my summer job for the school.”
“No way, you were the old lady?” Crystal asked.
“I sure was,” Jordan said, smiling with pride. “Right, then. Off you three go, or you’ll be tardy for your first class. Wouldn’t want to be the cause of that.”
The girls made their way downstairs, and filed into the rotunda. This time, they all made their way directly to the sections of the stands marked by the flag of their new house.
“Just yesterday, we were all the same, but today, we are on different teams,” Jessica remarked pessimistically.
“I’m sure it’s for the best,” Sarah replied. “It wouldn’t do for us all to learn the exact same things and live in the same place. Besides, isn’t it good to get a little distance from Tanya over there?” Jessica glanced over at the Medusa section and found Tanya glaring at her.
At last, a vivacious, red haired woman in her early 30s took the podium, and the class began. “Greetings, students, and welcome to your first day of a new you. I’m Professor Selene, and believe it or not, I can still clearly remember my first day as a young entrant of Aphrodite house…50 years ago,” she paused for dramatic effect, clearly taking great pride in her disguise.
They say beauty is only skin deep,” she started, “So, it is only fitting that today, we learn how to remake your skin. Each of you will have one hour to attempt to brew a potion to create a new skin for your disguise. At the end of that hour, your house will confer and select the best of you to be their representative. I’ll judge those four and give the winner a special prize.” The woman pressed a button under the podium, and the marble under the girls feet shifted and rose as if by magic. It formed into a facsimile of a desk, complete with an instruction book and a tray of herbs, a few beakers, mixing bowels, and a mortar and pestle.
“Your hour begins…now! Good luck,” she said with a wink.
~
“I guess Jordan wasn’t kidding when she said we’d be doing trial and error,” Jessica said with exasperation, after the girls had nearly exhausted the hour trying to follow the cryptic brewing instructions. “She just shoved this book in her face, and we’re supposed to figure it out on our own?”
“Trial and error, right?” Crystal asked. “Here goes nothing, maybe it will work?” She chugged her potion, a black, thick gooey mixture. She coughed and spat, cursing the taste.
For a moment, Sarah and Jessica did nothing but stare. Soon, though, changes began to occur rapidly. Her face became paler, losing its tan. Soon the pigment drained from her skin completely, rendering her albino.
“How do I look?” Crystal asked with optimism. Jessica and Sarah did not answer, only scrunching up their faces in dismay. “That bad huh? Ok, Sarah, why don’t you try?”
Sarah lifted her mixture to her lips, and drank. Age spots appeared to appear on her skin, but aside from that, no other change was visible.
“That’s pretty good,” Jessica said. Sarah pulled out a hand mirror from her purse and surveyed her work herself. “Yeah, but not good enough.” She turned around to look at the other Athena girls behind her. Most of them had also miscalculated, with generally circus like strange skin tones as the result. “Jessica, I guess this one is up to you, if you want Athena to win that prize,” Sarah said with trepidation.
“I wonder what it is?” Crystal asked.
“I bet something really good,” Jessica replied. “I hope I don’t blow it.” Feeling cautious, she allowed only the smallest sip of her blue hued mixture to touch her lips.
Jessica couldn’t see herself, but she saw the eyes of Sarah and Crystal grow wide. “You did it!” Sarah shouted after a moment of silent disbelief. She thrust her hand mirror into Jessica’s palm.
Jessica saw her face full of wrinkles, as well as age spots. Crows feet had sprouted under her eyes, and her neck as wrinkled and sagging. Her forehead was lined and small blue veins were visible under her slightly translucent skin.
“Wow,” she gasped in amazement. “I don’t even know how I did it!”
“You must be a natural,” Sarah said supportively. “But Athena’s got a real shot, now, thanks to you.”
“I agree, well done,” a deep voice intoned from behind Jessica. She jumped and turned around to see her face to face with Tanya, whose face bore a smirk and whose fingers were stained in dark blue.
“Tanya, what are you doing over here?” Jessica asked.
“I’m just surveying my competition. It appears, much to my surprise, that you could be my main contender for the prize,” Tanya quickly grabbed the beaker from Jessica’s desk.
“Hey, that’s mine,” she said.
“Just having a look,” Tanya responded, turning around and holding the flask up the light. “Impressive. But the fire seed prize is mine.”
“How do you know what the prize is?” Sarah said. Tanya looked a little flushed and quickly put the beaker down.
“None of your business. We Medusa girls are just…better informed,” she said in her thick accent. “I’ll be leaving now.”
“You do that,” Jessica replied, and her adversary made a hasty retreat.
“What was that all about?” Crystal asked. Before anyone could answer, Seline walked back into the rotunda and shouted “Time!”
“Please, select your representative for demonstration to the class. Persephone?”
Vanessa walked into the middle of the rotunda, her skin emblazoned with some tough looking tattoos of dragons and knives on her arms.
“I love the body art,” Seline began, “but you’ve only got the sleeves…but perhaps I’m just being a perfectionist. Alright, you can take a seat. Aphrodite?”
One of the twin French girls rose. Her skin had a gaudy coat of makeup on it.
“This is all very well done, Claudette, but I can’t just let you win because you’re part of my house. Makeup isn’t part of your skin, so I can’t give you the top marks…” Seline said with a sigh. “Medusa?”
Tanya strutted towards the center of the rotunda. Unlike the first two girls, she hadn’t drank her potion quite yet. Once she was at the center, she drank a swig with dramatic emphasis.
Her pink skin melted into a greenish, somewhat leathery form. The change was a subtle, smooth shift over several seconds, and Jessica had no doubt that she had mixed her potion well. The Medusa table cheered.
“Excellent job, Tanya. Very uniform distribution. If Athena can’t beat that, you’re the champion. Athena?”
“Take this. Your sip from a few minutes ago is wearing off,” Sarah said as she handed Jessica the flask. “Good luck.”
Jessica took her place at the center of the rotunda and downed another sip of her potion, but instead of cheering from the Athena section, gasps could be heard. The other three houses were laughing. Jessica quickly pulled out Sarah’s hand mirror from her pocket and saw why.
Her face had started to swell up, and was flat and blue. It looked like a huge blueberry! Jessica, mortified, tried to cover her eyes.
“I’m sorry that didn’t work so well, though for the life of me I don’t know why your house selected you to represent them! Here, drink this, it’ll counteract the effects,” Seline said, administering a clear liquid from a small bottle in her purse.
“It was working a few minutes ago, I don’t know what happened,” Jessica said with exasperation as her face returned to normal. Seline merely shrugged and Jessica slunk back to her place next to Crystal and Sarah.
“I believe we have our winner,” Seline said as she produced a small bag from the breast pocket of her pink pantsuit. “Congratulations are in order for Tanya and Medusa house.” The house’s section erupted in more cheers, and Tanya repeated her strut to the center of the room. She grabbed the seeds out of Seline’s hand and clutched them triumphantly for a moment, before raising them above her head, her hand clenched into a first.
Chapter Ten:
“Weight gain, in some form or another, can be a part of every house here at Olympia,” began their second professor, an appropriately plump older lady in a billowy purple dress. The girls were in their next class, in a smaller room upstairs ensconced in wood and decked out like a cabin.
“In Persephone, it can represent the loss of a strict diet, or the consumption of heavy foods, but it is often accompanied by muscle growth as well. In Medusa, some of the monsters are a bit larger than their human counterparts,” the professor, named Tiffany, intoned in a heavy Texas drawl. “You girls may be surprised that even Aphrodite girls learn about weight gain. And not just focused weight gain in specific areas, such as the buttocks or the breasts, but in some cases, they learn to do it all over. Remember, that house is about fulfilling images of beauty, and for some, a curvy form is the image of beauty.”
“Most women experience a slowing of their metabolism with age, and their natural body shape can also change. That is why it is important to emphasize for our house. In this Athena only class, you girls will not only learn how to brew a potion that gain cause weight gain, but you’ll also learn the much more subtle art of how to apply that weight gain in a way that creates the look of a heavy, older lady,” she continued. “Now, this obviously is going to require a great deal of calories, so there’s no better place to start then sugar. Any sugar based liquid, such as molasses or corn syrup, once properly enchanted, can function to effect weight gain…although, you can’t count out milk or ice cream…” she droned.
“I’ve figured it out!” Sarah whispered to Jessica, startling her. “I know why the potion didn’t work.”
“Sarah, please. First, I want to listen to this, and second, I don’t want to think about that anymore,” Jessica whispered back in protest.
“Wait, you need to know you were cheated! Tanya sabotaged your potion!” Sarah exclaimed. Jessica’s ears perked up.
“Go on…” she urged, feeling furious.
“I think she must have dropped some blueberry juice in your flask. We had blueberries for breakfast, she could have smuggled some into class. And her fingers were stained with something bluish. And now the weight gain on the face – the sugar in the berries! She could have dipped her finger into the potion just as you turned around and spoiled it.
“Do you really think she’d do something like that?” asked Crystal, who was listening it.
“It’s not about what I think she’s capable of,” Sarah explained, “it’s about the evidence. How else could Jessica’s potion work one minute and stop working the next? Nobody else touched it except Tanya.”
Her words hung in the air for a moment, and nobody said a word. Apparently, the lecture was over as well, because at that moment, desks pushed their way out of the floor, along with instructions on how to start experimenting with potions and a plethora of sugary substances to work with as bases.
“At least there isn’t a contest with this one,” Jessica grumbled as she got to work mixing chocolate sauce, soda pop, taffy and gummy worms in a large bowl.
~
“Wow, girls. We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Tiffany exclaimed with a sigh as she surveyed the classroom an hour later. Their experimentation at creating sugary weight gain had been a comical and dismal failure. The first year Athena girls were now a misshapen lot, with out of proportion body parts. Linda, a tall athletic girl, had a pair of oversized breasts that hung down to her waist. Josephina, a girl from Mexico, had a belly that looked as though she was 10 months pregnant with triplets. Tamika, who was from New Orleans, had a but that stuck out three feet from her body and seemed to be completely immune from the effects of gravity.
Crystal’s body was hopefully top heavy, with puffy chipmunk cheeks, rounded shoulders and a massive bosom, but otherwise thin. Sarah was the opposite, sporting heavy legs, saddlebags, thick thighs, and a ponderous but retaining her slender physique elsewhere on her body.
“Well, it looks like we have one success story,” Tiffany said as she surveyed Jessica. Her sugary mix had created a balanced, plump, and heavy look to her body. Her legs were thick and wobbly, her waist was lined with rolls, and her arms were very pudgy.
“Good use of the gummy worms. They work wonders for creating that old lady arms effect,” she remarks and she gave Jessica’s arm a gentle slap, causing the fat to jiggle for several seconds. “And I like how you mashed up the taffy beforehand. That created the nice look of a matronly, large, fallen bosom,” she said, pointing to Jessica’s chest. “Crystal over here has big knockers, but they are just defying gravity over there.”
“Well, it looks like you succeed again,” Sarah said.
“Yeah, but when it didn’t count,” Jessica complained.
“Why can’t they just tell us what to do?” Crystal whined. “Why do we have to figure it out for ourselves?” Tiffany just smiled knowingly and moved on to the next group of students.
“It does appear to be quite confusing…there doesn’t appear to be a logical reason to have us all re-learn how to do something the professors, and presumably the older girls, have already deduced how to do…unless…” Sarah began.
“Unless that’s the whole point,” Jessica finished for her. “We’re learning how to do it so that we each learn how to do it a little differently, so that we each create our own disguise alter ego. If we each learned the exact same technique, we’d come out looking like a row of clones.”
~
Their next class was introduced by a hunchbacked, ancient looking woman. She wore a dark black skirt with frilly white blouse and black cardigan, with a pince nez on her long, thin nose.
She stared at the class with cold, stoic grey eyes, with similarly colored hair swept back loosely into a loose bun. She was easily in her seventies.
The professor announced in an elderly, severe voice, "My name is Brittany, and I am a very attractive blonde in her mid-twenties. In this class, you may call me Ms. Critchleigh. I was sitting where you are sitting right now five years ago. But thanks to good potion making skills and the right wardrobe choices, I am disguised as the woman you see me as today. With a little luck, you can be, too.”
“It is important to balance two distinct needs: First, the need to dress modestly and conservatively, and second, two select clothing that will showcase your new body. Of course, some of you will find your balance leaning towards one end of that spectrum, while others will find it on the opposite…”
“Make sure your clothes reflect your new, older body and find a balance of that spectrum. I enjoy wearing cardigans, because they can show off my larger, heavier assets while still maintaining a modest look. Accessories are important as well. Shoes can really make an outfit, as can old fashioned jewelry.”
Jessica leaned over to Sarah and began to whisper. “I can’t let Tanya get away with this. I think the only way to teach her a lesson is to master this stuff. They said Medusa had won the house competition six years in a row, right? If we can win it for Athena, that’ll show her.”
Chapter Eleven:
“Do you two have your disguise clothing ready?” Jessica asked Crystal and Sarah. “And your potions already brewed? We have no idea what they are going to do. They could ask us to do another one of those disguise competitions right there. We have to be ready for anything.”
“You’re right,” exclaimed Jordan. “Every year I’ve been here, they’ve changed it. I saw a non traditional beauty pageant my first year, and a song and dance bit last year.”
“Hold on a minute,” Sarah started. “How did Medusa manage to win a beauty contest?”
“Ursula Diuqs,” Jordan said as she rolled her eyes. “Had a mermaid get up or something like that, what have you.”
“A mermaid? Does that sound scary to you?” Crystal asked.
“I’m sure she made it scary somehow,” Jessica said. “But they aren’t winning this time.”
It had been several months since their start at Olympia, and Jessica, Crystal, and Sarah had all but perfected their disguises. They had been waiting for an announcement about the contest for weeks, and now it was finally here.
They grabbed their bags of disguise clothing and made their way downstairs to the main rotunda lecture hall. Sylvia was already at the center podium waiting for them.
“Students of Olympia, I have an announcement to make,” she began in her signature wobbly voice once everyone had taken their seats. “The traditional house contest has been cancelled this year.”
Groans and boos erupted from the girls, most loudly in the Medusa section. Jessica saw Tanya rise to her feet and shout what Jessica surmised was a curse word in a foreign language.
“Settle down girls, settle down,” she remanded. “It is very important that you pay attention. The traditional contest has been cancelled because we are doing a very different type of contest this year. Call it a treasure hunt, if you will…”
“The artifact is ring which we call ‘The Opal of Zues.’ Whichever girl can find and recover it will win the house contest. And we’ve decided that the prize will be the ring itself.”
A hushed silence fell over the room. It was broken by Tanya, who took to her feet.
“What does the ring do?” She asked. “Is it magic?”
“It is indeed,” Sylvia said, resting her arm on the maple tree for a moment. “Whoever wears it will experience the arc of fate bending towards them. This school itself was founded by a woman who wore the ring. I doubt that this institution would have come into existence without it.”
Tanya took her seat. Even from across the large room, Jessica could see the greedy lust for power in her eyes. She dreaded what someone like her would be capable of with such a device, and mentally redoubled her commitment to win the contest and the ring.
“All I can tell you is that the ring is still on Olympia Island,” Sylvia concluded. “Neither I nor the rest of the staff will assist you further than that. I can say, however…that your first clues may be closer than you think.”
Chapter Twelve:
Back at Athena hall, Sarah, Crystal and Jessica sat with their heads in their hands. “How are we going to find it?” Crystal moaned. The other Athena girls had left the common, wandering around the grounds or other parts of the island in search of the treasure.
“This island is ten square miles,” Sarah said. “I’m not sure there’s any way to effectively search for an object so small in such a vast area.”
“But she did say the first clues were closer than we think,” Jessica said. “If only we could figure out what that meant…”
“That could be just to throw us off. Let’s just go with what we know about the ring. I don’t think they’d bury it in the ground somewhere. It means finding it would be random, and it wouldn’t have very much security…I think it must be in a vault somewhere…” Sarah theorized.
“That, or maybe someone is wearing it?” Crystal asked. “A ring that cool, it’s got to be a pretty big fashion statement.”
“But if they gave it to someone to wear, or to hide, it must be someone they trust,” Jessica said. “Which means…it has to be a member of the faculty, or more likely, since they said that faculty wouldn’t assist us, someone who the faculty trusts…who shares their goals…”
“Magic would be bouncing around everywhere if they were wearing it, wouldn’t we notice that?” Sarah asked.
“Wait…I have noticed it. Closer than we think! It’s brilliant,” Jessica exclaimed.
“What? What is it?” Crystal asked.
“What was closer to us at the time of that announcement than the maple tree? My vision quest, I think it was a clue. I was at some kind of breakfast place, and I saw a girl gain weight from eating pancakes,” Jessica said.
“Pancakes can be pretty fattening, you know that, right?” Crystal asked.
“Yes, Crystal,” Jessica said. “But the girl asked for extra maple syrup, if I remember right, and…”
“Maple syrup – a sugary liquid. Perfect base for a weight gain potion,” Sarah chimed in. “I didn’t really want to talk about my vision quest much, but I suppose this is relevant. I think the name of the place is Magic Waffles, and I spoke with the owner in mine.”
“Why didn’t you want to talk about it?” Crystal asked.
“It made me a bit uncomfortable at the time, to be honest,” Sarah said. “Intrigued, but, also scared. I’m a good Mormon girl from Utah. I always try to be polite and I never use foul language. But in my vision quest, well…” She closed her eyes and remembered and recounted it as best as she could.
~
“I’d like to make a withdrawal,” the short man at the front counter said anxiously. “I want to withdraw an item placed into a safety deposit box…”
“Hold your damn horses,” Sarah heard herself say in a gruff, older sounding voice. “Let me pull up your account information first…alright, Mr. Trull. Do you have two forms of ID?”
“Here’s my passport,” the man said as he handed over the blue document. The red headed, grinning faced clearly matched his, but Sarah wasn’t satisfied.
“This is just one document, are you going to pull another one out of your ass or are you just wasting my time?” she heard herself bark out.
“Passports count as two in most banks, don’t they?” the man asked nervously.
“Count my fingers!” Sarah demanded, giving him the bird with both index fingers. “One, two. You need two forms, or you aren’t getting anything from me.”
“Well, there’s no need to be rude,” he said. “Look, I’m Daniel, I own the Magic Waffles breakfast place, and I need…”
“Who cares what the hell you need, you bastard. You haven’t given me what I need. Two forms of ID!” Sarah bellowed, her voice sounding scratchy and deep, as if it had gone through decades of smoking and menopause.
“There’s something very important in that box,” the man insisted. “I need it.”
Sarah let out a loud, rattling cackle. “I’m sure you do. But that’s not my problem.”
~
“Wait, did you say his name was Daniel Trull?” Crystal asked. “Short guy with red hair, late 20s?”
“Yes, why?” Sarah asked.
“Because he was in my quest as well, so do you think that he might be the key to finding the ring?” Crystal said.
“Tell us everything you remember,” said Jessica.
~
Crystal was in a nightclub of some kind, but it wasn’t familiar to her. Colored lights flashed sporadically on an otherwise dimly lit dance floor, and the bodies were densely stacked.
A short, red haired man in his 20s was dancing and grinding uncomfortably close to Crystal, and as the music stopped between songs, he spoke to her.
“Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven, baby? I’m Daniel Trull. Why don’t we get out of here and go back to my place,” he said with a drunken slur to his voice.
At the time, Crystal was eager for some clue as to which house she’d been sorted into. At this point, she was afraid it was Aphrodite. She ran to the bathroom and found a mirror, though for some reason the lights gave off only the dimmest possible light. Still, she could see enough of herself: she was a middle aged woman with an exaggerated hourglass figure, and ridiculous, jutting breasts. Was the young man she had talked to too busy ogling them to notice how old she was? She made her way to the dance floor again, and he was waiting for her.
“Don’t you think I’m a little old for you?” Crystal asked nervously.
“Nonsense, you’re just my type,” Daniel insisted. “Come by my place sometime. I keep the back door unlocked.” He paused for a moment, and then leaned right into Crystal’s ear. “I’ve got something special that could be just for you/”
~
“Don’t you see?” Jessica exclaimed when Crystal had finished recounting the story. “He has the ring. That’s what the something special is. That’s what wanted from the bank deposit box.”
“So should be go back to the bank?” Sarah asked.
“Or the waffle house?” asked Crystal.
“No, his home! That’s where he told Crystal to go. Sarah, I’m guessing when you pulled up the information on the computer, it gave you an address? Right here on the Island, huh?”
Sarah nodded.
“Well, what are we waiting for? If the other girls had similar vision quests, it’s only a matter of time before they figure it out too. There’s no time to lose.”
Chapter Twelve:
The girls ran as fast as they could to Daniel’s house. Few residential buildings existed on Olympia Island, so it wasn’t too difficult to locate.
Daniel’s home turned out to be easily the largest home on the island. A mini mansion that contained four visible floors, it was tucked away at the end of a dirt road as if to avoid attention.
They were relieved to not run into any other girls on the way, and they quickly beat a path to the back door. When they tried to open it, however, they found that it was locked.
“What do we do now?” Crystal asked. “Try the front door?”
“He told you to try the back…” Sarah began.
“That’s it,” Jessica said. “He didn’t tell you to try the back, Crystal. He told you in disguise to try the back. You need to get your disguise on.”
“What if he hits on me again? Are you making me go in there all alone?” Crystal asked.
“No, we are doing this together. Tell you what, we’ll change too. I could pose as your mom and Sarah could be your aunt!” Jessica said excitedly. “Come on, let’s go for it,” she added, and the girls started changing.
Crystal, though always a very fashion conscious girl, didn’t change her outfit much for her alter ego, whom she’d named Sheryl. Mini skirts, hot pants, tube tops, and similar teen garb were happened to be what both Crystal and Sheryl wore. She had once explained this conundrum by asking “Why does a middle aged woman have to dress her age? Why can’t she dress my age instead?” Her refusal to acknowledge her advancing years was one of Sheryl’s main personality characteristics.
The one aspect of the clothing that did need changing, of course, was the size. Crystal was very thin, but Sheryl wasn’t quite so trim, and so Crystal had to have clothing she wasn’t going to burst out of. After putting on some hot pants and a tube top in a much larger size, she pulled out a purple, swirling potion from her purse, uncorked it, and chugged.
Her thighs expanded in girth as she greedily swallowed down the liquid, growing rounder and slightly more dimpled with cellulite. Crystal’s butt grew larger, becoming a large bubble, while her hips widened. Her modest bust grew outwards, turning into two massive, though slightly fallen torpedoes. Her shoulders expanded as well, and her arms became a bit thicker and more muscular. She grew taller, and overall frame grew much bigger, making her something of a middle aged Amazon.
Some wrinkles etched their way into Crystal’s skin, although she retained the distinct look of a woman who had worn her years well. Tiny laugh lines and some small crow’s feet were visible, but somewhat hidden by an overdone makeup job. Her platinum blonde hair looked a tad artificial and brittle in an overdone hairdo, as if the woman who was now Sheryl was going to fight her age until the end of time.
“Let’s go,” Sheryl said in her deeper, more seductive voice. “I don’t want to keep Daniel waiting.”
“I thought that you were scared of him hitting on you,” Sarah replied.
“Crystal was scared. I’m eager,” Sheryl said. “Remember, I’m a Puma. I want cub meat,” she said with a glint in her eye and a greedy smile on her lips.
“It is weird how easy it is for us to slip into character when we take these things,” Jessica said worriedly. “Perhaps the potion brings out our repressed desires.”
“Speaking of that,” Sarah began. “Crystal, er, I mean Sheryl, how did you know you weren’t in Aphrodite, based on your vision quest?”
“I do remember the tree kept flashing between colors,” Jessica added.
“Oh, it really could have gone either way,” Sheryl said. “It’s like the teachers said, it’s all about the overlap, and there was a lot of that in me. It just came down to a choice I guess. I wanted to be with my friends.” All three girls smiled.
Sarah was next. Her clothes, unlike Sheryl’s, were the epitome of fashion-less. She put on an ill fitting, dark, sack of a dress, with gnarled looking leather shoes and some frayed gloves. She pulled out her dark blue potion and quickly gulped it down.
Sarah’s face started to get more wrinkled and dotted with age spots. Her nose became longer and hooked downwards, as her forehead became a mess of wrinkles. Her eyebrows became bushy and mangy, and a few veins started to show through her leathery, translucent, wrinkled skin. Big bags formed under her eyes and her lips became thin and her mouth became puckered. Her hair lost its luster and became tangled, white, and stringy.
Sarah’s body became shorter as she leaned over and became more hunchbacked. Her breasts didn’t become larger, so much as they became longer and more saggy, dragging and drooping across her new pot belly. Her butt became wider and hung over her new cottage cheese thighs.
“So, are we going to take this bastard’s ring or not?” barked Mildred, Sarah’s alter ego. Mildred walked with a crooked gait, cursed, grinded her teeth, and violently cackled and coughed often. Thanks to a quick of Sarah’s potion making skills, Mildred also skimped on most forms of hygiene, leaving her smelly as well as scary.
Finally, it was Jessica’s turn. She had the most elaborate outfit of any of the girls, and had taken her time getting her costume just right. The grey skirt, white blouse and grey cardigan suggested a woman who was sensible and professional, perhaps the clothing of a friendly, but serious and hardworking grandmotherly figure. She had a string of large pears for a necklace and frumpy grandma shoes. She ran behind a tree for a moment to change into her granny panties, which looked decidedly odd on the body of a teenage girl.
Jessica pulled out her cloudy, bright blue potion and quickly gulped it down. Her face became fleshy, complete with large, dark eye bags. She grew hoods of flesh over her eyes; thin, grey eyebrows, with the corners of her mouth turned down at both ends, as if to suggest permanent disappointment or dissatisfaction. Her skin became leathery and full of age spots, tiny wrinkles, and spider veins.
Her small, farm girl’s nose faded away, or rather grew, into a long, pointed beak. Her deep blue eyes became flinty grey and piercing cold. Jessica rearranged her hair, which was quickly turning an iron-grey color, into a bun.
Jessica’s breast grew as well, becoming a large, fallen, matronly bosom and stretching and indenting the front of her grey cardigan. She tried to pull and re-adjust it, but to no avail. Her massive, fallen chest simply would not fit into it without leaving very little to the imagination. Under those breasts, rested several massive rolls of belly flab, which hung over the sides of her body in large, saggy love handles. Her hips were wide and caused a definite waddle in her step, which was already slowed down by slightly arthritic joints. Her legs were thick and round, and they jiggled with every shuffling step.
“It is time,” said Dorothy, her alter ego, in her signature creaky voice. It was always a serious tone, one that implied Dorothy wouldn’t be taking nonsense from anyone. Jessica's insecurities about her ability to accomplish things, to lead, seemed to fade quickly when she was Dorothy.
The three women walked to the back door of the mansion. Sheryl tried the door, and it was now unlocked.
Chapter Thirteen:
Dorothy, Sheryl, and Mildred found themselves in a den of some kind. A large, red velvet chair was in the middle of the room, and Daniel was sitting in it.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said knowingly. “You’ve come for the ring?”
“Yes,” Dorothy said with an anxious tone. “Hand it over. We got here first.”
“That is true, and I congratulate you on your hard work. But…am I going to get a kiss?” he asked.
“Hell no, you horn dog. Just hand over the damn ring and…” Mildred cried out.
“Wait just a minute,” Sheryl interrupted. “If the man wants a kiss, let me give him a kiss.” She strutted across the floor, leaned down, and planted her lips upon his. She put her arm behind his neck and caressed his curly red hair as she ran her tongue across his lips. Her left arm made its way under his shirt and her fingers gently played across his chest as her tongue entered and explored his mouth. As he moaned into the kiss, Sheryl suddenly tightened her other around round his neck, putting him into a headlock.
“Where is the ring?” Sheryl demanded, yelling right into his year. Daniel’s face contorted and he looked as if he was about to answer, but suddenly there was a sound at the back door. A clicking, as if someone was trying to open the door only to find it locked.
“It’s probably one of the others,” Dorothy said. “We only have a few moments until they change and find their way in. You’ve got hand us the ring!” Dorothy demanded.
Dorothy’s worst fears were realized as she heard a low roar from outside. “I think we all know what house would roar upon changing. Odds are, that’s Tanya out there. We’ve got to hurry.”
“Fine, fine, here’s the ring,” Daniel said as he fished into his pocket. “But please,” he began as he turned to Sheryl, “come by later? We could have some real fun, you and I.”
“I’ll think about it,” Sheryl said, he eyes on Daniel’s hand. Soon, it returned from his pocket, and he had the ring.
Sheryl stared at it for a moment, transfixed. The thick gold band was ornately carved with ancient symbols and studded with rhinestones. The large opal was the largest precious stone she had ever seen adorn a piece of jewelry, and as she stared into its deep darkness, it seemed to swirl.
As she began to reach for it, the back door came crashing down, and a hulking, monstrous form entered the room. Dorothy recognized her to be Tanya’s disguise from the green leathery skin she had used to win the contest during their first class. Her clothing now consisted of tattered rags, and her hair was red, flowing mane. Her body was hulking and massive, and appeared to be both corpulent and muscular at the same time. Her arms were massive and solid looking, while her bosom and belly distorted and stretched out the rags barely covering the front of her body.
“Sheryl, put the ring on, now!” Dorothy shouted, hoping the ring would lend her the magical prowess to defeat their rival. Sheryl reached for the ring, but the Tanya monster lunged, and landed right on Daniel and Sheryl. The red chair tipped over, and the ring flew out of Daniel’s hand.
Sheryl, tall and built somewhat powerfully in her own right, quickly rose to her feet, prepared to try and stop Tanya. But she proved no match, as the green beast tackled her and pinned her to floor with ease. Dorothy and Mildred hobbled towards them, each of them pulling umbrellas from their purses to use as a weapon.
Tanya, keeping her weight on Sheryl, partially turned around and batted the umbrellas out of both of their arms with one powerful stroke of her fist. The would be weapons clattered to the floor. Mildred hopped on top of Tanya’s back and dug her sharp, dirty fingernails into her skin, and the green monstrosity roared with rage.
Dorothy saw her chance. While Tanya was distracted, she moved as fast as her joints could carry to towards the ring on the floor. She tried to bend over to reach it, but her back wouldn’t let her. She was about to try to crouch to get it, but at that moment, she heard the sound of a gun cocking.
Dorothy turned around and was face to face with a scary looking biker chick holding a Desert Eagle pistol. Her hair was short, spiky and dyed bright red. She wore leather tube top, and had several gnarly looking piercings all over her face. Her face was painted with overdone gothic makeup, and her body was slightly overweight and heavy looking. Dorothy finally recognized her by the frightening sleeve tattoos on her arms.
“Vanessa?” Dorothy croaked out.
“The name is Morrigan, and that ring is mine. Everyone put their hands in the air,” she shouted. Tanya rose to her feet, seemingly undeterred by the handgun. She charged directly at Morrigan, but she lurched out of the way at the last moment and avoided the attack. She produced something metallic from her pocket, and a moment later, a horrific electric noise could be heard.
“You like my Taser?” Morrigan asked, as the Tanya monster writhed in pain on the ground. With one swift motion, she brought the butt of her pistol against Tanya’s face, and she fell to the floor. She strutted towards the ring that Dorothy had been about to pick up, and snatched it from the ground, putting it on her ring finger.
“All of you are coming with me into my helicopter,” Morrigan shouted in her harsh, masculine voice as she waved the gun around. “I don’t want to shoot you here like dogs, but I will.”
Morrigan forced Sheryl and Daniel to carry Tanya’s unconscious body into the waiting Chinook helicopter outside. The pilot, a man in a dark jumpsuit, helped her tie Tanya up. Everyone else was handcuffed to a rail inside the main compartment.
“What are you doing?” Dorothy asked. “If you want to win so badly, why didn’t you just take the ring and leave us be?”
Morrigan let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “My father is a defense contractor. He knows people who would be willing to pay billions for this ring.”
“That’s not what Sylvia would have wanted!” Mildred cried.
“So what? I’m done with this school now,” Morrigan said dismissively.
“They’ll come after you!” Dorothy warned.
“How will they even know who took the ring? Five girls have gone missing. It could have been any of us, as far as they know. Why do you think I didn’t want to shoot you back in the house?”
“Please,” Mildred begged. “You’re letting the disguise go to your head. I know how easy it is to allow yourself to get in character, as it were. But you’ve let it overwhelm you. This isn’t what Vanessa would want.
“Who cares what she would want? Vanessa originally went to this school to get away from her father, from his life. But that’s only because she was afraid to really live, to do what needs to be done. I am not so inhibited. Besides, I’ve been working on a potion that’s not as temporary as the ones the school teaches us to make.”
“No, you can’t mean…” Daniel began.
“Yes, that’s right. Soon I’ll be able to be Morrigan forever. And then I’ll never have to worry about her fears, her inhibitions, and her sense of right and wrong interfering with my plans.” Morrigan shut the partition between the main compartment and the cockpit, where she and the pilot were sitting.
“When do you want to do it?” the pilot asked in a low voice. Despite the partition, and the quiet tone, Dorothy could still hear.
“Wait until we are in international waters. Then we’ll dump ‘em,” Morrigan answered back.
Chapter Fourteen:
Nobody had on a watch, so there was no way for any of them to measure how long it was. But for an imperceptibly long interval, all of them were silent.
Finally, the silence was broken when Tanya opened her eyes. Tied up and in a heap on the floor of the chopper, she signaled her consciousness to the others with a low groan.
“You’re awake?” Dorothy asked.
“Yes, although I imagine that it won’t do me much good. We’re headed to our death, yes?” she asked. Dorothy nodded in reply. “I thought as much. I always imagined I might die like this.”
“What do you mean?” Dorothy asked.
“You assumed I was from Russia, right? Wrong. I’m from Belarus: Europe’s last dictatorship. It’s so authoritarian, that the film ‘V for Vendetta’ was actually banned because the dictator worried people would draw a connection between the evil mastermind in the film and himself. My family disappeared in helicopters when I was a child. Dissidents are not tolerated,” she said, with pain in her voice.
“The first time I met you, you mentioned your family, and so I thought of mine and lashed out at you,” she said. “But I felt so guilty about it afterwards. The reason why I came to this school, the reason why I sabotaged your potion on our first day of classes, and the reason why I wanted the ring are all the same: I thought I could take something with me when I go home. Something powerful enough to help bring freedom to my people. I felt guilty again when I made you lose that contest, but I wanted to win that prize so badly. My first thought, upon realizing the location of the ring, was to hope you weren’t there. So that I didn’t have to hurt you again.” Tears streamed down Tanya’s face. “And it the worst part is that it was all for nothing, now.”
“She’s right, it’s hopeless…” Sheryl said, tears falling down her face as well. Daniel leaned into her chest and started crying too.
“Wait…” Dorothy said as she looked at her hands. They blue veins were receding, and there were less wrinkles than she remembered. Not wanting to Morrigan to hear, she leaned as low as she could and whispered. “You’re changing back, Tanya. We all are. As you do, those ropes are going to slip a bit, because you’re smaller than your alter ego.”
“So?” Tanya said. “She took us all by herself. How can I stop her now?”
“When you won that contest for those seeds, what did you do with them?” Dorothy asked.
Tanya’s dark eyes lit up. “Pouch around my neck…”
“Wait, what about the ring? She’s wearing it!” Mildred said. “Won’t fate twist to her advantage?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Daniel said in a whisper, and then he lowered his voice even further. “It’s a fake!
“You’re just telling us this now?” Mildred asked angrily.
“If she knew it, she might have got mad and killed us earlier!” Daniel insisted.
After a few minutes, Tanya had shrunk enough to pull herself free of the ropes, and had the seed back ready. Dorothy hit the partition and shouted at Morrigan, “There’s something you need to know about how that ring works.”
“What?” she shouted back through the partition.
“It’s a fake,” she shouted back.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Morrigan said, as she opened the partition.
“Now,” Dorothy shouted, and Tanya opened the seed back, titled her head back ,and emptied it down her throat. She rushed to the partition, put her face towards the cockpit, and exhaled.
A deafening roar rocked the chopper, along with a bright flash of light. The cockpit was consumed with flame, and the chopper rapidly started losing attitude control. Unfortunately, the cockpit was still locked, and as the girls saw when the smoke cleared, the controls were fried, along with the pilots.
“We should have thought of that,” Mildred said as the aircraft started to descend rapidly.
“Fortunately, we’ve got the ring,” Daniel said with a smile.
“I can’t reach it!” Tanya said as she stuck her hand into the partition. “Besides, you said it was a fake.”
“Yes, that ring was a fake,” Daniel said, as he reached into his other pocket. “This one is real,” he said with a grin as he put on the real Opal of Zeus.
“You little bastard,” Mildred said with exasperation. “You had that the whole time?”
“So played along, wanted to have a little fun. What’s the harm?” Daniel said with a shrug.
“The harm is we are going to crash into the hillside and die,” Tanya shouted.
“Relax. I’m wearing the ring, remember? We’ll be fine. We were never really in danger,” he promised.
As he said that, the Chinook helicopter’s descent ended in a thundering crash.
Chapter Fifteen:
“What about that?” Sylvia asked to the crowd gathered in the rotunda. “Girls from Medusa and Athena working together. I can’t remember the last time the house contest was shared by two houses. And just between us, that’s saying something. Give all four of these girls a round of applause!” Jessica, Sarah, Crystal and Tanya were cheered, with the loudest cheers coming from Athena and Medusa house sections.
It had been a week since that fateful afternoon, and since then they had been the talk of the school. None of them had been hurt in the cash, and even Vanessa had somehow survived, though she’d been expelled from Olympia.
“I also want to thank someone else very special for helping out with this contest. Please give a round of applause to my son, Daniel Trull.” Everyone was shocked, but as Daniel rose from the stands, he got an ovation from crowd. He looked at Crystal and gave her a little wink before he returned to his seat.
“This has been an interesting semester for us all. I sincerely hope you enjoy your winter holiday, and that you feel you learned something valuable here at Olympia,” Sylvia concluded, and the girls made their way off of the stage.
As soon as they were out of the hall, Tanya, who had been holding the ring, placed it in Jessica’s hand.
“I owe you my life. You deserve the ring,” she said at last. Jessica did not take it.
“Tanya, I think I have learned something really important. It’s not about what we are entitled to, what we need. And I believe you, and your nation, need that ring more than I do,” Jessica said.
“You mean that?” Tanya said, looking confused.
“When they announced the contest, I’ll admit, one of my big motivations for finding that ring was to stop you from getting it. But…I know you’ll make better use of it than me. You have to avenge your family…I have to put up with mine.”
“Jessica, just because I have challenges, doesn’t mean I’ll use the ring the right way. I’m worried, what if I become like Morrigan?” Tanya asked, with emotion in her voice.
“The fact that you’re willing to ask that question means your heart is in the right place,” Jessica said. “Now, please, keep the ring, and stay true to yourself.”
“It’s…it’s a shame you weren’t in Medusa,” she said at last. “We might have been friends.”
“I still intend to be your friend, Tanya,” Jessica said with a smile, and the two parted ways.
“What do you intend to do when you get back?” Sarah asked when Jessica had rejoined them.
“Apart from catching up with family, obviously,” Crystal chimed in.
“Well, maybe I’m over interpreting things here,” Jessica said. “But I think I know what I’m meant to do.”
“What’s that?” Crystal asked.
“I’m going to go home and enjoy a huge pancake breakfast. With extra maple syrup,” she said. “And no matter what anyone says, I’m not going to feel bad about it.”