Free The Heir of Olympus and the Forest Realm by Zachary Howe

Atalo’s lips as he tried to keep a lid on his excitement, glancing back and forth between his daughter and grandson. Ellie’s look was more difficult to read: she seemed to be studying Gordie, her eyes narrowed like an eagle fixated on a mouse scurrying through a field hundreds of feet below—Gordie would not be made a meal of. He returned her gaze to impress upon her how serious he was.
    The silence dragged on until Ellie’s gaze finally softened. “I think you’re right,” she said, with a look of resignation. Atalo looked elated and ushered her to the table.
    “Sit,” he urged. “Pancakes are ready. I’ll bring ‘em to the table.” Gordie’s enthusiasm matched his grandfather’s, but he fought to remain stony-faced. She and Gordie sat at the table and were joined by Atalo as he hastily set down a steaming pile of pancakes, forgetting plates for them all.
    The scene was tense, save for Atalo’s giddiness. It almost felt to Gordie as though they had never left the table from their first night at his grandfather’s house. Ellie watched him expectantly, but he was unsure how to start, so he just asked, “What do I do now?”
    “ You? ” she asked. “You won’t be doing anything. You can go back to school next week and we will continue our lives.” There was a definite finality in her voice.
    “How can you say that, Ellie?” Atalo looked shocked. “The boy is being hunted by the ruler of Olympus, and you think he should just go back to high school?”
    “He was being hunted,” she said. “As far as I can tell he’s not anymore. Nothing has happened since Robert died—who’s to say it’s not over?” The mention of his father stung Gordie, but he was determined to keep the conversation on course.
    “You can’t possibly think that, Mom? He’ll figure out that I’m alive sooner or later.” Gordie didn’t use Zeus’s name because he assumed they were all on the same page. Plus, it just felt weird . “You want me to just wait for death back at school?”
    “He’s right, Ellie,” Atalo said. “According to the myths, Zeus is not omniscient, but I think we’re lucky to have made it this long without another incident. It’d be unsafe to stay here much longer.”
    “So where do you suggest we go?” Ellie asked. “Mount Olympus?”
    “Of course not. I don’t even know if it exists, but I think Greece would be a good place to start,” Atalo suggested, ignoring the look of shock on his daughter’s face. “More specifically, I say we head to the island of Lemnos to get the Nemean Lion Skin from Hephaestus.”
    Ellie was dumbfounded, staring at her father with her mouth open. “You can’t be serious? Even if Hephaestus is real, how would you know where to find him?”
    “I already told you,” Atalo said. “My father traded the Skin with Hephaestus. He wasn’t happy about parting with such a valuable possession, so he told me where I could find the blacksmith, in case I ever wanted to retrieve our heirloom. His workshop is inside Mount Mosychlos, which is now a submerged, inactive volcano. But there’s a way to reach it from the island.” He leaned back with a sheepish grin, relishing in the hungry look on his audience’s faces as they waited for him to expound. Gordie felt his grandfather’s tendency to be overdramatic was annoying in this circumstance.
    “Well, how the hell do we do that, Dad?”
    “There’s a large peninsula on the southern edge of the island that’s sparsely inhabited. From there, there’s a tunnel. It’s not manmade, but it’s not natural either. I haven’t actually been there myself, but my father told me where it was.”
    “And what exactly is the point of us traipsing across the Mediterranean to find a glorified man-shawl?” Ellie asked. Gordie hadn’t really thought of that, but she made a fair point. He had been so enthralled with the prospect of fetching the Herculean garb that he never stopped to think about the purpose of such a