Chapter 12 - The Power Inside Apollo
Felix found the stone behind the old hearth bricks.
He had hidden it there after his mother died, unable to bear either keeping it in sight or throwing it away. It fit in both his hands. Its surface was dark and smooth, except for a carved circle crossed by three curved lines.
Betsy stood beside him while Apollo slept in his cradle. Mrs. Hart had gone outside to help send the soldiers away.
“That’s the mark,” Betsy said.
“Yes.”
Felix traced its grooves. The gold on his hand had followed them exactly.
“My mother called it the keeper’s seal. She said it belonged to our oldest family. I thought she meant the Minotaurs.”
“What else could she mean?”
“The line began before anyone used that name.”
He turned the stone over. On its back, worn letters surrounded a second carving: a small flame beneath an open hand.
His mother had taught him the words when he was young. He spoke them aloud now, slowly translating as he went.
“When storm takes fire from the first horned house, a child of storm will carry it back. The child may open the threshold. The keeper must show him how to close it.”
Betsy looked at Apollo. “That sounds like a prophecy.”
“It may be a warning.”
Felix explained what he remembered. Long before Olympus, the first horned guardians had watched over a boundary between the mortal world and a place of raw divine power. Their gift was protection: they could hold a door shut, or still an instant long enough to save someone crossing it.
Generations later, Zeus had taken a portion of that power. The old stories disagreed on whether he stole it or received it in a bargain he failed to honor. His descendants carried traces of the first guardians’ fire, though it had slept for centuries.
“Then Apollo’s horns...” Betsy began.
“They may be the sign that the fire has woken in him.”
“But he’s Zeus’s son. I’m human.”
“Both are true. The old power reached him through Zeus’s blood, and it answered when he touched mine.”
Betsy sat down. She had spent weeks trying to understand why Apollo could not thrive. Now she understood only that a conflict older than anyone she knew had found its way into his tiny body.
“Can this stone tell us how to help him?” she asked.
Felix studied the inscription again. At the bottom, nearly erased, was a final line.
“No keeper can claim the child,” he read. “The threshold opens to the hand he chooses.”
Betsy looked up. “He chose yours.”
“He reaches for you, too.”
“I’m his mother.”
“And I’m here because you brought him.” Felix set the stone on the table. “Whatever this means, nobody gets to treat him as a key.”
Betsy thought of Vale’s warning about a passage. “What lies beyond the threshold?”
“I don’t know.”
Vale might know more. Felix went out to speak to him, with Mrs. Hart beside him. By then most of the soldiers had left. The oldest archer stayed to bring his commander back to town.
Vale rose when Felix approached. “I gave an order I can’t defend.”
“No,” Felix said. “You can’t.”
“I was told the child’s power would destroy whatever he came to love.”
“By the messenger?”
“Yes. He said the only safe course was to take the child before the power woke.”
“Did Zeus send that message himself?”
“I never met Zeus. The messenger carried his seal.”
Felix exchanged a look with Mrs. Hart. A seal could be stolen or used without its owner’s knowledge, but Apollo’s father had already abandoned him. Felix had no reason to trust the silence around the order.
Vale reached into his coat. Felix tensed. Vale drew out a folded scrap of cloth, not a weapon. A copy of the same mark on Felix’s stone had been stitched into it.
“He told us to look for this,” Vale said. “If it appeared, we were to report to him immediately.”
“Have you?”
“Not yet.”
“Then don’t.”
Vale handed Felix the cloth. “I won’t.”
Back inside, Felix placed it beside the stone. Betsy read the stitched lines, her hand resting on Apollo’s cradle.
“What happens if Zeus comes?” she asked.
Felix looked at the sleeping child.
“We’ll hear what he wants,” he said. “Then we’ll decide what Apollo needs.”
May you like
Betsy heard the certainty in his voice. The prophecy offered a role to Felix, but he was choosing what kind of keeper to become.
Outside, the rain stopped. The yard was scattered with arrows, and beyond them the fields shone in the returning sun.
