CHAPTER SIX HUNDRED and SEVENTY

(part one)

Tuesday midday — 12:15 p.m.

“Say it again,” Delphie said.

“It doesn’t make sense to you either?” Jill asked. “At least it’s not just me and Jacob.”

“I think that it doesn’t make sense because it’s been translated badly,” Delphie said. “Your dad said that the prophecy was made by . . .?”

“The Oracles at Delphi,” Jill said.

“Can you translate it into Greek?” Delphie asked Heather.

The women of the Castle were sitting around the kitchen table. Jill and Heather were on one side of the table. Valerie and Delphie were on the other. Honey was on the end, and Tanesha was on the other end. Sandy’s face was on the computer tablet next to Jill. Still working through her backload of clients, Sandy was on a video call from her salon.

“Sure,” Heather said. “But it still sounds like: ‘There will be a female child — not an average child, but a female child, none the less. She will rise from the greatest house of the great houses, the greatest blade will guide the smallest hand, the smallest blade, the finest cut will change the fate of those strive for powerful and greatness.’”

“Those gals were so high,” Delphie said, her voice low.

“High?” Sandy asked, the only one who caught Delphie’s words.

“They were situated over a well that gave off gas,” Delphie said. “Made them hallucinate. That’s how you have some helpful oracles and others who speak in code.”

“Dad says that they all speak in code,” Jill said. “Even you.”

Delphie laughed.

“He’s probably right,” Delphie said.

“It’s very hard to translate sight into . . . words,” Heather said.

“What are we going to do?” Valerie asked. “We can’t have Katy risking her life for some bullshit greatest house, blade, whatever, and certainly not for those horrible Templars. Bleck.”

Valerie made a face and shook her head.

“I really hate them,” Valerie said.

The women nodded in agreement.

“Let’s take it apart,” Delphie said. “I have a lot of practice at this because I used to do it for training.”

“How do we do that?” Jill asked.

“Read it line for line,” Delphie said.

Jill held her phone in front of her face and read the prophecy she’d typed there.

“There will be a female child — not an average child, but a female child, none the less,” Jill said. She looked up at Delphie.

“That’s just saying that a female will be important,” Delphie said. “This would have been very usual and almost world-shattering, at that time. Women were slaves to their husbands and sons. While there were goddesses, they were made irrelevant by inserting petty storylines in between their great deeds.”

“Like Hera being angry about Zeus’ cheating,” Heather said.

“She wasn’t?” Valerie asked.

“You can ask her,” Heather said. “She was upset and offended that he assaulted women, and some men. She spent most of her time going around after her husband trying to repair what he’d broken. They are siblings. She was trying to take care of her brother.”

“Didn’t they have kids?” Tanesha asked.

“Define ‘they’,” Heather said. “At least one of them was born after Zeus was in the Sea of Amber.”

Denver Cereal continues tomorrow...