Athena the Brain by Holub Joan

Author:Holub, Joan [Holub, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2010-04-05T22:00:00+00:00

THE NEXT MORNING ATHENA OVERSLEPT. Not a good start to her second day. Then, while dashing to class, she tripped over something on the stairs and fell, skinning her knee. She picked up the object to examine it, then tucked it in her bag. It was a little ship–one of the inventions that had magically appeared when she’d brainstormed yesterday. Most of them had fallen to Earth, but this one apparently hadn’t made it that far.

Mr. Cyclops gave her the stink-eye when she slipped into Hero-ology class late, but at least he didn’t scold her in front of everyone. For some reason, all the desks had been pushed against the walls on two sides of the room today. A long table stood in the middle of the floor, and a three-dimensional map covered its entire top. The teacher and students were all standing around it.

“You’ll each find your hero somewhere on this map,” Mr. Cyclops was saying. He’d collected the little statues yesterday at the end of class, explaining that they were never to leave the room.

When Athena got close enough, she saw that the huge map was very realistic. There were roads, valleys, villages, and castles with moats around them. The tallest mountain stood nearly a foot high, and strange, scaly beasts peeked from the seas and oceans.

“What did I miss?” Athena whispered to Aphrodite.

“We’re beginning our quests,” Aphrodite whispered back. “I made Paris fall in love with a pretty mortal named Helen. He just took her to his fortress in Troy to show her around. Isn’t that romantic?” She sighed blissfully.

“Smooth move, Bubbles,” Medusa said sarcastically. “In case you hadn’t noticed, someone else was already in love with Helen. My hero–King Menelaus from Sparta.”

“He was?” Aphrodite looked sweetly mystified. “Oops.”

Medusa called Mr. Cyclops over to complain. His eye studied the map carefully, but he didn’t seem mad about what had happened. Instead he said, “This is somewhat irregular, Aphrodite, but I like that you were able to set up roadblocks to success for two heroes at the same time.”

Anyone else would have gotten in trouble for making such a mistake, thought Athena. But Aphrodite was so glamorous and nice, you just had to excuse her, no matter what she did. Unless, of course, you were Medusa, who was now looking rather grumpy.

“Remember, you’ll all be graded on the creativity of the quests you design, and also on your ability to get your heroes out of trouble,” Mr. Cyclops told the class. “So don’t make things too easy on your heroes. They must be tested in ways that prove they’re heroic. Otherwise they’d just be ordinary mortals.”

Athena thought about that as she searched for her Odysseus figure. Where in the world had Mr. Cyclops put him? She finally found him standing on an island called Ithaca. It was in the Ionian Sea, west of Greece. She picked him up by the head, using two fingers.

Aphrodite gasped. “Don’t hold him like that. You’re probably giving him a horrible headache.”

“Oh! Sorry,” said Athena.

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