The Romans were duly impressed. Some of them even learned a little, like how to fire an arrow without blinding yourself or killing the guy next to you. Still, I could tell they were more excited about the other activities they’d done. I overheard a lot of whispering about unicorns and Hazel’s supersecret ghoul-fighting techniques. Larry from the Third Cohort had enjoyed boarding ships so much he declared that he wanted to be a pirate when he grew up. I suspected most of the legionnaires had even enjoyed ditch-digging more than my class.
It was late evening when the final horn blew and the cohorts tromped back to camp. I was hungry and exhausted. I wondered if this was how mortal teachers felt after a full day of classes. If so, I didn’t see how they managed. I hoped they were richly compensated with gold, diamonds, and rare spices.
At least the cohorts seemed to be in an upbeat mood. If the praetors’ goal had been to take the troops’ minds off their fears and raise morale on the eve of battle, then our afternoon had been a success. If the goal had been to train the legion to successfully repel our enemies…then I was less than hopeful. Also, all day long, everyone had carefully avoided addressing the worst thing about tomorrow’s attack. The Romans would have to face their former comrades, returned as zombies under Tarquin’s control. I remembered how hard it had been for Lavinia to shoot down Bobby with her crossbow in the tomb. I wondered how the legion’s morale would hold up once they faced the same ethical dilemma times fifty or sixty.
I was turning onto the Via Principalis, on my way to the mess hall, when a voice said, “Pssst.”
Lurking in the alley between Bombilo’s café and the chariot repair shop were Lavinia and Don. The faun was wearing an honest-to-gods trench coat over his tie-dyed T-shirt, as if that made him look inconspicuous. Lavinia wore a black cap over her pink hair.
“C’mere!” she hissed.
“But dinner—”
“We need you.”
“Is this a mugging?”
She marched over, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into the shadows.
“Don’t worry, dude,” Don told me. “It’s not a mugging! But, like, if you do have any spare change—”
“Shut up, Don,” said Lavinia.
“I’ll shut up,” Don agreed.
“Lester,” Lavinia said, “you need to come with us.”
“Lavinia, I’m tired. I’m hungry. And I have no spare change. Can’t it please wait—?”
“No. Because tomorrow we might all die, and this is important. We’re sneaking out.”
“Sneaking out?”
“Yeah,” Don said. “It’s when you’re sneaking. And you go out.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“You’ll see.” Lavinia’s tone was ominous, as if she couldn’t explain what my coffin looked like. I had to admire it with my own eyes.
“What if we get caught?”
“Oh!” Don perked up. “I know this one! For a first offense, it’s latrine duty for a month. But, see, if we all die tomorrow, it won’t matter!”
With that happy news, Lavinia and Don grabbed my hands and dragged me farther into the darkness.
I sing of dead plants
And heroic shrubberies
Inspiring stuff
SNEAKING OUT OF A Roman military camp should not have been so easy.
Once we were safely through a hole in the fence, down a trench, through a tunnel, past the pickets, and out of sight of the camp’s sentry towers, Don was happy to explain how he’d arranged it all. “Dude, the place is designed to keep out armies. It’s not meant to keep in individual legionnaires, or keep out, you know, the occasional well-meaning faun who’s just looking for a hot meal. If you know the patrol schedule and are willing to keep changing up your entry points, it’s easy.”
“That seems remarkably industrious for a faun,” I noted.
Don grinned. “Hey, man. Slacking is hard work.”
“We’ve got a long walk,” Lavinia said. “Best keep moving.”
I tried not to groan. Another nighttime hike with Lavinia had not been on my evening’s agenda. But I had to admit I was curious. What had she and Don been arguing about before? Why had she wanted to talk to me earlier? And where were we going? With her stormy eyes and the black cap over her hair, Lavinia looked troubled and determined, less like a gawky giraffe, more like a tense gazelle. I’d seen her father, Sergei Asimov, perform once with the Moscow Ballet. He’d had that exact expression on his face before launching into a grand jeté.
I wanted to ask Lavinia what was going on, but her posture made it clear she was not in the mood for conversation. Not yet, anyway. We hiked in silence out of the valley and down into the streets of Berkeley.
It must have been about midnight by the time we got to People’s Park.
I had not been there since 1969, when I’d stopped by to experience some groovy hippie music and flower power and instead found myself in the middle of a riot. The police officers’ tear gas, shotguns, and batons had definitely not been groovy. It had taken all my godly restraint not to reveal my divine form and blast everyone within a six-mile radius to cinders.
Now, decades later, the scruffy park looked like it was still suffering from the aftermath. The worn brown lawn was strewn with piles of discarded clothing and cardboard signs bearing hand-painted slogans like GREEN SPACE NOT DORM SPACE and SAVE OUR PARK. Several tree stumps held potted plants and beaded necklaces, like shrines to the fallen. Trash cans overflowed. Homeless people slept on benches or fussed over shopping carts full of their worldly belongings.
At the far end of the square, occupying a raised plywood stage, was the largest sit-in of dryads and fauns I’d ever seen. It made total sense to me that fauns would inhabit People’s Park. They could laze around, panhandle, eat leftover food out of the garbage bins, and no one would bat an eye. The dryads were more of a surprise. At least two dozen of them were present. Some, I guessed, were the spirits of local eucalyptus and redwood trees, but most, given their sickly appearances, must have been dryads of the park’s long-suffering shrubs, grasses, and weeds. (Not that I am judging weed dryads. I’ve known some very fine crabgrasses.)
The fauns and dryads sat in a wide circle as if preparing for a sing-along around an invisible campfire. I got the feeling they were waiting for us—for me—to start the music.
I was already nervous enough. Then I spotted a familiar face and nearly jumped out of my zombie-infected skin. “Peaches?”
Meg’s demon-baby karpos bared his fangs and responded, “Peaches!”
His tree-branch wings had lost a few leaves. His curly green hair was dead brown at the tips, and his lamplike eyes didn’t shine as brightly as I remembered. He must’ve undergone quite an ordeal tracking us to Northern California, but his growl was still intimidating enough to make me fear for my bladder control.
“Where have you been?” I demanded.
“Peaches!”
I felt foolish for asking. Of course he had been peaches, probably because peaches, peaches, and peaches. “Does Meg know you’re here? How did you—?”
Lavinia gripped my shoulder. “Hey, Apollo. Time is short. Peaches filled us in on what he saw in Southern California, but he arrived there too late to help. He busted his wings to get up here as fast as he could. He wants you to tell the group firsthand what happened in SoCal.”