Changing the Future

Chapter 36

I was standing on the beach for the second time that day, impatiently tapping my foot as I waited for my visitors to show up. In the eight years that I'd been a demigod, I'd never met my employers, my true employers, but that was finally going to change tonight.

I didn't know whether to be relieved or extremely worried that the Fates had accepted my invitation so easily. The three ladies didn't even argue, simply telling me the time and place of where I needed to be if I was going to speak with them.

Unlike earlier, the ocean was completely still, the moonlight making the surface glimmer like a shard of broken glass. Even at night, I could still smell the strawberries in the fields, their sweet aroma permeating through the air like perfume. The trees were perfectly still, too, making it seem as if I were in a scene of a movie or in a postcard rather than having to deal with one of the most tumultuous things I've ever had to encounter.

I'd rather fight Kronos himself than have to be the one to nail the final coffin in Cleo's hope, ending any chance of her surviving the next battle.

It took me the majority of the campfire that night to calm Cleo down, assuring her that for the time being, she was fine. Never mind the fact that I could hear my pulse roaring in my ears like war drums as I soothed my best friend, feeling like the world's biggest liar.

How could I say that she would be fine when I knew exactly, in painstaking detail, what was going to happen? I didn't know why Morpheus decided to plague me with that accursed nightmare for over a month, but if I ever saw his face, he'd end up with a dagger sticking out of his forehead like a unicorn horn.

"Don't go after the dream god," I heard Clotho say, which spooked me so badly that I instinctively threw the stone I'd been tossing in my hand at the Fates.

The middle Fate, Lachesis, caught the stone in her bony hand and dropped it back onto the ground, seeming mildly amused by what I had done. She then reached into Clotho's basket, pulling along a sky blue thread in her hands before passing it off to Atropos, who was holding a pair of silver scissors.

"After all, we're the ones who sent the dream your way," Lachesis continued, completely unfazed from my flinching as I watched Atropos cut the thread, the Fates moving onto a different colored thread.

"Why would you do that?" I asked, trying not to flinch again as I saw a second strand of blue being spun by Clotho. "I thought knowing too much of your future was a bad thing."

"Oh, for most people, it is," Atropos agreed, calmly swinging her scissors around her index finger while she waited for Lachesis to finish measuring Clotho's string. "But that doesn't apply to you, Andromeda. Especially since you know everything that's supposed to happen ever since you were fourteen."

"Be quiet!" I hissed, glancing around me to make sure that none of the dryads had overheard. They were worse than the Aphrodite kids in terms of spreading gossip. "No one knows about that yet, and because of you three, I'm not allowed to tell for another three years. So I'd appreciate if we kept this on the down low."

"We didn't put that rule in place because it tampered with fate," Clotho said. "Yes, it played a part, but it is mostly for your protection."

"Imagine if a young demigoddess walks into camp and talks about everything she knows. And suddenly everything she ever said comes true. People would've come to fear you," Lachesis explained.

"You would've been treated like the Oracle," Atropos finished. "Treated as a fearsome being that spewed the future, no matter how horrible it may be."

"I was already treated like a freak my first week here," I said, skipping a rock out across the ocean. I watched as the moon's pristine reflection turned into a bunch of ripples. "Most people here already fear me. They know of what I can do, of whom I serve."