Minor Gods
My name’s Jennifer, and I’m a goddess. But you’ve never heard of me.
There are a lot of us, really, normal people living normal lives except for the tiny fact that we happen to be minor deities.
This is my story.
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It was a miserable day in April. It was so cloudy that it was hard to tell if the sun was up, down, or had just given up and taken a holiday, and it was raining. It wasn’t even a polite rain, one that gets you wet quickly so that you stop caring; it was the kind of rain that blurs the world out and sneaks up on you, so that you just feel a bit damp until suddenly there’s an icy stream running down the back on your neck and under your cheap rain jacket. I was feeling just as bad as the weather, knowing that I had nearly a mile to walk home in the rain - the perfect topping to the shit sundae that had been my day. My slimy womanizer of a boss had been at me all day, and dumped at least six more hours of paperwork to the already huge pile of paperwork I had to do for them. Have I mentioned that I hate my job?
I was practically the only living thing on the streets, although every now and then a car would speed past and drench me, at which point I would stop to shake my fist and swear ineffectually until I felt a bit better. It was after my tenth or so such break that I noticed the building. It was right across the street from where I was standing, made so fuzzy by the drizzle that I could barely make out the name printed in old-fashioned lettering on the storefront: The Pantheon. It looked like a café, and both I and the outside world were wet and miserable. A hot coffee seemed like a pretty good idea, so I booked it across the street and inside without even stopping to wonder why I’d never noticed the place before.
I pushed open the big wooden door and a little bell jingled. It wasn’t a very loud bell, but I swear to god everyone in the place stopped talking and just stared at me. I just stood there, bedraggled and wet and my makeup in all probability ruined by the rain, feeling awkward. Nobody said a word for a minute or so, just stared, and I was starting to think that maybe I didn’t really need that coffee after all, when I heard a strangely familiar voice break the silence.
“Jen?”
I searched for the source of the voice, but I shouldn’t have bothered. Seconds later, a violently pink whirlwind crashed into me, hugging me hard enough that I thought I might suffocate.
“Omigod! I can’t believe that you’re here! This is so amazing, it’s been forever since I’ve seen you!”
I didn’t even need to look, but I did anyway. “Cora?” I asked, incredulous.
Cora was my best friend back in high school. We were polar opposites - Cora was bright, loud and energetic where I preferred plain clothes, and tended towards sarcasm and deadpan humour - but we just meshed. Then I decided to go to university and try for a business degree, and Cora took a year off to travel and do artsy crap. I hadn’t seen her in nearly three years, but she looked exactly the same, except for the spiky, neon pink pixie cut.
“Your hair,” I said, surprise turning me into a complete moron. Cora sprang back, allowing me to breathe again, and preened.
“You like it? I got it, like, a month ago, because I was tired of green, right? And…” Years of hanging out with Cora had attuned me to her habits, and whenever she got into a mood like this I had learned that the best way to preserve my sanity was to tune out for a little while.
With Cora’s hug attack on me, the other patrons (of which there were actually a lot, considering it was six o’clock on a Tuesday) had returned to their coffee and conversations. They were an eclectic group - one or two business people in suits, an elderly woman knitting in a corner, a guy with a Mohawk at least a foot high and more piercings than I cared to count, and I swear I saw a little girl in a party dress chatting up some solemn-looking older men. I tuned back in suddenly when Cora grabbed my hands.
“…and it’s so good that you’re one of us too, and we’re going to have so much fun together now that -”
“Wait, hold up a sec,” I said, blocking the flow of babble coming from my friend’s mouth with a well-placed hand. “What are you talking about? I just came in to get a coffee.”
Cora’s eyes widened, and she pulled away from my hand easily. “You mean you don’t know?” My blank stare must have been enough for her, and I suddenly found myself being dragged to the back of the café, Cora’s hand like a vise on my arm. Cora may be tiny, but she is damn strong. I was propelled past groups of people sipping coffee, playing cards and chatting, and through a door marked ‘Employees Only: DO NOT ENTER’ which Cora, of course, ignored. The back room was cramped and dark, with boxes and shelves taking up most of the room and a desk shoved in the corner almost as an afterthought. The desk was covered with paper, with a couple of snow globes acting as paperweights.
“Nolan!” Cora called, and it was loud. There was a small crash from amid the boxes. Soon after a man of maybe thirty, forty at the most, with glasses and messy black hair emerged from the stacks, wincing and rubbing at his ear.
“Cora, that voice of yours should be a controlled weapon,” he muttered, and I noticed a slight Irish lilt to his voice. After a beat he noticed me, and frowned. “Cora, you know that we have a no-guests policy here.”
“No, no, no!” Cora protested. “She found her way in by herself! And she doesn’t even know about us!”
An interested gleam came into Nolan’s eye. “Really? How intriguing…”
“Look,” I interrupted, trying to force down the anxiety building in the pit of my stomach. “I just came in here to get a coffee. I have no idea what you guys are talking about, so if you’ll kindly let me go I’ll just leave, okay?”
Nolan came right up to me, apparently ignoring everything I had just said, and examined my face closely. I would have moved back, but Cora’s grip on my arm prevented me from doing so, so I had to settle for squirming uncomfortably under his scrutiny. After a few long seconds he seemed to be satisfied, and moved over to the desk. He rummaged through it for a few seconds before producing a flat glass disc, which he then passed to me. I shot a glare at Cora which said what the hell have you gotten me into this time?, and then tentatively took the disc.
I felt a sort of jolt, or maybe a pull, and suddenly a plastic cup and a pile of thick-cut fries appeared on the disc. Nolan raised an eyebrow, took the cup and sniffed it, then took a sip. “Kool-Aid,” he said, sounding mystified. “And chips.” He picked up a fry and took a delicate bite, wrinkling his nose. “Soggy chips.”
“So does she pass?” Cora asked breathlessly. Nolan nodded, and Cora squealed with glee. Nolan clapped his hands over his ears with a sour expression. “Stop that!” he hissed, and Cora actually zipped her lip. I wish I could do that.
I put the plate with its strange load carefully down atop a stack of boxes. “Pass what? And would somebody explain to me what the hell just happened?”
“You’re a member of the Pantheon now,” Nolan said. “Only... well, this is going to be a bit hard to believe, but you see... only gods can find this place. The annulet will only respond to a deity - it manifests whatever their powers are tied to.”
I couldn’t - and didn’t want to - keep the scepticism from my expression or my voice. “A god. Me.”
“The goddess of refrigerated Kool-Aid and soggy chips, apparently,” Nolan said with an apologetic shrug. “Not a very glamorous title, to be sure, but none of us here are particularly major deities. I myself am the god of snowstorms in summer and snow globes.”
“I’m the goddess of hip-hop/ballet fusion,” Cora chirped.
“O...kay,” I said, thinking, these people are nuts, though I guess we already knew that about Cora... I began to edge towards the door as unobtrusively as I could; If I could just get out of here...
Cora’s hand clamped itself back onto my arm. Great. I need to type with that hand later. “Don’t go,” she said.
Nolan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I realize that this is all very overwhelming and hard to accept, but -”
“Hard to accept?” I was starting to get pissed off now. “It’s not possible! There’s no such thing as -”
Cora’s free hand covered my mouth at the same time Nolan interrupted with “Don’t - say it. Just watch.” Cora’s hand remained firmly over my mouth as Nolan moved back to the desk and picked up a snow globe. I barely resisted the urge to lick Cora’s hand, since I knew that she probably wouldn’t let go even if I did. Nolan moved back to where we were standing, and I suddenly noticed that the snow globe didn’t have any of the glittery “snow” stuff, and the tiny amount of water inside didn’t even reach the roofs of the tiny clay houses stuck to the base. As I watched, tiny clouds began to form inside the globe, swirling darkly in the domed top. Moments later the clouds broke, and a mini-blizzard engulfed the tiny clay neighbourhood. The storm didn’t last much longer than a minute or two, but when it was over there was a layer of snow thick enough to cover the houses entirely. Nolan passed the snow globe to me and it was frigid - all my paralyzed little mind could think was that would be one hell of a snow day. The heat from my hands was already starting to melt the snow, but I barely noticed. I was too busy staring openmouthed at the sheepish, slightly nerdy-looking god in front of me. Cora gingerly took her hand away from my mouth, which only allowed it to gape even more widely.
“It - it’s a trick, or something,” I managed to stammer, but I wasn’t very convincing.
“It’s not a trick, Jen,” Cora said, and she actually sounded serious. That, more than anything I’d seen so far, was what pushed me to believe that maybe, just maybe, these people weren’t complete whack-jobs. I mean, Cora’s never serious. Ever.
Nolan seemed to sense my weakening disbelief. “Most of us have a hard time grasping the concept at first,” he said. “It’s a difficult thing to have such a huge paradigm shift happen, and the implications often take a little while to sink in. Do you need to sit down?” I shook my head, still a little stunned. Nolan smiled. “Well. You’re welcome to come here any time you please - Cora works here from time to time, and I’m nearly always in, if you have questions. Any of the other patrons would likely be happy to help you as well, I’m sure - we’ve all gone through this at some point.”
Cora beamed up at me and Nolan looked at me with a mild expression as I struggled to put the pieces of my mind back into something like coherency. “Um, I... well, I mean, I’ve got school, and work... I’m in Business, see, and it’s a lot of work -”
“Business?” Nolan asked, perking up suddenly. “Really? You wouldn’t happen to be looking for employment, would you?”
I blinked - it was about all that I was mentally capable of doing, at that point. “Um. I have a job already, and... What kind of employment are we talking, here?”
Nolan adjusted his glasses. “I will be the first to admit that, while I own the place, I really have no practical knowledge of how to run a business. If you were interested, of course, you could come in and work as a sort of manager - that wouldn’t be the official title, of course, but your duties would essentially be managerial. Cara can tell you that the hours are quite flexible, if you need them to be, and it would be a good opportunity to acquaint yourself with others like, erm, us.” He smiled a little bit awkwardly, and then he told me what the starting pay would be and any doubts I might have had about taking the job disappeared. I’d get to see Cora more, for one thing, and I was pretty sure that Nolan would be a much better boss than my other one. And hell, maybe I’d even start to get a handle on whatever the hell it was that was going on with these people.
“Count me in.”