New Olympus

By Ronald Anthony Cross

This startlingly beautiful and exotic story has to do with one of the most wondrous and frightening things in the world: growing up. Such simple words for such a complex, weighty, never-ending process. It carries with it the realization of responsibilities, the maddening loss of one kind of security and the sometimes-reluctant gain of another, and so much isolation. “New Olympus” is undoubtedly about a good deal more than the loss of one’s childhood. Cross’s stories, his visions of life, are as complex as the finest poetry and similarly leave the reader with singular, recognizable, yet hard-to-define feelings. This one left us feeling awash in admiration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Apr 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781479460083

Book preview

NEW OLYMPUS

RONALD ANTHONY CROSS

Table of Contents

NEW OLYMPUS

I. THE RIVER

II. THE BABIES’ HOUSE

III. THE STORM KING’S CASTLE

IV. SPACES IN-BETWEEN

V. THE ORACLE

VI. SILVERFLASH’S MIND

VII. THE FUTURE

VIII. THE COSTUME BALL

IX. WILBUR’S MIND

EPILOGUE

I. THE RIVER

The waterbabies were noisily at play in the middle of the river. It was a bright sunny summer day on the Storm King’s asteroid, as usual. He had seldom exhibited those rainy-day blues of late: he was all sunshine and flowers.

These were fun days for the babies old enough to be let out of the nursery to play all day in the cool swift running river. The only fear was that the Storm King would magnify the sun up too bright and roast all the kids. Except for the fear of Maneagle.

They were supposed to be watching the sky for the Maneagle. Which was why they spotted Silverflash standing in the middle of the waterfall, right at the top, just before it goes over the edge and falls and falls, and changes into white frothy foam, like they all blew off the tops of their icy mugs when Mama brought them root bear and said, You have all been good babies and now you may all have a good drink of root bear to cool you off, and they laughed and laughed because they all felt so good and Mama was so good, and root bear was good, and ‘bear’ was funny, only Mama said it wasn’t really ‘bear,’ silly, but ‘beer,’ which men drank and drank and then got silly after they drank it too much. And they fell down. So all the waterbabies always got silly and fell down after they drank their root bear.

Silverflash was waving to them now, sinking a little into the water: he liked to let himself get heavier than the waterbabies did because he ran so fast he liked to let his feet sink in and get more of a purchase.

They knew it was him because the sun glinted off his round silver hat. They shouted and waved back because everybody loved the Silverflash messenger boy, he could run faster than anybody in the whole world and he was just a little boy like them—well, maybe bigger than that, like a seven-year-old or eight-year-old, but he was the oldest little boy ever. He was over two hundred years old.

So all the waterbabies shouted, Silverflash, Silverflash, over and over, and waved over and over, and Silverflash waved back from the top of the waterfall, only something was wrong because he was waving too fast and then he shot over the edge and popped down into the bubbles like a cork. That made everybody laugh, only he came up out of the bubbles and skimmed across the top of the river right at them, shouting something they couldn’t hear, and then one of the babies was shouting Eagle, eagle, and they were all screaming and running for cover.

One of the babies was scrambling in terror toward the shelter of the trees along the bank, when the shadow fell on him.

Then he heard the scream of death and the whistling sound of something plunging to him from a great height.

At the same time Silverflash was