Love or Fate by Clea Hantman

steady. She held the smaller stick upright in place and took the bow in hand.
    Once we’d arranged the bark and twigs to herliking, Era took a long, deep breath and began to slowly rub the bow against the stick. It turned back and forth in the groove of the flat piece of wood. Era picked up speed, moving the stick faster and faster till a long wisp of smoke rose from the leaves.
    Polly and I couldn’t believe our eyes. Neither could the pygmy. He began to jump up and down with delight.
    Era got on her knees and began to blow on the leaves fast and furiously. Then she pushed the wood aside and scooped up a handful that was already dark and burnt and smoky.
    “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” she cried as she placed the leaves into the pile of branches and bark that Polly and I had made.
    “Help, blow!” she yelled as she crouched over the pile.
    We dropped to the ground and blew hard, harder, hardest and POOF! The bark and the leaves burst into flames!
    “Yay!” we screamed. Within moments the entire thing was ablaze.
    “Oh, it’s hot! It’s really hot! Oh, happy day!” cried the pygmy.
    “Brilliant!” I said, grabbing Era around the waist and hugging her tight.
    “Oh, Era, that was exceptional!” cried Polly.
    The grated wall disappeared, and the gates of Tartarus loomed before us once again.
    I looked at my timepiece and immediately forgot my excitement. “We’ve got to go!”
    We took off for the gates at top speed. As we approached, Polly let out a huge whistle, and suddenly there was Cerberus, thundering toward us.
    “Here, boy, here, boy!” Polly called to him. “He…eaahhhhh!” Polly’s voice was muffled under the weight of one of Cerberus’s giant tongues, which covered her in a wad of slobber as he greeted her. Era looked disgusted, but Polly just laughed. “Hi, Cerberus. I’m glad to see you, too, boy, but we don’t have much time. We need to get out, please; can you open the gate for us?”
    Cerberus let out a roar that rocked the gate.
    “Please, Cerberus. I know it is your job to guard this gate, but we have been wrongly sent here,” she pleaded.
    He just roared again, only this time it caused a small dust storm.
    “I don’t know if this is working, Pol,” I said. But she shushed me and continued.
    “Cerberus, look, here’s our story. Hera is our stepmother. When she married our father, who by the way happens to be Zeus…”
    Cerberus’s ears perked up; he tilted two of his three heads to the side.
    “Yes, the Zeus. Ever since she married our father, she’s tortured us girls. She’s never shown us love or kindness or generosity. And now she has banished us here, to be slaves to the Furies, and my father knows nothing of it! She’s done it all behind his back.”
    Cerberus put his two humongous paws together and crouched low, like he was really listening to Polly’s tale.
    “Now you are our only hope. We must get out of here now, or we are doomed to spend eternity here. Please, Cerberus, let us through these gates, let us out of here alive.”
    Cerberus looked at Polly with his six big brown eyes and then looked at Era and me. A single tear trickled out of the third eye from the left. He let out a doglike whimper and kicked back his hind legs, and the gate slowly and majestically opened up!
    Polly gave him a huge hug and kiss. “Thank you, Cerberus, we won’t ever forget you!”
    We raced through the gates triumphantly. Hallelujah, we were out of Tartarus! Now the hard part—figuring out where to go next.
    As soon as the gates shut behind us, a riverappeared before us. The same river we’d seen before when we’d first entered the gates. We ran out onto the beach, where a lone boat rested along the shore. But if we took this boat, where would we take it to ?
    Gazing across the water, I saw the island I’d noticed when we’d first come to Tartarus. With the black blob floating above it. And I got the same feeling I’d gotten when I’d seen it before—that there was something about