When Corey announced he had something to tell Daniel and me, Ash decided to take a walk. I would like to think he was being polite, but he probably just didn't want to sit through a boring personal conversation.
"I know what I am," Corey said. "I looked up those two words you guys saw on that paper with skin-walker and benandanti. I had to guess at spellings, but I eventually got a hit."
Daniel caught my look and gave an abashed nod. We hadn't even thought of that. The words had been blocked when we looked them up in Salmon Creek. That should have been the first thing we researched at the library.
"I'm sorry," I said. "We should have done that."
Corey looked confused. "Why? Finding the right term for what I am is hardly a priority. It's not like looking up something that's supposed to be real. Whatever we find on the web is just stories. Like with you guys. I looked up you both, too. Daniel's supposed to be fighting for the olive crops. I bet you don't even know where the nearest olive crop is."
"No idea," Daniel said.
"And Maya? You're supposed to be an evil witch." He paused. "Well, they got that part right."
I pitched a pebble at him.
"Hey, I was nice to you earlier. Gotta balance it out. Point is, I looked up sileni and xana. Hayley and Nicole are xana, which is a really obscure kind of Spanish mermaid-siren cross. A blond water spirit that sings. I couldn't find much on them. But apparently, they have some kind of evil-fighting skills themselves. You know how sirens are supposed to drive guys crazy with their singing? Well, xana can do that, too, but only to folks who deserve it." He paused. "Which means I really gotta be a lot nicer to Hayley."
"Good idea," I said. "So that makes you a sileni, then. Which is . . . ?"
He poked a stick at the dirt, like he was prodding an imaginary campfire. It took a moment before he said, "You know what a satyr is?"
"Um, a guy who's half goat?"
He glowered at me.
"What?" I said. "It is, isn't it? Centaur is part horse. Faun is part deer. Satyr is--"
"It's a lie. They were confused with some Roman monsters when the Romans and Greeks started hanging out together. The real Greek satyrs were followers of Dionysus. They looked human."
"Dionysus," I said. "God of wine, women, and song. You know, when you said you didn't fit your type--"
"Yeah, yeah. So okay, these satyrs liked to run around, drinking and chasing women and playing some kind of harmonica. Their leader was a guy named Silenus, who had visions of the future."
"Ah . . ."
"He was a minor god," Corey said. "He taught Dionysus."
"Like Chiron and Achilles."
"Huh?"
"Oh, right. You slept through Greek and Roman mythology. You said you didn't need to know it because it wasn't applicable to your life. Guess you were wrong, huh?"
Daniel chuckled.
"So Silenus was a minor deity," I said. "What's the connection to you?"
"It's complicated. You remember those long stories we had to write in English last year? Mr. Parks accused me of having constancy errors?"
"Continuity errors," I said.
"Whatever. It wasn't a big deal."
"Your characters changed names. More than once."
"Only by a few letters," he said. "Anyway, obviously Parks never read myths. Those guys were zinging out continuity errors all the time. Sometimes Silenus was one guy and sometimes sileni was a word used for all his followers."
"It's the influence of other cultures. Plus regional difference and the impact of oral storytelling."