Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,79

better find yourself a good weaver.

Arachne made it look easy. She could make you a Hawaiian shirt with pictures of flowers and frogs and coconuts woven into the fabric, and she could do it in about five minutes. She could make curtains with silver and blue thread so when the fabric rustled, it looked like actual clouds moving across a blue sky. Her favorite thing was making tapestries—which were big pieces of fabric art that you could hang on your walls. They were only for decoration, and they were so hard for most weavers to make that nobody but kings and pro basketball players could afford them, but Arachne made them for fun and handed them out like party favors.

That made her popular and very famous.

Pretty soon the local folks were gathering at Arachne’s hut every day to watch her work. Even the nymphs left their woods and their streams to gawk at her weaving, because her tapestries were more beautiful than nature.

Arachne’s hands seemed to fly. She picked up a tuft of wool, spun it into thread, dyed it whatever color she wanted, and looped it on the frame of her loom in less than a second. When she had a whole row of strands going up and down, she attached the sideways thread to a long piece of wood called a shuttle, which was kind of like a giant sewing needle. She slid the shuttle back and forth as fast as a ball in a tennis game, weaving the threads together into a solid piece of cloth, and because she’d planned out her colors so perfectly, a picture appeared in the cloth as if by magic.

Shuttle, shuttle, shuttle, shuttle: WHAM!

Suddenly you were looking at an ocean scene woven from cloth, but so realistic that the waves seemed to break on the beach. The water glittered in blue and green metallic thread. The woven people on the shore were so carefully crafted you could make out the expressions on their faces. If you held a magnifying glass up to the sand dunes, you could pick out each individual grain of sand. Arachne had basically invented high-definition weaving.

One of the nymphs gasped. “Arachne, you are amazing!”

“Thanks.” Arachne allowed herself a smug smile as she prepared to weave her next masterpiece.

“Athena herself must have taught you weaving!” the nymph said.

Now, this was a huge compliment. Arachne should’ve just nodded, said thank you, and let it go.

But Arachne was too proud of her own work. She had no use for the gods. What had they ever done for her? Arachne had built herself up from nothing. Her parents had died and left her penniless. She’d never had a bit of good luck.

“Athena?” Arachne snorted. “I taught myself how to weave.”

The crowd shuffled nervously.

“But, surely,” one man said, “you should thank Athena for your talent, since the goddess invented weaving. Without her—”

“No tapestry for you!” Arachne hit the man in the face with a ball of yarn. “Weaving is my thing. If Athena is so great, she can come down here and test her skills against mine. We’ll see who gets schooled.”

You can guess what happened. Athena heard about this challenge. When you’re a goddess, you really can’t let somebody get away with calling you out like that.

The next day, Athena descended to the earth, but rather than come in with spears blazing, she decided to visit Arachne in stealth mode and check things out. Athena was careful that way. She liked to get her facts straight, and she believed in giving people a second chance. After all, she’d accidentally killed her own best friend Pallas. She knew that mistakes happened.

She took the shape of a feeble old woman and hobbled over to Arachne’s hut, joining the crowd that had gathered to watch the weaver do her thing.

The mortal was good. No doubt about it. Arachne wove scenes of mountains and waterfalls, cities shimmering in the afternoon heat, animals prowling in the forests, and sea monsters so terrifying they looked ready to leap out of the fabric and attack. Arachne churned out the tapestries with inhuman speed, flinging them into the crowd as prizes, firing them from her T-shirt cannon, making all the spectators happy with valuable parting gifts.

The girl didn’t seem greedy. She just wanted to share her work with the world.

Athena respected that. This mortal Arachne hadn’t come from a rich family or gone to a fancy school. She had no advantages, and she’d made something of herself from skill alone.