KEEPING THE FAITH

“$100!” Dimitra exclaimed, as she rifled through her bag.

Her husband smiled and waved away his wife’s absurdity. “It probably fell out of your purse…”

“No, you don’t understand, Alex! I cleaned out my bag on Saturday. I haven’t gone to the bank in the last two days and… Oh, my god!” She pulled out another $100 note. “Alex, look – there’s 300… 400… 500… 600… 700… 800… 900… $1000 in here!”

Seeing the money being pulled out of the bag, Alex’s curiosity got the better of him. He stood up from where he sat and walked over to the kitchen table. “$1000? Are you sure?”

“I didn’t have that much money – that’s what I’ve been telling you!” Dimitra placed the ten crisp $100 notes on the table. “It’s like the bag is possessed and keeps producing money. We could be rich if this keeps going!”

Alex grabbed his wife’s bag and shoved a hand inside, but came out with nothing. “Dimi, you’re not playing a prank on me, are you? This isn’t being filming or anything?” He looked about with suspicion.

“Go and check our bank account,” Dimitra ordered elatedly, as she keyed in the details into her phone. Handing it to her husband, he looked it over. “Look – there have been no withdrawals for two weeks.”

Alex scrolled through the account details and pondered this, as he scrutinised the money on the table.

“Yeah-nah, I put the cows in the paddock last night,” Peter explained to the cameras, “All forty-three head of cattle. Then this mornin’ I get up and find ten more! Prime cattle these ones!”

“And you check the properties around you?” the reporter questioned, already knowing the answer, but providing viewers with an insight.

“Yeah-nah, I asked Phil on the farm next-door and he said he’s still got all his cattle. The other farms around us are sheep farmers, so they didn’t lose any. It’s like I got meself around $20,000 worth of stock for nothin’!” Peter said triumphantly. “The police are lookin’ into it, but they reckon I can keep’em if no one’s reported’em missin’.”

“Thank you for your time, Pete,” the reporter said to the farmer, before turning her attention back to the camera. “So there you have it – the case of the mystery cattle is still unsolved, but I know that Pete is hoping that it remains so. Back to you in the studio, Geoff.”

“All around the country and seemingly the world, people claim to have been miraculously gathering wealth…” the news reporter stated, “from mysterious bovine influx on farms and even in the suburbs, to people finding hundreds and thousands of dollars in the most absurd places, through to traders who have been overpaid for products that ‘are not even worth it’, as one salesman put it…”

“…this guy came in… short fella, possibly Arabian in appearance… and he says that he’s gonna make a deal with me… being only a small time electrical appliance dealer, I tell him that I’ll hear him out and he says he’ll give me $10,000 for this Fotex 32” HD LED TV. Then I says to him, but it’s only worth $179 – how many are you buying? And he lays the suitcase on the table and tells me, just the one… I says, are you sure you don’t want the most expensive one then – it’s better quality – and he says, the $179 one thanks. Ha! He must be one of those Arabian princes or something…”

Alex turned off the television. “Dimi, did you hear all that? Some guy got $10,000 for a $179 television.” There was no response, so Alex tried again. “Dimitra – did you hear me? There are people all over the world who are finding money and cows… Dimi? I said cows – on their property!”

A sudden scream from the bedroom had Alex off the couch and moving quickly towards the direction of his wife’s cries. “Dimi, what is it? What’s happened?”

“I came out of the loo and there was a man,” Dimitra said in a panicked voice, “He had my bag and the $1,000 – he went out the window!”

The curtain blowing in the breeze of the open window had Alex moving cautiously towards it. From his vantage point, he could only see the empty street with the usual two parked cars that aligned the curbs on either side of the street. He sighed at the loss of his fortune.

Peter returned from the cattle market $20,000 richer. He parked the SUV in the shed, as usual, but was surprised to see his wife rushing out of the farmstead.

“Hey, darlin’!” he called, “Guess who just sold those ten heifers and made us $20,000 richer?”

“Pete, there’s been a terrible tragedy!”

Peter looked about, as though the tragedy would present itself if he looked for it, and then returned his attention to his wife. “What’s goin’ on, Janey?”

“The paddocks,” she pointed amidst sobs. “The cattle… they’re dead.”

Peter uttered some expletives and raced to the back of the farmstead to scour the paddock. Forty-three head of cattle lay dead in the fields. “Is that all of ‘em?” Peter asked in dismay.

His wife nodded in her misery. “Yeah, there are none left standing.”

“How?” Peter questioned aloud, “How did this happen?”

His wife shrugged.

Meanwhile on Mount Olympus…

“You brought Thanatos in on this!” Phaethusa exclaimed angrily at the large, bearded man sitting opposite her, “Mr God of Death himself?”

“Oh, don’t be so outraged, woman!” the man cried, “I know you got Hermes on your side. Only the God of Thieves would bring in someone to steal my follower’s money.”

“Plutus, this may surprise you but I can fight my own battles,” Phaethusa told the God of Wealth. “As the Goddess of Cows, I told you that the humans feel a lot wealthier having cows than your money; and you saw that not only do the cows provide meat and dairy for them, they can also gain money! So you sent in Thanatos to kill the cows that my follower had left!”

Plutus looked a little abashed. “Well, actually, I didn’t tell him to do it… it was more a suggestion after you interfered with my followers’ gaining wealth.” He mumbled, before becoming more agitated. “And this wasn’t the only time you got Hermes to send his followers to steal from mine! That couple that won $1 million in the lottery had their ticket taken just as they were going to bring it in! You were cheating!”

“I beg your pardon – I did no such thing!” Phaethusa scolded, just as Hermes walked in.

“You!” Plutus shouted, as he stood up from the table that held the map of the world. “Explain to me how thieves managed to steal many of my followers’ wealth, God of Thieves.”

Hermes was about to leave, but Plutus’ gaze told him that he should stay – even if Hermes’ famed winged sandals would get him away much quicker than the older god could react.

“Sorry, Plutus, what do you want of this humble God of Communication and Trade?” Hermes responded as innocently as he could muster.

“Oh, don’t give me that, Hermes!” Plutus strode up to the god. “I know you are a god of many things and thieves are one of them!”

Hermes looked from Plutus to Phaethusa and then sighed. “Okay, fine! I wanted to play! Is that so bad?” He marched up to the table and pointed to the map. “I saw this Dimitra human getting money from you and then this Peter human getting cows from Phaethusa and I wanted to play! So I gave my follower who works in that electrical store some of the money I stole from your followers, so that my followers would win. Then while leading some souls to the underworld, I kind of asked Thanatos to kill a few cows…”

Phaethusa slapped the young god across the face. “They were my cattle – you had no right to give them over to that murdering oaf!”

“Ha!” Plutus cried, as he fixed a piece on the map. “Your little human’s electrical store just became poor!”

“How did you know where my follower’s store was?” Hermes asked in shock.

Plutus raised his hand, showing a little black notebook. “I have your notebook that has all of your ancestral followers,” he said with a nasty grin, “Just because you are the God of Thieves, does not mean that I have not learnt anything in that vein… after all, I do work with money and wealth, which people beg, steal and kill for.”

“You give my ancestral notebook back!” Hermes demanded.

“Only if you play in the spirit of the game,” Plutus told him. Phaethusa seconded the God of Wealth’s comment with a stern nod.

“Oh, alright!” Hermes said sulkily, putting out his hand to retrieve his little, black notebook. “Now, I’ll have to help my electrical store trader gain back his wealth.”

“Very well,” Phaethusa stated, as she took her seat at the table once again. “Since that unpleasantness is over, let us continue the game.” She perused her own little notebook, placed forty-three cows in Peter’s farm again and then chose an ancestral follower from New Zealand.

“I’m starting all over again – this time in France!” Plutus said, after checking through his ancestral notebook. “€20,000 goes to this young human couple – it’ll be in the back of their couch!” His laugh rang through the halls of Olympus.