Published: September 7, 2021
Edited: June 24, 2022

~✰~

We were pretty miserable that night. We camped out in the woods, a hundred yards from the main road, in a marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties. The ground was littered with flattened soda cans and fast-food wrappers.

We'd taken some food and blankets from Aunty Em's, but we didn't dare light a fire to dry our damp clothes. The Furies and Medusa had provided enough excitement for one day. We didn't want to attract anything else. We decided to sleep in shifts. I volunteered to take first watch.

Annabeth curled up on the blankets and was snoring as soon as her head hit the ground. Grover fluttered with his flying shoes to the lowest bough of a tree, put his back to the trunk, and stared at the night sky. Percy sat next to Annabeth on the blanket mat but didn't seem to want to sleep.

"Go ahead and sleep," I told the boys. "I'll wake you if there's trouble."

Grover nodded, but still didn't close his eyes. "It makes me sad."

"What does? The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?" Percy suggested.

"No. This makes me sad." He pointed at all the garbage on the ground. "And the sky. You can't even see the stars."

"They've polluted the sky. This is a terrible time to be a satyr." I sympathized. I wasn't exactly a huge earth fanatic like Grover but I understood where he was coming from, it was terrible how mortals were destroying the earth

"Oh, yeah. I guess you'd be an environmentalist." Percy shrugged. His voice didn't hold any malice, just a detached politeness.

Grover glared at Percy. "Only a human wouldn't be. Your species is clogging up the world so fast...ah, never mind. It's useless to lecture a human. At the rate things are going, I'll never find Pan."

"Pam? Like the cooking spray?" Percy inquired. I smacked my forehead on my palm.

"Pan!" he cried indignantly. "P-A-N. The great god Pan! What do you think I want a searcher's license for?"

A strange breeze rustled through the clearing, temporarily overpowering the stink of trash and muck. It brought the smell of berries and wildflowers and clean rainwater, things that might've once been in these woods. Suddenly I was nostalgic for something I'd never known. This was Pan's power, at least a fraction of it.

"Tell us about the search," I prompted gently. Grover looked at me cautiously, as if he were afraid I was just making fun.

"The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago," he started, telling the story just like he used to when I was traveling with him, Annabeth, Luke and Thalia. I curled up on the mat like I was seven years old again and listened as Grover went on. "A sailor off the coast of Ephesos heard a mysterious voice crying out from the shore, 'Tell them that the great god Pan has died!' When humans heard the news, they believed it. They've been pillaging Pan's kingdom ever since. But for the satyrs, Pan was our lord and master. He protected us and the wild places of the earth. We refuse to believe that he died. In every generation, the bravest satyrs pledge their lives to finding Pan. They search the earth, exploring all the wildest places, hoping to find where he is hidden, and wake him from his sleep."

"And you want to be a searcher." Percy stated while I yawned.

"It's my life's dream," Grover said. "My father was a searcher. And my Uncle Ferdinand...the statue you saw back there—"

"Oh, right, sorry."

Grover shook his head. "Uncle Ferdinand knew the risks. So did my dad. But I'll succeed. I'll be the first searcher to return alive."

"Hang on—the first?"

Grover took his reed pipes out of his pocket. "No searcher has ever come back. Once they set out, they disappear. They're never seen alive again." 

"Not once in two thousand years?"

"No."

"And your dad? You have no idea what happened to him?"

"None."

"But you still want to go," Percy asked, amazed. "I mean, you really think you'll be the one to find Pan?"

"I have to believe that, Percy. Every searcher does. It's the only thing that keeps us from despair when we look at what humans have done to the world. I have to believe Pan can still be awakened."

I stared at the orange haze of the sky and tried to understand how Grover could pursue a dream that seemed so hopeless. Then again, was I any better?

"How are we going to get into the Underworld?" I asked the two. "I mean, what chance do we have against a god?"

"I don't know," Grover admitted. "But back at Medusa's, when you were searching her office? Annabeth was telling us—"

"Oh, I forgot. Annabeth will have a plan all figured out." Percy's voice was scathing and abrasive.

"Percy..." I warned.

"Don't be so hard on her, Percy. She's had a tough life, but she's a good person. After all, she forgave me...." Grover's voice faltered. Of course. Every conversation always had to turn to Thalia. I rolled over and pretended to try and sleep.

"What do you mean?" Percy asked. "Forgave you for what?" 

Suddenly, Grover seemed very interested in playing notes on his pipes.

"Wait a minute," Percy said. "Your first keeper job was five years ago. Annabeth and Neridia have been at camp five years. They weren't...I mean, your first assignment that went wrong—"

"I can't talk about it," Grover said, his voice quivering  "But as I was saying, back at Medusa's, Annabeth and I agreed there's something strange going on with this quest. Something isn't what it seems."

"Well, duh. Neri and I are getting blamed for stealing a thunderbolt that Hades took."

"That's not what I mean," Grover pondered. "The Fur—The Kindly Ones were sort of holding back. Like Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy...why did she wait so long to try to kill you? Then on the bus, they just weren't as aggressive as they could've been."

"They seemed plenty aggressive to me."

Grover shook his head. "They were screeching at us: 'Where is it? Where?'"

"Asking about me and my sister," Percy noted, sounding like it should have been obvious to Grover.

"Maybe...but Annabeth and I, we both got the feeling they weren't asking about a person. They said 'Where is it?' They seemed to be asking about an object."

"That doesn't make sense."

"I know. But if we've misunderstood something about this quest, and we only have nine days to find the master bolt...." He looked at me like he was hoping for answers, but I didn't have any so I kept feigning sleep.

I thought about what Medusa had said: I was being used by the gods. What lay ahead of me was worse than petrification. "We haven't been straight with you," Percy told Grover. "I don't care about the master bolt, Neridia says she doesn't either. We agreed to go to the Underworld so I could bring back our mother."

Grover blew a soft note on his pipes. "I know that, Percy. But are you sure that's the only reason?"

"I'm not doing it to help my father. He doesn't care about us. We don't care about him. End. Of. Story." I jumped back into the conversation, my temper flaring up.

Grover gazed down from his tree branch. "Look, Dia, I'm not as smart as Annabeth. I'm not as brave as Percy. I'm not as tough as you. But I'm pretty good at reading emotions. You're glad your dad is alive. You feel good that he's claimed you, and part of you wants to make him proud. That's why you mailed Medusa's head to Olympus. You wanted him to notice what you'd done."

"Yeah? Well maybe satyr emotions work differently than human emotions. Because you're wrong. I don't give a flying Fury what he thinks."

Grover pulled his feet up onto the branch. "Okay, 'Dia. Whatever."

"Besides, I haven't done anything worth bragging about. We barely got out of New York and we're stuck here with no money and no way west."

Grover looked at the night sky, like he was thinking about that problem. "How about I take first watch, huh? You get some sleep."

I wanted to protest, but he started to play Mozart, soft and sweet, and I turned away, my eyes stinging. After a few bars of Piano Concerto no. 12, I was asleep.

In my dreams, I stood in a dark cavern before a gaping pit. Percy stood bedside me, looking ghostly in the dim light. Gray mist creatures churned all around me, whispering rags of smoke that I somehow knew were the spirits of the dead. They tugged at my clothes, trying to pull me back, but I felt compelled to walk forward to the very edge of the chasm.

Looking down made me dizzy.

The pit yawned so wide and was so completely black, I knew it must be bottomless. Yet I had a feeling that something was trying to rise from the abyss, something huge and evil.

The little twin heroes, an amused voice echoed far down in the darkness. Too weak, too young, but perhaps you will do.

The voice felt ancient—cold and heavy. It wrapped around me like sheets of lead.

They have misled you, children, it said. Barter with me. I will give you what you want.

A shimmering image hovered over the void: a woman, a woman who looked so like me that I knew this must be my mother, frozen at the moment she'd dissolved in a shower of gold.

Her face was distorted with pain, as if the Minotaur were still squeezing her neck. Her eyes looked directly at me and Percy, pleading: Go!

I tried to cry out, but my voice wouldn't work.

Cold laughter echoed from the chasm.

An invisible force pulled me forward. It would drag me into the pit unless I stood firm.

Help me rise, twins, The voice became hungrier. Bring me the bolt. Strike a blow against the treacherous gods!

The spirits of the dead whispered around me, No! Wake! The image of my mother began to fade. The thing in the pit tightened its unseen grip around me. I realized it wasn't interested in pulling me in. It was using me to pull itself out.

Good, it murmured. Good.

Wake! the dead whispered. Wake!

Someone was shaking me. My eyes opened, and it was daylight.

"Well," Annabeth said, "the zombies live."

I was trembling from the dream. I could still feel the grip of the chasm monster around my chest and Percy's hand in mine. "How long was I asleep?"

"Long enough for me to cook breakfast." Annabeth tossed me and Percy each a bag of nacho-flavored corn chips from Aunty Em's snack bar. "And Grover went exploring. Look, he found a friend."

My eyes had trouble focusing. Grover was sitting cross-legged on a blanket with something fuzzy in his lap, a dirty, unnaturally pink stuffed animal. No. It wasn't a stuffed animal. It was a pink poodle.

"What in the-"

The poodle yapped at me suspiciously. Grover said, "No, they're not." I knew satyrs could talk to animals but it was fascinating to see it in action.

"Hello there!" I pet it's head softly. The poodle looked content and closed it's eyes under my touch. Percy blinked in bewilderment.

 "Are you...talking to that thing?"

The poodle growled, it's eyes snapping open and its teeth baring.

"This thing," Grover warned, "is our ticket west. Be nice to him."

"You can talk to animals?"

Grover ignored the question. "Percy, Dia, meet Gladiola. Gladiola, Percy and Neridia."

Percy stared at Annabeth as if he thought he was being pranked.

"I'm not saying hello to a pink poodle," Percy said firmly. "Forget it."

"Percy," I cautioned. "I said hello to the poodle. You say hello to the poodle." Gladiola growled as if to prove my point.

Percy said hello to the poodle.

Grover explained that he'd come across Gladiola in the woods and they'd struck up a conversation. The poodle had run away from a rich family who was passing through, they'd apparently posted a $200 reward for his return. Gladiola didn't really want to go back to his family, but he was willing to if it meant helping Grover.

"How does Gladiola know about the reward?" I asked, resuming my stroking of the poodle.

"He read the signs," Grover said. "Duh."

"Of course," Percy rolled his eyes and gave me a 'can you belive this guy' kind of look. "Silly us."

"So we turn in Gladiola," Annabeth explained in her best strategy voice, "we get money, and we buy tickets to Los Angeles. Simple."

I thought about my dream—the whispering voices of the dead, the thing in the chasm, and my mother's face, shimmering as it dissolved into gold. All that might be waiting for us in the West.

"Not another bus," Percy said warily.

"No," Annabeth agreed.

She pointed downhill, toward train tracks I hadn't been able to see last night in the dark. "There's an Amtrack station half a mile that way. According to Gladiola, the westbound train leaves at noon."

~✰~
Word Count: 2244