An Undertow of Sand
A PJO Fanfiction
So, uh.
This…
This wasn't even
remotely part of the plan.
Shocker.
Apate showing up wasn't in the plan either.
Look, I'm going to level with you. In hindsight, I really should have expected her to still be holding a grudge. Maybe an asshole toddler needling you over not
really being 'alive' so who'd care if you 'died' was a bit memorable, you know?
And Apate's
Greek.
I should have known from the start that it was going to come back to bite me.
Apate was smart enough not to just smite me, but that meant I was dumb enough to believe that
changed anything. I knew better than to try to ask Mom for help here. If there was anything I could do to disappoint my mother, it would be asking to be saved from my own stupidity.
I was on my own here.
If you're just like 'isn't Persephone that one chick that got kidnapped and forced to marry Hades with that fruit thing? What's the problem?'
Debts are not toys.
You can't just put them down and stop playing with them whenever you feel like it. And you better know what the other party is getting out of it, or you'll end up paying interest you can't afford.
Two, she had
no fucking eyes.
Persephone was standing on a giant decayed mutant hand belonging to
something in the walls beneath the earth, literally hanging us by rotting threads above the Greek Super Hell, Tartarus like we just stopped by for cookies and hot chocolate.
Hello?
If you haven't figured out that there is an awful lot
missing from that version of the myth we
both heard, I don't know what to tell you.
I didn't know what to tell Persephone either.
This was the worst time in the history of ever for my mind to just go
blank.
You know that thing that happens when you open your mouth to say something,
anything, and fucking nothing comes out?
I was completely at the Dread Persephone's mercy with my mouth open and I couldn't think of a single word to say. My brain just checked out. I tried to bank on my ADHD to pick up the slack, but it didn't know what to do either.
The silence dragged on long enough to get awkward. My blood turned cold when Persephone's slight smile started to falter.
You might be wondering how I was going to smooth talk my way out of this one.
There was no way.
Luckily for me, I was traveling with the absolute dumbest fucking rodent known to mankind.
"You -
Persephone?" Arty the Wonder Rabbit, She-Who-Voted-To-Torture-This-Woman's-Husband-Because-She's-a-Petty-Baby gasped.
I gasped in a greedy breath of air as the dangling eyes of the dark goddess shifted off me. I watched the corner of her red lips curl in a familiar way as she slightly inclined her head, like she was acknowledging the existence of a dog.
Or a rabbit.
"...in the
flesh," she said softly.
"But it's
summer!" Artemis cried out.
"Really?" Persephone's slim dark eyebrow raised over blank skin instead of a right eye.
She absently shook out a wrinkle in her skirt, lifting it up over her bare feet as she stepped towards us. She would have fallen right off the hand, if one of the fingers hadn't moved on its own to catch her. The loud 'crack' of the swollen, rotting joint made my stomach lurch.
"I hadn't noticed," she said with a lazy wave of her hand. "You know, with all the utter dark
darkness going on."
Shit.
She's
likable.
"You can't - " Artemis wheezed, having just as much trouble breathing as I did. "But you can't - "
"Be
free?" Persephone finished the sentence still with her soft, mild tone. She turned her head back towards the hole in the wall where the putrid arm came from, a hand to her mouth as she stage whispered, "I do believe our mother has been keeping
secrets. And we
love her for it, don't we?"
Something spoke.
I felt like a bubble in my head just
popped, a warm feeling of water trickling down the inside of my skull as I blinked. I looked around and everything felt off. I felt confused. There was blood in my mouth and I realized that I had slipped further down the wall somehow. Had I just -
Had I just blacked out?
"Well, now." Persephone was suddenly
there right in front of me. The rusted nails and
pressure was back. I felt her gently grasp my chin between her fingers. Her touch was so cold, it
burned.
Staring her in the face was
hard.
It wasn't because she didn't have eyes. She almost looked like one of those old school actresses from the 30s, a real classical long dark haired look. It wasn't the ADHD making me notice the small mole on her right cheekbone or the diamond studs in her ears or even the odd
scar that made a divot in her bottom lip. I had to settle for focusing on the tip of her button nose.
It was because she didn't have eyes, but I could feel her gaze cut right through me. I felt like she was
looking at me with two ice cold needles of vision, gently drawing blood. Every time I tried to raise my eyes, something about the
blank where her eyes should have been was…
Wrong.
I had the sudden thought that maybe she
did have eyes and maybe I really didn't want to look at her without my sunglasses.
"You
heard my brother, didn't you?" Persephone mused as she slowly turned my face this way and that. I felt like I was a horse being inspected for bad teeth. "What a pleasant surprise. You just keep getting more interesting."
Great.
Just what I wanted to hear.
"But where are my
manners?" she asked herself as the hand platform she was standing on smoothly drew away.
Her face turned, as if she was glancing to the side and the hands holding me to the wall moved, clamping onto my wrists and shins. My stomach swooped as I was peeled away from the wall. For one terrifying moment, I was suspended in mid air with just creaking bones as support and then I was deposited onto the rotting hand.
Which was so much worse.
The flesh under my sneakers was putrefying. Almost goopy in some areas and hard as a rock in others. She didn't seem to care about the slurry squishing between her toes. I almost gagged at the smell.
"There we are." Persephone affectionately ruffled my hair and it felt like getting a brain freeze after eating too much ice cream. I wouldn't have been surprised to find icicles in my hair. "We were about to make a deal, weren't we?"
"...any chance we could relocate to someplace nicer?" I risked asking.
She raised a dark eyebrow again as the eyes decorating her hair pointedly looked around.
She said nothing.
"Fair," I said weakly, curling into myself.
"P-perseus," Artemis coughed out. I looked over and saw the rabbit trapped in a cage of bones. Two large skeletal hands were clasped together like a clam shell of interlocking finger bones around her, holding her above the abyss.
Luke was held to the wall like I was, with a large rotten limb bent across his chest and hands held his head still, but one of his legs had disappeared into the grave. At first, I thought he was unconscious, but then I realized he had his eyes
screwed shut. Every inch of him was tense, the muscle in his jaw straining like he was furiously pretending he was somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
"Perseus," Artemis said again.
"Don't."
Persephone frowned.
Awesome.
We weren't going to the Pit
or getting into debt, because this rabbit was going to get us
killed in horrible ways.
"Arty," I said, feeling tired. "Please shut up."
The Dreaded let out an amused huff of air.
"You heard him, 'temis," she said with an odd smile as she watched me curiously. The pomegranate flower in her hair wilted and withered away to dust. A single, crinkled gray petal landed on my sneaker.
"Shush."
Artemis obeyed.
"
Perseus, is it? Like my title,
Persephone?" She asked idly. "I prefer to think it means 'Murderer.'"
Take it from me, pick a nickname.
Live it, breathe it until it's just as real to you as the name you were born with. I told you before, didn't I? Names are important. Some beings out there can really make you regret giving yours away.
"Ravager, or perhaps 'one who destroys.' Good name."
I swallowed thickly.
"So, uh," I began.
My brain felt like it was made of mush. I felt like I was stuck in a trap room with the walls closing in. My fingers were numb and I was trying really hard to not
think about the last time I took on a debt even as the back of my neck kept screaming like an air raid siren. My forearms were prickling in warning too. I felt like that moment back at Rhea's where reality itself seemed to buckle under the
threat of the Matriarch of Swarms paying attention to me. My Spidey Sense let me react to mortal danger I couldn't even see, but right now it didn't need to warn me. I already had Persephone's attention.
I knew I was looking Death in the face.
"What
are - " I stopped myself. I didn't like people asking me that question, why would I go and do it to someone else? "Sorry."
Persephone shrugged a careless shoulder. "What have you heard about me?"
I shuffled, and then stopped when my shoes squelched. "What…everyone does, I guess?" When she waved me on, I kept going. "So, Hades was a huge dork - "
"The biggest," she agreed.
"And for some reason thought asking Zeus for help with you was a good idea - "
"It wasn't."
"And then your mom did the…" I waved a hand vaguely. "The whole thing with trying to kill everyone and Olympus was panicking because it was all going to shit until you made…"
My brain finally caught up to the words coming out of my mouth.
A slow smile was spreading across Persephone's face. "The
deal?"
The pomegranate flower in her headband bloomed as the endless hands stretched out towards us, their skeletal remains mimicking the opening of the flower petals as they grasped at thin air, begging.
The cavern around us shuddered, pelting me with dust and rocks.
The version of the story I heard was that she was forced to stay in the Underworld for six months of the year, one month for each pomegranate seed she ate.
But the pomegranate flower was Persephone's symbol, like the spindle was for Mom. It made me wonder how many times gods were represented by their chains. But Persephone was in the Underworld now, in the middle of June and Artemis didn't seem happy about that at all.
Maybe it was the other way around. It wasn't that Persephone was forced to stay in the Underworld, it was that for six months of the year, she was supposed to be
locked out of it.
She called it 'being free.'
"I thought Demeter was your mom," I whispered.
"She is," Persephone said simply. She smiled a bit sadly. "Her…occupation has its risks when it comes to getting attention." As the Earth Mother's Warden. "She was not given a choice, I'm afraid."
"You have a
brother?"
Another hole in the wall opened and I didn't look into it as a ragged, slimy looking tendril snaked past me and seemed to almost questioningly poke the goddess' cheek. Her hand came up absently, petting it. "What'd you think?"
She turned away from me towards the holes in the wall. I barely had the time to brace myself before the world pulsed, like I'd been caught in the shockwave of an airplane breaking the sound barrier. The only reason I didn't fall right into the Pit was Persephone's steady, burning hand around my upper arm.
"Easy," she said and then with a twist of her fingers, she was gently dabbing at my face with a cloth. "Literally. It will be simpler if you just
open your mind to him. Blow your nose."
I did. The cloth was stained with my blood.
"Can I - " Persephone didn't stop me from making a grab for the napkin. If Hiraya had taught me anything, it was that there was nothing I could take for granted. I pinched my bloody nose shut. "Thanksh you."
She was still
looking at me. "...you're not one of Poseidon's, are you?"
"Uh," I said dumbly. "No."
At this rate, I was going to have to ask my father to turn in a paternity test.
"And you're not of Demeter, Dionysus or Hephaestus," she mused as the hands in the wall fluttered, like long blades of grass bending before an unfelt breeze. "No, don't tell me, let me guess." I felt like there was some kind of pattern or logic in who she was Naming. If she had eyes, I was sure I would have seen them looking me over from head to toe. "You're pretty enough to be Aphrodite's."
"Uh."
Call me old-fashioned, but that did not feel like a compliment.
"If only I was younger," she said wistfully.
"...and less married?"
Persephone burst out laughing.
She had one of those movie star laughs, the kind that was all charm, perfect white teeth and the partly raised hand, like she thought about covering her mouth to be polite but couldn't quite bring herself to care.
I forced a laugh. "Right, haha. I - I was kidding. Greek, right?"
"Oh, you're
adorable," she chuckled, wiping a non-existent tear from the corner of a non-existent eye. "Tell me you're Rhea's."
"...does she actually
have demigods?" I had to ask.
"Of course." Persephone's lips curled again. "Technically speaking."
How do you
technically have a demigod?
"And you are certainly not
mine. I would remember that," she continued matter of factly. She made a frustrated sound. "I give up. Who do you remind us of?"
"Um." I licked my lips. My jaw was still throbbing. "Are you going to drop me if I give the wrong answer?"
Her lips pursed. "Hmm, I think not. You still interest me." She turned her head towards my party members and I felt my heart stop. I could swear Luke started praying. "But if you don't answer, I will just drop
them."
Alright.
That's fair, I guess.
"Fate," I said quietly. "My mother is Fate."
My stomach scrunched into a ball when Persephone pulled back, her nose wrinkling. "Those - your mother is a Fate?"
"Not…
a Fate."
Persephone's face went blank the same way Rhea's did, the same way
Mom's did, in surprise. Like the guiding intelligence had just zoned out and went fishing for a second. The molten red glow of Phlegethon, the river of fire running through the heart of Tartarus burned below as all the eyes strung in her hair focused on me.
Persephone
stared.
I felt like an ant looking up into the magnifying glass, seeing the radiant edge of the sun
just come into focus.
"...well met, Perseus of the Bloody Tongue, son of
Ananke," she said softly.
Nothing happened.
My stomach, lungs and heart dropped out of my ass simultaneously.
Nothing happened.
Mom didn't answer.
She wasn't
here.
"I am Persephone of the Endless Abyss, Priestess of my father,
Tartarus."
The Name felt like being dropped into a black hole.
My blood turned to fire and steam and evaporating
gas. I could feel my body stretch like it was on a torture rack, my spine was popping, my feet being pulled down by an impossible gravity towards the mind of a malevolent galaxy. I felt like screaming. I think I
tried. I was coming apart at the seams, separating into strands like spaghetti as the molecules that held me together began to
fail -
And then it was over.
"He sleeps still," Persephone said with the air of someone explaining why it was raining outside. "Not forever, but, for now."
I was shaking. I couldn't help it.
Mom kept me from most of my cousins for a reason.
"Hi," I croaked. If I was a dog, my tail would be tucked so far between my legs, it would have fused with the crack of my ass.
"Hello," Persephone nearly chirped, amused. "Perhaps a change in locale
is in order. How are you with curry? I know a nice Indian place."
She was offering to feed me.
Hospitality.
I almost lunged for the promise of safety, but at the last second, I pulled myself back. "My - my friends…"
Her eyebrows rose. "You are…including 'temis in that?"
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
Persephone's eyebrows rose higher. She turned towards the cage of bone holding a still and quiet bunny rabbit. "Oh, very well," she sighed. "It might be for the better, actually. How long has it been since we had a real conversation, sister?" She asked the rabbit. "Like this, I mean.
Face to face."
"...Rome," Artemis said very quietly.
"
That's right," Persephone said. "That was a bit of a mess, wasn't it?" It must have been a rhetorical question because in the next instant, the dead limbs pulled Artemis and Luke into the wall. I swallowed a yell. There was nothing I could do.
"Don't worry," Persephone said. "They're your friends. I am not…" She tilted her head with a thoughtful frown. "
Metaphorically heartless. It's always nice meeting family members."
Right.
Nice.
"And you haven't
changed your mind, have you?" She asked. "I was rather looking forward to making a new deal with someone."
"I would…really like it if we didn't end up in the Pit."
"Nothing wrong with the classics," Persephone reassured me with a numbing touch to the shoulder.
If you asked me yesterday what I would have done if I got tossed into the Pit, I would have said 'sit down and scream for Erebus.' Now, the very thought made my skin
crawl with fear. The Mist wouldn't hide anything from me. I wanted to
staple my sunglasses to my
head.
I was now probably the last person on earth that wanted to look my uncle in the face.
"And…still alive to tell my grandkids about the close call," I continued hopefully, because not going to Super Hell because she thought killing us solved our problems would be Super Lame.
Gotta cover all my bases.
"All of us intact and unchanged." I hesitated. "Would it be too much to ask to be deposited within a horizontal mile of our previous location on the surface?"
Persephone's eyebrows jumped a little. "Done this before, have you?"
"You could say that," I mumbled.
I've
failed at it before. Lost a game I was too stupid and arrogant to realize I was playing in a den full of monsters.
Those pixies were - were
never going to leave Eva alone -
Don't think about it.
I felt sick.
"Are you sure that's all you want?" Persephone sounded disappointed.
I panicked.
"We're doing Hades a favor!" I blurted out. "Alekto came to ask if we wouldn't mind looking around for something he lost, so we're doing that but the Night is making it hard - "
"For the love of - " Persephone's hand came up to massage at a temple. "'I've got it under control, Persephone. I can handle my own problems, Persephone. I know what my siblings are like, Persephone' and he just goes
asking random people for help?"
"Well, I mean - "
She wasn't listening. She leaned over the edge of the hand and shouted down the hole, "I am
right here, you
insufferable man!"
Silence answered her.
"We really need the Night to stop," I whispered. "I called, but Apate answered - "
"Of course she would," Persephone said. "Nyx is currently suffering - hmm," she thought over her word choice with furrowed brows and I abruptly remembered that Rhea and Nyx were her
sisters. "Let's call it 'a bout of melancholy.' She will only respond to something that interests Her and you are not it."
I felt completely helpless.
So that -
That's it then.
"No need for the long face," Persephone said, bumping my chin up with a cold finger. "We can kill
three towns with one plague."
I think that meant the same thing as the saying 'kill two birds with one stone.'
Don't - don't quote me on that.
"Sometime ago, my husband stashed a pair of children away with the Lotus Eater in fear Olympus would continue to be as stupid as we all know it is. A boy and a girl."
A boy and a girl?
What she was saying was tickling something in my memory. Something I heard at Camp, but it took me a bit to place it. Zeus had murdered a pair of children, a boy and a girl, back in the 1940s after WW2, after the oracle of Delphi gave her Great Prophecy. Children of Hades.
"You will retrieve them for me and in return, I will intercede on your behalf with Nyx in my official capacity." Persephone's lips twitched up into a brief smile. "The Night is
nice, don't get me wrong, but it is, perhaps, too
early."
I wasn't sure what she meant by that.
"You…
want your husband's
demigods?" I asked, just to be sure I understood what she was saying and what was going on. Maybe those kids
didn't die, but were smuggled away.
Except…
That must have been about
sixty years ago.
"Why can't you get them?"
"I am not Hera," Persephone said coolly. "And I will not trespass lightly. It would be more trouble than it is worth, but you should be…more or less fine."
"More or less?"
"There's an entry fee to Its abode," Persephone admitted easily. She pinched the air with her index finger and thumb. "Just a small amount of your
time, nothing you cannot afford easily. They will be easy enough to spot and they have aged…slowly."
So they were - they were still kids?
After all this time?
"Go in, get them, get out. Simple."
"Simple," I repeated dully.
I didn't miss the Name. The Lotus Eater. We were going to have to walk into another old god's territory to swipe some children of Hades right out from under its nose.
Fuck me.
"Well?" Persephone asked. "Do we have
a deal?"
I told you before.
I didn't really have a choice.
"We do."
"Excellent!" Persephone was genuinely pleased, but I felt like I just made a bargain with the devil. "He won't
say it, but I know he'll be
thrilled to see his daughter again."
…just the daughter?
Right as I thought that, Persephone's face soured. "Almost as thrilled as Nyx would be with her son."
And my world fell out from under my feet as giant putrid fingers closed over us.
I think I dissociated.
Or maybe I had an aneurysm.
It's happened before. Dad took me in to meet with a therapist a few days after Mom left. I wasn't sleeping well. I wasn't eating. That's where I first heard the term to describe this hazy,
separated feeling, like everything was just shy of being real. Or maybe I was the one who wasn't quite real, just going through the motions, hoping that any moment now, I would just wake up and everything would be back to normal.
It's really all a blur.
I
sort of remember a cozy, but exotic looking restaurant where everyone sat on the floor in front of low tables and Ottoman carpets with cushions. I remember smelling spiced meat, but all I can remember tasting was blood and cinnamon, like I just chewed on my own tongue with every bite. I remember seeing Artemis' auburn fur turn an aged gray underneath Persephone's fingers, before the Priestess of the Endless Abyss changed forms. Pale skin warming to olive. Black hair lightening to the color of that dirt that was sold with grass squares.
I remember Luke breaking three glasses in a row with his white knuckled grip, before the server settled on a plastic cup. For some reason, Persephone offering to let Artemis live out the rest of her punishment as a flower really stuck with me. I don't remember if I said anything. I don't remember if anyone said anything back.
'A half-blood child of the eldest gods, shall reach sixteen against all odds,' was on a never-ending loop in my head.
Nyx has a demigod.
I wasn't the only one.
I've known since Apollo told me when I was nine years old that I was the Prophecy child. I had a destiny. I wasn't like everyone else. I was
important.
Mom never said otherwise.
I knew now that she needed me. That she had to have me. All I had to do was figure out how to break my Prophecy.
And it turns out, my Prophecy might not even be mine.
I know my mother is not perfect. She's not all powerful. She's not all-knowing. But there was a difference between not being omnipotent and being
helpless. There was a difference between Mom's plan going so wrong, she didn't know what was going to happen anymore and thinking that maybe Mom's plan had
always been a desperate shot in the dark.
I felt the same way she must have.
I could see all my plans for fixing Camp, for fixing
Olympus fracturing into tiny, little pieces.
Maybe Nyx's son was the
wiser choice for Athena. Maybe he wouldn't put his foot in it so much, maybe he would know what to say to Khione or know what to do when there was a problem instead of standing there, running his mouth like an
idiot. Maybe he could actually
focus and listen and didn't - didn't trust the wrong people or make risky bets and made better decisions that didn't hurt people.
Didn't hurt Clovis or Annabeth or Luke.
Maybe he was more careful or knew more or was just -
Just
better.
Maybe the future wasn't up to me at all.
Maybe that was a
good thing.
I felt like I was watching myself through a TV screen. I saw a hand that didn't feel like mine pack away leftover schwarma and I saw it reach out and take the bus tickets from Persephone's (or was it Kore, the Maiden now?) warm hand. I know I stared at them. I couldn't read. The letters were just impressions of ink, a blur. It was like I was Dreaming, when I knew I should have been wide awake.
My mouth opened and I didn't know what I was going to say.
"So that could have gone bet - "
Luke punched me.
I snapped back to myself as stars exploded in my eyes and I fell over.
I looked up at him from the pavement of the parking lot somewhere in California. I felt numb as he loomed over me. At six feet tall, both of his hands curled into shaking fists with a street light at his back throwing his scar into sharp relief, Luke looked menacing.
Dangerous.
I didn't realize how lucky I was that he didn't pull
Reclaim on me until I saw the tears in his eyes.
"You - " He breathed. "You
fucking - "
He didn't finish.
Luke turned and ran away from me.
I sat there like a bump on a log.
I didn't move until a cold, wet rabbit nose nudged my hand. I lifted it automatically and it just hung there in the air. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, so then I put it back down. Instead of rough tar, it fell on fur.
I pet the rabbit.
"...I messed up," I said. I felt like it was killing me to have said it out loud. I couldn't breathe. My chest felt tight and it
hurt like I had broken every one of my ribs. A cramp was forming in my side. I felt light headed.
I nearly got us thrown into
Tartarus.
Once you're in there, the only way out were the Doors of Death.
And that could only be opened from
both ends.
Artemis sighed under my hand. "No, you did not."
I turned disbelieving eyes onto her. "You can't be serious."
"We are alive, intact, unchanged and sane," she said bluntly. "I believe this is what is called a 'win.'"
"What'd I
win?" I snapped at her. I waved my hand in the direction Luke ran off in. "What did I
fucking win?"
"Luke is not angry with you."
I was barely able to restrain myself to just pushing her away. She still hit the ground hard.
"Fuck off."
He's
furious.
"He's
scared," Artemis said quietly as she got back to her feet.
I stared at her mutely.
"It is…
so much easier -" she said in a rush. "When you are scared, or worried, or hurt or sad to just - just get
angry instead. It makes you feel powerful. It makes you feel like you can
do something about it. And it does not - " her voice hitched. "And it hardly matters anymore if it will even solve the problem. If you are hurting someone else, you cannot be a victim."
"...I don't think that's how it works," I rasped. There was a frog in my throat. My eyes burned.
My father was not like my mother.
Dad got angry, but I always knew it was because he cared.
"It
feels like it does," Artemis said. She risked coming closer again. "He's not angry with you. I promise."
"I
messed up," I said again. I waved around the bus tickets still in my hand. "You told me - to not make a deal - "
"I was wrong to do so," Artemis cut me off. Her ears drooped. "I have not seen
Kore in a very long time," she admitted softly. "We both wanted to be…
more than we were. All three of us, actually." Artemis stared off into the distance, seeing nothing. "Athena changed her mind quickly and stopped seeking Time's attention altogether. I…struggled." She laid a paw over her eyes. "To this day, I am amazed Selene did not just kill me."
"She loved you," I said thickly. "She was your
mother."
Artemis sighed. "She was incapable of communicating with words. I learned directly from concepts implanted in the mind, so believe me when I say that does
not mean what you think it does."
I frowned.
I wasn't sure how to take that.
The rabbit looked away again. "Kore despite all advice, caution,
warnings went to her father. And she
thrived."
Those words hung in the air.
"Athena saw the abyss for what it was. I was - was
stupid and ignorant until I found myself standing at the edge. I do not
want to know if Kore just…
slipped or if she did not
fall so much as just…" Artemis looked up at the dark Night Sky and the boiling thunderclouds of Ouranos' prison. "Our last real conversation was just - " She fought with her words. "I was
disappointingly human," Artemis said. "I said things I regret." She huffed. "A lot of things I regret, because I was scared."
"You still are," I said.
"I am
terrified," Artemis said. "I gave up on my sister that day and I - I did not see her today either."
"...she offered to turn you into a flower," I said because I'm stupid and don't know where half the shit that comes out of my mouth comes from. "Hijack your punishment from Mom. Doesn't that mean
anything?"
"...I do not know." The rabbit looked up at me with solemn, silver eyes. "Demeter blames Hades. She
has to. I - I blame myself."
I didn't know what to say to that.
"She seems happy," I said.
"That is what scares me," Artemis replied. "This…feeling you have, that you failed. You did not."
I couldn't say anything.
"We are intact, so that means you won. This is what being a demigod
means." She was a six month old bunny rabbit, but I felt like she was ten feet tall. "The odds are always against you. You are one grain of sand before an uncaring ocean. You can sweat and bleed and die and sometimes it will mean
nothing beyond what you make of it."
Artemis paused.
"This is what being mortal means," she said quietly, almost like she wasn't talking to me anymore.
Mortal.
When it truly matters, we're dust in the wind.
Sometimes I forget.
Artemis is several thousand years old.
"Kore
listened to you," Artemis murmured. "You have a foot in both worlds, but I think….one day, you will have to choose."
Choose.
'A single choice shall end his days, Olympus to preserve or raze.'
Well.
I wasn't so sure about that anymore.
After a bit, Artemis went to find Luke.
I didn't stop her.
I stayed out of it entirely.
I don't know what they said to each other, if they said anything. I wasn't keeping track of time either. I should have been. We had bus tickets. Those had departure times and everything.
My ADHD was all out of fucks to give.
I was getting gravel down my sneakers and I think I had California dirt
fused into my jeans by the time I heard heavy footsteps approach. I stood up. Brushing my pants off was automatic, I wasn't even looking. I don't know if I got anything off as I watched Luke stalk across the parking lot.
He stopped a good five or six feet away.
His blond brow furrowed. He was getting stubble on his cheeks now. His face was too angular, like in the week and a half since we left Camp, he had lost weight he didn't have to lose. I swallowed hard, but I didn't say anything.
I felt like trying to apologize would just make things worse.
Luke looked down at the rabbit at his heels, then he looked back up at me. Then he slowly got down on one knee, like I was some kind of wild animal. I didn't know what he was doing until he opened his arms.
I crashed into him.
Luke hugged me, hard. He hugged like my grandfather did, with a hand cupping the back of my head and I'm going to blame that for why I just started bawling into his shoulder. I tried to stop, but my emotions were out of control. The tears wouldn't stop coming.
"You're fucking
twelve," Luke almost
whined, like this was the first time since he's laid eyes on me that he finally figured it out. "You're
twelve."
"A-and a half," I hiccupped.
Luke cursed a blue streak. There were something in there about 'fucking nuclear waste mountain' and 'King Thundercunt,' a bit about this 'piece of shit reality' and a fifteen second piece that was just one cuss word after another before he finally calmed down.
I stared at him, sniffling as Luke put both hands on my shoulders. "Repeat after me."
I nodded.
"I don't want to die."
I stared.
Luke shook me. "
Say it."
"I don't want to die."
Luke sagged.
"I
don't want to die," I insisted. "I don't."
"No," he agreed sadly. "You were just taught to do
whatever will work first and to worry about getting through it alive
later."
My throat closed up.
Luke sighed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have hit you. I was just - "
"Worried," I finished for him.
Luke gave me a weak smile. Then he yelped, and glared down at the rabbit.
Artemis had her ears flat against her head in a bunny glare as she looked back up at him.
"Tell him," she hissed.
Luke looked away.
"...I fell into the Pit once," he said roughly. "In my sleep."
Even though we were on solid ground and out of danger, the thought still made my blood run cold.
"Something noticed me before I could get away and I - I had nightmares for
weeks when I didn't do what it wanted me to." Luke was still looking away. "It showed me what it was
like down there and I - I
never - " His voice broke.
I'm sorry," I said thickly.
Luke shook his head. "It - it should never have been up to
us to end something like
this." He flung a hand out at the sky above us. "That's - that's fucked up."
"If we don't, who
will?" I asked.
Luke shook his head again. "You still have…the tickets?"
I dug them out of my pocket and handed them over. Luke took them like they were coated in acid.
He blew out a breath. "Okay. Tell me…what the objective is."
"Rescuing demigods," I said. "A daughter of Hades and a son of Night."
Luke did a double take.
"Of
Night?" Artemis squawked.
"Yeah," I said, feeling like I was going to explode.
"Another half-blood of the eldest gods."
We found the nearest bus station. Persephone had left us on her doorstep in Los Angeles. Way more than a mile away from Blythe, but then we hadn't
settled that deal either. I had gotten distracted, remembering the last deal I made and I had been too scared to think straight and I had panicked, letting Persephone make a counter offer.
This could have turned out so, so badly.
It still might.
Luke found the Greyhound bus after squinting at the tickets. "Go over the border, go back across the border, go over the border…" he griped as he stuffed his backpack underneath his legs. Artemis peeked out from his vest, her little nose twitching furiously as she sniffed around for monsters.
"Where are we going?" I spoke up. My voice sounded small. Young.
"Las Vegas," Luke said. He glanced over at me. "Should be about four hours. Are you going to sleep?"
I shook my head mutely.
"Yeah," Luke sighed. "Me neither."
The other passengers looked as haunted as I felt. Here behind the Roman border things were better. Kind of. People could talk and it wasn't nearly as dark. The pale harvest moon in the sky was almost radiant and Vesta cast a golden glow far and wide. I don't know if the mortals could really see it, but some people were plastered to their windows, staring out with wide eyes.
"It's all over, if you're trying to find someplace
sane," an older man turned in his seat to look at us from underneath heavy salt and pepper brows.
"That's fine," Luke said smoothly. "As long as it's away from
here."
"Amen to that," the man said, making a sign of the cross. He handed Luke a small pocket Bible, but didn't try to preach, just settling back in his seat. Luke frowned at the book.
I fiddled with
Damocles on my necklace.
Luke's told me more about…what
hurt than I've told him. I've told you some of it, but it's not the
same, is it?
It's not the same.
"Debts are bad," I said.
Luke looked at me and it felt like I had just jabbed a needle right into a pus filled sac in my heart. I watched him wave a hand at the people close by.
"Debts are bad, but I'm a Celt."
I'm Greek. I'm Egyptian.
"Greek demigods have dyslexia pretty bad and Norse are - are
stifled in mortal flesh so usually their abilities don't emerge until they die. Shinto demigods are
shadowed, like they are more
real to the mythological world and that causes all sorts of trouble."
I was rambling. I knew I was, but neither Luke or Artemis stopped me. "Celts are similar, too
bright, too noticeable by things that
shouldn't notice."
I tried to find the words.
"Going with - with what will
work is how Celts do things," I said. "There's no
room for half-assing
anything. It's like climbing a sheer cliff, but you were always just - just
leaping for the next foot or hand hold, no time to plan out your moves because the foundation you were standing on was going to break at any moment."
My eyes burned.
"I don't know
how to - "
I didn't know how to say that I wasn't sure any other approach would work
at all.
Not with gods like the Night or the Pit or Persephone.
Or Mom.
"This
is how we survive, I - "
My voice died.
I was so scared.
Luke swore under his breath and pulled me close to his side.
I hiccuped.
"...how old were you?" Luke asked softly.
"Eight."
"Eight," Luke said tightly.
But I already had training, I didn't say. I was already learning about the mythological world and the pantheons. I had a safe, warm home with nice clothes.
…
I was eight when I taught myself how to clean up an arm amputation. You gotta - arteries feel different from veins. They're thicker and rubbery and there's pressure from the heart so you can't just
pinch -
It's better to even the wound out and then -
Burning
works.
Not with an open flame. Just heat up some metal and
press -
I got three of my friends killed going to the moon of the Dreamlands. Cost Willie his arm. Cost Sam an eye and got him banished from his home.
Carl, he was another Dreamer. I knew - I
knew that teleporter was a bad idea because the Dreamlands only
pretended to work by logical rules, but I didn't - I didn't say anything because it's not like we were
close, he was in that spot in my brain that said 'Willie's friend' and then what came out the other end
wasn't him.
Wilhelm killed whatever it was. Sam and I trashed the machine and we threw the pieces into a tar pit and then we burned the house down.
Mom left.
A scared girl in an oversized hoodie in New York died for nothing.
Dad tried so hard
- so fucking hard that year, raising me alone. I just made one dumb decision after another, alternating between thinking I was invincible to feeling like I should just keel over and
die.
Evangeline gave her right arm to pay a debt for a stupid kid. She could have
died right in front of me. She
should have died, but she
didn't and that was -
That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
She wasn't the same.
And I
couldn't be.
Then Apollo kidnapped me.
He drugged me, left a note on the refrigerator door, packed a bag of my stuff, hopped continents and threw me at Saule, the most patient goddess I've ever met.
I won't say I healed.
That implies going back to normal, or close to it. I know Saule didn't mean it how I took it. I think I knew it then too, but I had already made up my mind.
I went into the Dreamlands.
The place where logic didn't matter and the subconscious ruled and
ripped it all out.
My home in the Dreamlands used to be a black beach of razor fossils and coarse sand. A tower in the distance, the crashing of waves and deep, dark water. Now I have my apartment. It's mortal and normal and filled with mementos of my
family.
It's
better.
One of my windows stubbornly won't change from that beach. From the old me, but I try to keep the blinds closed on it as much as I can.
Sometimes I fail.
"Hey," Luke said softly, squeezing my shoulders. I realized I was crying again. "We're going to get through this and then - and then I'll use my boon to punch your mother in the mouth."
I snorted and nearly choked.
Artemis
did choke.
"I'll do it too," Luke said with a grin and soft eyes. He ruffled the rabbit's ears and avoided her bite.
I found him. Later. The one who betrayed Eva. The person I trusted. After Mom came back. It was the first step in getting our relationship back to normal. Mom…didn't seem to understand me anymore, but that -
That she knew about.
She helped.
I told you, right? If I flipped my shit over how the Greeks beat the Romans, if I clutched my non-existent pearls at the guy feeding himself to a cannibal getting exactly what he wanted, if I felt
bad about the Oracle of Delphi…
I'd be a hypocrite.
I ate him.
I still don't feel like it was wrong.
I'd do it again.
"Do it," I said. "You won't."
"Betcha twenty," Luke said.
"No." Artemis sounded exasperated.
The Greyhound bus rumbled out of the station. I looked out the window and saw my face reflected back. A child of Prophecy.
Not 'the.'
Hey, um, thanks.
For listening. For being here.
