prologue, part two: we douse ourselves in something holy and hope we are clean
T-MINUS FOUR YEARS UNTIL THE QUEST FOR THE LOST SON.
"He's twelve, you say?"
Sally cradles the phone in between her shoulder and head, hip checking a drawer shut in the tiny kitchen. "Mhm, Avozinha. Just turned twelve today!"
Avozinha laughs creakily, and through the connection, Sally can hear the Matriarch begin to work her hand whisk through a bowl batter. "Your mother wishes that you'd brought him to Salvador, Sally. He's your only son, after all – "
"And the only son of the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter holds immense power; yes, Avozinha, I know." She cracks open three eggs over the blue mixing bowl. "But I can't. Money is tight, and Gabe won't let me go. Maybe when he's eighteen."
"If he was a daughter, you'd bring him for his quinceañera," Avozinha says. Disapproval leaks through every word. "Sally, what are you doing with this…Gabe?" She spits out Gabe's name like it's something dirty and – well, that's another part of Avozinha that reminds her so much of Percy.
"It's to protect Percy, Avozinha." She places the whisk down, and suddenly, she feels exhausted. This is the only way to truly protect her son, sans locking him away completely. But it's not a failsafe, Sally knows. He's getting older and more powerful each day.
"You have to send him there," Poseidon had warned her. "Your attachment could kill him, Sally."
He'd gotten down and begged, and Sally had turned him away.
"Sally."
She rakes a hand through her hair, through the newly sprouted grays and her already there brown. "I iknow/i, Avozinha – I know. But this, the coffin – I can't."
Avozinha sighs through the phone. "Sally, you must. There's no other way to truly protect him. The Old Ones will watch over him while he sleeps, until he is safe."
Sally looks down at the batter of Percy's birthday cake; at the spattering of blue food coloring amidst the almost-mixed flour. "…and the Old Ones have told you that this is the only way?"
"The only way, querida. I wish there was another."
She begins to whisk the batter together again. "Give me one week, Avozinha – before you bring Mãe and my sisters down to New York. One more week with my son."
"One week, Sally. And then We are coming."
Avozinha leaves her on the dial tone, and Sally presses her forehead to the kitchen countertop, blinking back hot tears. The only way, she thinks desperately. Percy, I'm sorry, but this is the only way.
She picks herself up, reassembles the pieces, and begins to whisk the batter together again.
Percy is twelve, but he feels a lot older. He stares blankly at the old landline in their shitty apartment, not the one Mamãe and him had shared before Gabe, as the dial tone echoes around him, monotone and grating. The business card Grover had given him on the sputtering Greyhound bus hangs loosely between his fingers and – it stings. Grover hadn't picked up the phone, hadn't texted, hadn't even written a letter, and it hurts more than Percy likes to admit.
It hurts, thinking that he'd finally, finally made a friend this year, the kind that would stick around after the inevitable, yearly expulsion – and in the end, Grover hadn't been any better than any of the others.
Happy Birthday to me, Percy thinks bitterly. It shouldn't hurt. It does. But this only serves to cement the hard truth; Percy only needs Mamãe. She's the only constant, the only good thing someone like Percy gets to have, amidst Gabe and his cronies, his deadbeat dad, supposedly "dead at sea," and so-called friends who never pick up calls, don't write and don't care.
"Percy?"
He turns around. Mamãe stands in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, whisk in hand. Sunlight streams in through the dirty windows, casting her in a honey-warm light, and something raging and sharp mellows in Percy. She smiles, and Percy can see the places where crow's feet are just beginning to form, around the corners of her blue eyes and the curve of her smile. "Hey, neném," she coos, voice impossibly warm, and Mamãe meets him halfway, already pulling him into a hug.
It's so warm. Percy could cry – wants to cry, but instead he buries his face into her chest, and lets the batter drip off the whisk and into his hair.
"What's wrong?" She asks. Percy doesn't know how to tell her, doesn't want to tell her, because he knows Mamãe will worry, as she always does, so instead he shakes his head and snuffles wetly into her chest. "It's okay if you don't want to talk about it." He feels fingers carding through his hair, and the weight of her chin as it comes to rest atop his unruly curls. "Why don't you come help me finish off the cake? I have exciting news to tell you anyways. Might as well get this into the oven while we're at it, right?"
Percy really doesn't want to pull away, but he's also starving in the way most pre-teen – teenage boys are wont to be. There's nothing better than Mamãe's cakes, and she makes them so rarely that he's aware that he tends to descend on them like a starving man. At least he's honest about it.
"Yeah, okay," he mutters, pulling away. His forelocks are dyed blue with cake batter now, and Mamãe shakes her head at it, laughing. Percy bats her hand away jokingly, and reaches up to scrape the batter from his hair.
"Don't eat that!" Mamãe chides. "I'm not letting you lick the bowl if you do."
Fingers halfway into his mouth, Percy sticks his tongue out at her, wiping them on his already grass-stained jeans. "Can I lick the bowl and the whisk?"
Mamãe rolls her eyes at him, corralling him into the kitchen. "Don't push your luck, neném." She points the whisk at him, bared like the gleaming point of a fencing sabre, as blinding in their dingy kitchen as it was in Yancy Academy's lower gym. "Come on, help me portion the batter into the cake pans, and we'll talk."
Percy bends down, unfolding his green and white striped apron from beneath the pristine table mats Mamãe had gotten from her mother when she'd packed up and left Brazil behind, tying it around his waist. "So," he asks, ladling cobalt blue cake batter into nine-inch pans, "what's the news?" Behind them, their rickety, fire-hazard of an oven is rattling as it preheats; part of Percy thinks he should be nervous, but the rest just keeps a careful eye on it and resolves to tell Mamãe to buy a fire deterrent the next time they're at Home Depot for more duct tape.
"Do you remember Avó and Avozinha?" She sounds a little tentative, and out the corner of his eyes, Percy can see how she wrings the dishtowel a little harder than necessary, smearing bright blue batter across her sunkissed forearms.
"Granny?" Percy taps the batter on the kitchen counter and turns around to check on the oven. "Yeah." He remembers Mamãe's mother, the one time they'd come to New York to visit for Percy's birthday. Granny had been an odd presence, one that smelt of the sea and with a presence twice as strong. "Are they coming up to the city again?"
"Mhm," Mamãe hums, whisking the pans away. She pushes them into the belly of the oven, and together they warily eye the old dragon of an oven, waiting for signs of smoke or impending fire.
"We should get a fire extinguisher," Percy tells her.
Mamãe just shakes her head and hip checks the cantankerous old thing fondly. "We'll see," she says, "but I think he's got a few years left in him yet."
Percy isn't quite as confident in the Dragon as she is, but he shrugs, washing his hands in the kitchen sink. The batter runs off his hands in blue clumps, watery and fading, running down into the drain like watercolors down a canvas. The melancholy is returning, he realizes, despite Mamãe's warm presence behind him, and the scent of cake beginning to bake in the old oven.
"Grover's not coming today," he mutters, wiping them dry on his jeans. "He's…busy. Family issues – can't make it in time."
Mamãe purses her lips, sighing. "Well, I guess we're going to just eat this cake together then. What do you think?" She turns to him, and Percy kind of hates the sad gleam in her eyes. "Think we can eat it all between the two of us?"
Percy rolls his eyes. "Maybe a slice or two each before Gabe and his troupe get their flippers on it, yeah." Flippers. Percy likes that analogy – Gabe's been looking more and more walrus like as the days go by, and while Eddie kind of looks more like a distressed bird than anything, the opportunity to mock Gabe is, as usual, too good to give up.
"Percy," Mamãe warns – though she sounds more resigned than angry at this point. "Don't say that about Gabe. He's – "
"You know there's no excuse for his bullshit!" It bursts out of Percy with all the force of a popped balloon, and he hates this, Mamãe's constant excuses for Gabe's shitty everything. He's a waste of space, a no-good filho da puta, and Percy hates that Mamãe felt that she had to turn to him to support the two of them.
Maybe the money would've been tighter without Gabe, but Percy's never cared about that. They would have found a way to make it work. Jacksons always did.
"Perseus Jackson, language!" They're both yelling now. Percy hates this – and he knows she does too. "Meu Deus," she sighs, running a hand down her face. "I don't want to fight about this today, neném. It's your birthday. Avó and Avozinha are coming down with my sisters next week. Let's talk about Gabe later, okay?"
And school, she doesn't say. Percy doesn't know why she always has to send him away, away from home where he can protect her from Gabe, but maybe – maybe this year she'll let him stay at home. Maybe this year won't be as miserable.
"Okay," he mutters, pushing his bangs out from his eyes.
Mamãe ruffles his hair fondly, and sighs, tension leaving with her breath. "Okay!" She claps her hands together. "Go take a shower, Percy. We'll frost the cake, stick it in the fridge, and start dinner once you don't smell like subway and taxi exhaust, okay?"
Percy smiles at her. "Got it." Maybe, not the worst birthday. He folds his apron away, and heads down the short corridor to take a shower.
Something like apprehension rises in Sally's stomach as she clutches Percy's shoulders outside the terminal in JFK. Her son, to his credit, doesn't squirm or fidget – as hard as she knows that tends to be for him – surveying the crowd for a face Sally knows he barely remembers.
Gods, sometimes when she looks at him, Sally isn't sure whether or not she's looking at a child or a man. He's caught somewhere in between the two, nebulous and changing, having grown up too fast, and somehow, not at all. There are lines between his brows from frowning too much, callouses on his palms from gripping the handles of his secondhand bike too hard while running the paper route; but his hair is still downy and tufting, and not all of his baby teeth have fallen out.
She sighs and smooths down the tuft of his hair. What an exercise in paradoxes they make, the two of them – mother and son, protected and protector. A witch and the son of a god – they are regular irregularities, and Sally can feel the pent up tension pushing against the tide, fit to burst.
Something is going to give – and it's only a matter of when now.
"Oh! Is that her?" Percy speaks up suddenly, shocking Sally from her reverie. She looks up, following her son's finger to the gaggle of women who have just exited the terminal. Two young girls, hair plaited to the side, tied with neat ribbons and identical in all but eye color. An older woman, with crow's feet and smile lines, her mousey brown hair shot with gray and white, and a woman not much older than Sally, in a pantsuit and carrying several suitcases. Lastly, a figure in a clean white shawl, covered from head to toe in clothing, an ornate cane holding their weight up.
Sally's heart jumps into her throat – she knows them as she knows her own limbs. Madelena, third youngest of their seven and her two daughters, Isolde and Igraine, Mãe, with her thick-soled gardening boots, and smile-lined face – and Avozinha, shawled as always, gnarled hands clasped over the wood-carved head of her staff.
She wants to run to them, wants to bury her face into Mãe's chest like a little girl again, wants to coo at her twin nieces and ask after Madelena's scatter-brained husband – but she simply smooths Percy's hair down again, and smiles.
"That's them," she says, nudging him forwards. "Want to go say hi?"
Percy tilts his head up to scowl at her. "I'm not a little kid," he complains. "You don't have to iprompt/i me, Mamãe." Still, he shakes his head at her and starts off towards Avozinha and the others. "But yeah. I'll bring them over here."
Sally raises an amused eyebrow at him and tucks a flyaway hair back behind her ear. "Sure thing, Percy. Hurry back, and don't shove the pedestrians too hard."
Percy sticks his tongue out at her, laughter dancing across his eyes. "If they're tourists, they deserve it."
She shakes her head at him as he vanishes into the crowd. New Yorkers and their omnipresent mockery of tourists. Sally will never understand it, but the breath of the city runs through Percy's veins – Percy who can navigate the subways without a glance towards a map, Percy who hails down cabs with a whistle shrill enough to make Sally deaf. She's still a Salvador girl at heart, no matter where she lives now.
But she keeps her eyes on him, her not-so-little-anymore boy, as he weaves through the crowds with ease, their motley little family in tow. The twins take to him easily, it seems, clutching at his hands, little Isolde already sitting on Percy's back. Madelena looks amused at this, and as her eyes catch Sally's from across the terminal, she shakes her head fondly and mouths he's just like you.
Sally's heart is fit to burst. She's missed this, this easy companionship that comes from years of furtive glances across the dinner table while Mãe and Pai argue in the kitchen. Madelena grins at her, winking quietly as Mãe smothers Percy in a hug.
"It's been a while, huh?" She says, handing two suitcases over to Sally. "It's good to see you again, irmãzinha."
Sally smiles, but there's a heavy atmosphere between them, this tension that lingers and stays between them, taught and unmoving. "I wish it were under better conditions," Sally replies, and the sad look Madelena gives her could make her cry.
Sally's stronger than that, though. She's made of sterner stuff, lived through years of toil training under Avozinha and her mother, lived through Gabe, raised Percy – Sally knows that she can survive this too.
She just wishes that it hadn't come to this.
"I know," Madelena replies, regret heavy in her voice. She too, is looking at their children, twin girls in perfect braids, haranguing poor Percy as he tries to juggle both their requests at once. "I know."
They spend one last day together – one last, shining day – out on Montauk's shores, where the sun is burningly warm, and when Sally breathes in the scent of the sea, it takes her back to Salvador and Poseidon. Percy takes to being a cousin-cum-older brother with surprising ease, and that too, tugs at Sally's heartstrings.
All these years they will deprive of him, the sheer impact of what this will cost them hits her like an oncoming train. Percy will grow up ensconced in glass, a fairy tale and legend brought to life. He will breathe and grow and be in that coffin, buried where none can ever hope to find him – but he won't live. Sally will deprive him of that, years of high school and potential friends, a whole life of what-ifs and what-could-have-beens, gone in an instant.
There is something inherently cruel about that.
But that night, Avozinha presses the butt of her cane to the cool, shimmering glass of the shrunken coffin, and it grows, larger and larger beneath the setting sun. It throws off light, iridescent and gleaming, a beautiful tomb for Sally's baby boy.
"Percy?" Sally calls – there is he, out by the bonfire, features cast into stark relief by the flickering flames. Salt water has crusted in his hair, drying it in a near-untamable wave, and the freckles dotting constellations across his nose and cheeks stretch as he smiles at her, pulling away from Isolde and Igraine with a soft word to both girls.
"Yeah?" He asks, running over. His hands are in his pockets, swim trunks still damp, still covered in sand. His feet are bare, and Sally can see a hint of a sunburn where the sunscreen did not take, on his left ankle. She drinks him in like a desperate woman, this last image of her baby boy, vibrant and living.
She wants to tell him to run from this. She knows that if she wants him to survive, she cannot. So she smiles at Percy, and smooths down his hair, as futile of a move as it is.
"What's the matter?"
Sally laughs, and it feels like choking. "Nothing much. C'mere, I have a present for you, neném.
This is the easiest-hardest thing Sally knows she will ever do. Her baby boy looks at her, all sea-glass green eyes, the upward tick of his nose, freckles splashed across his cheeks like little kisses from a day spent in the sun, and all Sally can think is: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Forgive me, Percy. Please, forgive me. There is nothing but trust in those eyes, steady and unwavering, and all she can think about is how she does not deserve it.
She presses the sachet into his hands. The cotton is still soft, despite being nearly twelve years old now, and the colors are still those of the summer sea by Salvador's shores. "Sleep well," is the last thing she says to her son, as his eyes flutter shut.
He falls backwards, into her arms, form limp and prone. Percy is still all elbows and knees, a skinny little thing despite how much Sally tries to feed him. He feels like a pillow in her arms, weight negligible. Despite that, her arms still tremble, and she pressed him to her chest, a desperate, ugly sob forcing its way out from the tightness in her heart.
"Time to let him sleep, querida," Avozinha says. Her gnarled hand reaches out, grasping Sally by the shoulder. "Time to let him go."
They take him from her arms, Avozhina, Madelena and Mãe, cradling him gently in their own. Madelena places him in their glittering glass tomb, cushioning his head on a pillow of lavender and poppy. He looks peaceful like this, the crease between his eyebrows smoothed for once, eyes closed and lips silent.
He looks dead like this, her little boy. Unmoving. Unspeaking – all things that her hindbrain tells her he should not be. There is a tragedy in this moment, this quiet snuffing of her son's life, and as Sally watches her coven seal the glass coffin shut, she desperate reassures herself that this – this was the only way.
She doesn't think she can live with herself if she realizes that maybe, maybe it wasn't.
a/n: paralogue two! finished! hell yeah. we're finally finished with the pre-plot/prefacing and next chapter, we're onto the beginning of the quest!
once more, please drop a review or favorite/follow if you're interested/like this or maybe want to scream at me.
cheers, ren
