Despite the trouble that they went through in Southampton, the transatlantic trip was going quite smoothly. Elliott fell into a daily habit that wasn't quite unlike the one he had at home. He would wake up with the crew of the ship, long before any of the passengers had woken. Mollie would come find him and they would eat breakfast together; if the weather wasn't too bad they would eat on the deck, but most mornings they were the first to eat in the dining room. Elliott would drink his tea and Mollie would already be on her third cup of coffee, chatting away with the servers. After an hour or so he would return to their room, where time crept by slowly until dinner, when he would come out again to eat with Mollie. Sometimes she would visit more than twice a day, but those were always surprises.
The time spent in his cabin was just as neatly organized as the rest of his day. He would read in the morning – anything he could get his hands on – and jot his ideas down before lunch. The empty notebook that he had taken from his bedroom was already nearly halfway filled. Seamus would tell him about the gods through lunch, although their conversations always managed to spin out of control by the time Mollie came to get them for dinner.
Against the odds, Elliott found himself comfortable on the ship. He thought of his mother and father every day, but he found that it was a relief to have Seamus and Mollie around – even if Seamus snored incredibly loud and Mollie was always telling him he was wrong about everything. The bottom line was, they knew what he was going through. And in their weird ways, they were trying to help him in this really strange, scary situation. So he tried not to complain too much.
At any rate, he didn't have much to complain about. Things were starting to feel normal again. He had his routine and, despite the fact it wasn't ideal, he enjoyed it.
The problem was, it never crossed Elliott's mind that something could happen to disrupt everything again, just as he had managed to grapple onto some control. Truthfully, he didn't want to think that anything bad could happen. Things were going fine now, and in a couple of days they would be safe on American soil and on their way to Camp Half-Blood. It was too easy, and any other fool would have known that something was bound to go wrong.
But Elliott had forgotten what the scolopendra had told him – he had to be careful with a bounty on his head.
They were two days away from the states when trouble found them again.
Elliott learned that Mollie had been offering gifts to her father and Poseidon each meal for safe passage, and the weather had been calm. The morning of the longest day Elliott would have in a long time started with her telling him, rather pleased, that they would be reaching New York safely. She told him that someone from camp would be there to pick them up, and they would make the trip north.
He had already gone through those details with Seamus – who was constantly telling him the plan to get to camp. It was simple enough; they were going to dock, and pretend like they belonged there. That was it. The Master Plan that was going to help the two of them to safety. Elliott had been skeptical at first, but (just the rest of this insane journey) he was just going to have to trust the nervous satyr. They would act like they belonged, and Mollie would shuffle them off quickly before anyone noticed them. She would sneak them passed all of the security and hail them a cab, which they would take to the nearest, safest, looking fast food joint to wait for their ride.
It wasn't that Elliott didn't trust either of them, but he wondered if they had thought about the consequences if their plan went wrong. What if security did catch them on their way out? Seamus had various forms of identification (although how honest they were, he didn't know), and Mollie was a legitimate citizen. He was, basically, a nameless stowaway. Mollie just told him not to be such a worrywart.
So he tried not to concern himself with the specifics, and instead reminded himself that it was just his job to be invisible. Well, he was pretty good at that.
The rest of the morning went just as normally – they finished they breakfast and took a little walk around the ship. Elliott listened to Mollie excitedly tell him about all of the cool things in New York city, occasionally stopping to poke her head into some room or office to bark orders at someone. Even the bulkiest of men were reduced to kittens around her – smiling sweetly, calling her ma'am. Elliott thought the whole process to be a little bit amusing. He still had no idea what Mollie did on the ship, but it must have been important. She brought him back to their room, where Seamus was already comfortably curled up on his cot and fiddling away with his pipes.
Elliott tried to pass the time the same way he had the past few weeks – reading, jotting down notes and ideas, and day dreaming. He learned early on in this journey that he could read Greek, and Seamus explained to him that his brain was basically hardwired for it. (He decided this must have also been why he was taking advanced Latin courses, and why reading was such a chore for him.) So Mollie found a couple of books for him to toil through – both the Iliad and the Odyssey, written in their native language. Why she had them, he would never know. But he accepted them graciously and became determined to finish both of them.
But despite the general ease he had with the language (although he did have to ask Seamus for help from time to time), Elliott found it hard to focus on anything. He felt anxious, just as he had during particularly long days of school. He didn't want to sit still and read quietly, he wanted to be moving around – and outside. He was restless.
Needless to say, attempting to read the Iliad in Greek was not stimulating enough.
He tried to talk to Seamus, but the satyr was distracted with refitting a new pipe onto his reeds. Elliott tried everything – he tried talking about the states, Camp Half-Blood, he even tried to press him for more information about his prophecy – but he was apparently in one of his moods again. (He had noticed that Seamus seemed to miss solid land as much as he did.) For about an hour he managed to distract himself with various doodles of the satyr, bent over and cursing at his pipes. Every few seconds he would sit straight and give the instrument a little blow, but apparently the reeds didn't sound quite right to him.
Elliott's problem was when he got restless, he often did stupid things.
This was why when Seamus fell asleep for his late afternoon nap before dinner, he quietly grabbed his jacket and slipped out the door. Elliott was certain that if he stayed in that room for much longer, he was going to go a bit mad. Plus, it had never been explicitly said that they weren't allowed to leave without Mollie escorting them; perhaps they had just been acting polite. He was quiet; he could go unnoticed without the loud blonde at his side. And he would make sure to be back after an hour or so, before Seamus was sure to wake.
His first stop was the dining area, where a few passengers were milling about – reading, chatting, drinking coffee. Most of the passengers were older folk, people with plenty of money and time to spare to take a trip across the Atlantic. Elliott got himself something hot to drink (he settled on hot chocolate instead of his usual tea) and then made his way up to the deck. Most of the massive ship was covered in trailers filled with various things, stacked four to five high, but there was a path alongside them that the passengers could use to explore the ship during the day.
He made his way to the back of the ship, stopping when he was a few feet away from the railing. Elliott tugged his jacket tighter around himself and wished he had grabbed that ridiculous scarf that Mollie had given him. For a few quiet minutes he just stood there, sipping on his hot chocolate, and watching the waves splash up behind the ship. A couple crewmen walked by, smoking cigarettes and chatting quietly in a language he couldn't recognize, but they didn't glance at him twice. This only made him think that he should have gone off on his own ages ago. No one would have cared.
After a while, though, standing became uncomfortable, and Elliott considered sitting down. He glanced around for a moment, his eyes lingering on the railing a few feet away from him. Feeling rather brazen, he walked to the railing and cautiously peered into the water, still clutching his hot chocolate with both hands. The water crested up behind the ship, white and foamy, and –
Elliott blinked, taking an automatic step away from the edge of the boat. For a second, he could have sworn he saw something in the water below, moving along swiftly in the waves – something huge. And he also could have sworn that it saw him.
But that couldn't have been right; it must have been a dolphin, or something. Elliott thought he read somewhere that they liked to swim alongside boats. After a hesitant sip of hot chocolate, he stepped back to the railing and looked back down into the water. The waves were empty, just as they should have been. He let out a little sigh and leaned on the rail once more, staring out into the horizon. He couldn't help but think about how far away his home was now, and how he didn't even know if he would ever see it again.
He started to feel sorry for himself again.
These thoughts were short-lived though, and totally forgotten when the entire ship gave a sudden lurch to one side. Elliott stumbled, the Styrofoam cup slipping from his hand and falling into the water below. Heart pounding in his chest, he leaned over a little bit to look into the water, wondering what could have caused that. Just as he was thinking it sounded like they had hit something, the boat gave another horrible pitch.
Now in full-blown panic mode, Elliott stumbled backwards away from the railing, wildly looking around. From where he stood he couldn't see the bridge, so it was hard to tell if anyone else was concerned by what had just happened. Frankly, he couldn't see why they shouldn't worry – at the very least they were still at sea, but the ship also happened to be harboring him. And apparently things wanted to kill him.
Without a second thought, he turned on his heel and bolted back toward the bridge and cabins. He was nearly there when the boat swayed again, groaning threateningly. Elliott stumbled forward, knocking his shoulder against a metal post. Cursing, he did his best to regain his balance, but the entire ship was still swaying in the water. Clutching his shoulder, he continued to head toward the bridge. He could hear a little bit of commotion now, and a voice coming across the tinny loudspeakers giving directions to both crew and passengers.
As he got closer, he recognized the voice coming from the loudspeakers as Mollie's, and Elliott tried not to feel guilty as he made his way down a flight of stairs to the room he and Seamus had been staying in. He burst through the door and the satyr poked his head out of the bathroom, looking completely panicked. "Where have you been?" he cried, clopping out to him and pulling him into the room. "Mollie is furious."
For a moment, Elliott wasn't quite sure what to say, but then Seamus was shoving his things at him. "What are you doing?" he asked stupidly, staring down at his backpack.
"Packing!" Seamus answered a little bit angrily, glowering at him. The boat gave another sudden jolt, and the satyr tumbled backwards into one of the cots, which promptly collapsed. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything! Why do you automatically assume I did something?" Elliott shouted back, trying his best not to fall over as well. He started shoving what little he did have into his bag, including the cashmere scarf. "I just went for some fresh air!"
"And you couldn't wait a couple more hours?" Seamus huffed, giving his hoof an impatient little kick to free himself from the cot. "There was a reason Mollie came to get us, you know." He gave one more kick and the cot clattered against the wall.
Elliott zipped up his bag and looked over at him, his gaze a bit icy. "What do you mean?"
Seamus looked at him as if he was stupid. "Something's been following us."
"What?" Elliott cried, going a bit pale. "And you never thought it might have been a good idea to tell me this?"
Before Seamus could answer him, the door to their cabin burst open, and Mollie pushed her way in. She glanced at Elliott, and he immediately shrunk back a bit. He had never seen her angry before, but there was no denying that's exactly what she was now. He didn't like the way she looked at him so coldly, and he found that he had to look away from her while she turned away from him.
"I sent an Iris message to Chiron," she was telling Seamus, bending over to straighten the cot he had knocked over. "He's going to send in help." After clearing her throat and straightening her skirt, she turned her attention to Elliott. "You – what did you do?" She seemed to be trying very hard to keep her tone level.
All this time, the ship was beginning to steadily rock back and forth, and Elliott was finding it hard to concentrate. "I just went to get some hot chocolate," he answered helplessly. "And for a walk." He stopped suddenly and Mollie straightened, quirking an eyebrow.
"What?" she asked flatly.
Elliott hesitated, tightening his grip on his bag. "I thought I saw something in the water. I thought it looked at me," he answered quietly, diverting his gaze to the ground. He stumbled a bit as the ship lurched violently, steadying himself against the wall. When he looked back up, both Mollie and Seamus were looking at him incredulously. "Well no one told me," he added defensively.
Mollie groaned, scrubbing her hand down her face. For a moment she looked as if she was going to yell at him, but instead she just let out a long sigh. "Okay, okay," she said calmly, holding her hands up. "Look, ever since we left Southampton, there's been a little… blip on our radar. We've gone unnoticed – until now." Her expression went sour for a second.
Suddenly Elliott felt incredibly stupid. He didn't know what to say, and all he could do was stand there, feeling ashamed of himself, not unlike a child that had been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to do. But why hadn't they just told him? If he had known that there was something following him, he never would have gone up to the deck. But the longer he thought about it, the more he realized he should have just known. The scolopendra had found them rather easily, there was no reason something else couldn't track them down – especially if word had gotten out that they were leaving on a cargo ship from Southampton. They were right. He had messed up really badly.
He couldn't dwell on this for very long, though, because the rocking of the ship grew more intense. Mollie let out another frustrated sigh and glanced around the room. "Okay, have all your things? Let's go." And then she turned on her heel and stomped out of the room, and all Elliott and Seamus could do was follow her.
"So what now?" Elliott asked a little bit hesitantly as they made their way down the corridor. There were a few panicked passengers about, but Mollie told them to get to their rooms unless told otherwise. He was more than a little impressed how she handled herself – constantly cool and collected. He found himself a little bit envious that she could be in so much control.
"Now we get you off this ship," she answered sharply, leading them up the stairs to the deck. The whole time, the ship was rocking violently back and forth, like something was repeatedly slamming into it. She brought them to a door they had never been in before, fumbling with a key as the boat groaned. "Chiron is sending in help, but who knows how long it will take them to get here. So we need to get you a weapon."
She finally managed to wiggle the room unlocked, and Elliot and Seamus followed her in awkwardly. Mollie flipped a switch, and Elliott realized they were standing in a room that was a lot like the one that they had been sleeping in. But there was only one cot, and at the foot of that was an old leather travelling case covered in stickers. Mollie unlatched the trunk and pulled it open, digging around in it for a few minutes. Elliott remained silent, despite the fact he wanted to ask about a hundred questions. He thought that Mollie was still pretty angry with him.
"Okay – dagger for the satyr," Mollie started absently, handing the weapon to Seamus. He looked as if he didn't want it, but he took it anyway lest Mollie turn her cool anger on him.
She went back to digging through the chest, and Elliott watched her anxiously. Was he going to be expected to fight something – whatever that something was that was causing the ship to rock back and forth? He didn't want to think about it; anything that was big enough to stir a cargo ship was not something he wanted to see face to face, let alone attempt to kill. His imagination was running wildly away from him, and he almost didn't notice when Mollie tossed him a blade tucked safely in a leather scabbard. Somehow, he managed to catch it, though not before fumbling around for a few seconds.
The sword was three feet long – short, but the biggest (and heaviest) weapon Elliott had ever held before. For a second he just gave Mollie an incredulous look, but she was fitting herself with her own sword. Suddenly, something occurred to him. "Why do we need these?" he asked meekly, afraid of the answer.
Mollie looked up, finally grinning. "We're gonna' kill it, of course."