Chapter 12
We Get Advice From a Poodle
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 up 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.
Anthony curled up on the blankets and was snoring as soon as his head hit the ground. Gretel fluttered with her flying shoes to the lowest bough of a tree, put her back to the trunk, and stared at the night sky.
"Go ahead and sleep," I told her. "I'll wake you if there's trouble."
She nodded, but still didn't close her eyes. "It makes me sad, Perci."
"What does? The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?"
"No. This makes me sad." She 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 wood nymph."
"Oh, yeah. I guess you'd be an environmentalist."
She glared at me. "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?"
"Pan!" She cried indignantly. "P-A-N. The great god Pan! Why 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.
"Tell me about the search," I said.
Gretel looked at me cautiously, as if she were afraid I was just making fun.
"The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago," she told me. "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 their lord and master. He protected them and the wild places of the earth. They refused 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, like them."
"It's my life's dream to be the first nymph to find him," she said. "My Aunt Juniper...the statue you saw back there—"
"Oh, right, sorry."
Gretel shook her head. "Aunt Juniper knew the risks, and she even taught me how to be a fighter," She unwraps her whip and snaps it once in the air that made me flinch a little like someone clapped in front of my face. "And how to use woodland magic, much like the satyr's." She made an apple grow from the tree, she picked and tossed it to me. "But I'll succeed. I'll be the first searcher to return alive, and to honor my aunt."
"Hang on—the first?"
Gretel wrapped her whip around her shoulder again and leaned back. "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."
"But you still want to go," I said, amazed. "I mean, you really think you'll be the one to find Pan?"
"I have to believe that, Perci. 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 looked at the apple Gretel made me, and then at the orange haze of the sky and tried to understand how Gretel 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 her. "I mean, what chance do we have against a god?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "But back at Medusa's, when you were searching her office? Anthony was telling me—"
"Oh, I forgot. Anthony will have a plan all figured out."
"Don't be so hard on him, Perci. He's had a tough life, but he's a good person. After all, he forgave me…." Her voice faltered.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Forgave you for what?"
Suddenly, Gretel seemed very interested in her singing.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Your first keeper job was five years ago. Anthony has been at camp five years. He wasn't...I mean, your first assignment that went wrong—"
"I can't talk about it," Gretel said, and her quivering lower lip suggested she'd start crying chlorophyll if I pressed her. "But as I was saying, back at Medusa's, Anthony and I agreed there's something strange going on with this quest. Something isn't what it seems."
"Well, duh. I'm getting blamed for stealing a thunderbolt that Hades took."
"That's not what I mean," Gretel said. "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."
Gretel shook her head. "They were screeching at us: 'Where is it? Where?'"
"Asking about me," I said.
"Maybe...but Anthony 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…" She looked at me like she was hoping for answers, but I didn't have any.
I thought about what Medusa had said: I was being used by the gods. What lay ahead of me was worse than petrification. "I haven't been straight with you," I told Gretel. "I don't care about the master bolt. I agreed to go to the Underworld so I could bring back my mother."
"I know that, Perci. But are you sure that's the only reason?"
"I'm not doing it to help my father. He doesn't care about me. I don't care about him."
Gretel gazed down the tree branch. "Look, Perci, I'm not as smart as Anthony. I'm not as brave as you. But I'm pretty good at reading emotions. You're glad you 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 nymph emotions work differently than human emotions. Because you're wrong. I don't' care what he thinks."
Gretel pulled her feet up onto the branch. "Okay, Perci. 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."
Gretel looked at the night sky, like she was thinking about that problem. "How about I take first watch, huh? You get some sleep."
I wanted to protest, but honestly my eyes were feeling a little droopy, so I turn away, my eyes stinging, then after a few moments, I fell asleep.
In my dreams, I stood in a dark cavern before a gaping pit. 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 hero, 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 mislead you, girl, I said. Barter with me. I will give you what you want.
A shimmering image hovered over the void: my mother, frozen at the moment she'd dissolved in a shower of gold. Her face was disoriented with pain, as if the Minotaur were still squeezing her neck. Her eyes looked directly at me, 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, girl. 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," Anthony said, "the zombie lives."
I was trembling from the dream. I could still feel the grip of the chasm monster around my chest. "How long was I asleep?"
"Long enough for me to cook breakfast." Anthony tossed me a bag of nacho-flavored corn chips from Aunty Em's snack bar. "And Gretel went exploring. Look, she found a friend."
My eyes had trouble focusing.
Gretel was sitting cross-legged on a blanket with something fuzzy in her lap, a dirty, unnaturally pink stuffed animal.
No. It wasn't a stuffed animal. It was a pink poodle.
The poodle yapped at me suspiciously. Gretel said, "No, she's not."
I blinked. "Are you...talking to that thing?"
The poodle growled.
"This thing," Gretel warned, "is our ticket west. Be nice to him.
"You can talk to animals, too?"
Gretel ignored the question. "Perci, meet Gladiola. Gladiola, Perci."
I stared at Anthony, figured he'd cracked up at this practical joke they were playing on me, but he looked deadly serious.
"I'm not saying hello to a pink poodle," I said. "Forget it."
"Perci," Anthony said. "I said hello to the poodle. You say hello to the poodle."
The poodle growled.
I said hello to the poodle.
Gretel explained that she'd come across Gladiola in the woods and they'd stuck up a conversation. The poodle had run away from a rich local family, who'd 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 Gretel.
"How does Gladiola know about the reward?" I asked.
"He read the signs," Gretel said. "Duh."
"Of course," I said. "Silly me."
"So we turn in Gladiola," Anthony explained in his best strategy voice, "we get the 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 me in the West.
"Not another bus," I said warily.
"No," Anthony agreed.
He 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."