Chapter XXVI: Leo
Leo thinks he is lost. Or maybe he his. He's not so sure. He doesn't exactly know where he is.
The waves are splashing against his tiny little raft, causing it to to tilt and dip ever so often, Leo has to grip the sides of it to steady himself. Before he had left the ship, he had checked his maps, his GPS, his controls, his everything to make sure he had left everything fixed and up to date. He had left Jason in charge of steering and hopefully Jason had some skills and wouldn't drown the entire crew….You never know!
He was not having the time of his life on the cold lonely ocean without anyone next to him. He has experienced strong winds, unfriendly birds and three somewhat like tsunamis. The water seemed keen to murder him. He was nearly knocked off the tiny little raft with all his possessions and survival needs before he used the crystal device.
It worked somewhat like shadow travelling. When he pressed the red button, he swirled as swirled until he was dizzy. He had been thrown aback on the raft, clutching anything to keep his from falling off. He closed his eyes tight. It was like a ride. He swirled, he had been lifted up in the sky and the had been thrown down again like a piece of meat.
"You are a piece of meat." A voice inside his head says. Leo chided himself. It was bad enough others thought he was crazy. Now he was hearing voices inside his head. How pleasant.
He went freefalling, writing a tiny epitaph in his head before he died. Not like anyone was here to hear it. He was surprised when the boat hit soft lapping waves. Leo stood up, weakly and threw up . It wasn't a pretty sight, just take his word for it.
He lifts his eyelids open. He isn't in the dark, misty waters anymore. This place looks like a carnival island. He can see the nice green, hilly terrain and the luscious green trees covering the island. Leo knows where he has come. Ogygia. He pumps his hand in the air and crows in triumph. Not everything went wrong. For once.
Once, Leo had told Calypso that Ogygia looked like the Bahamas and she had smacked him on the head. "I'm not the music and dancing type," she had told him. "I can never even dream of going to Florida." Leo keeps a mental note to take her to America one time. That is, if he survived this suicide mission. Which is, by now, the highest of the odds.
He realizes it would be seconds before he landed on the beach. He grabs his oar and paddles as fast as he can towards the shore, and he reaches it. Quickly, he steps off the raft and swings his bag across his back. He walks across the squishy sand, his feet getting dirty. He can see Calypso's well done house, her beautiful garden and a tiny speck which Leo took as his metal-made house. His heart starts beating thrice the speed it usually did.
"Hello?" He calls. "It's me, -" He is abruptly interrupted by a small but petite figure jump out of the tree in front of him. He gives a yell in exclamation as the figure bowls into him, shoving their elbow against his throat, knocking him into his raft.
"Who are you?" A voice calls out.
It's definitely a girl, and Leo has a growing suspicion of who it is. The girl has long, brown, wavy hair going down to her waist, and her almond brown eyes as rich as melting chocolate, her skin fair as pearls. Her face looks fierce, her arms in front of her as if she is expecting a fight. Her eyes look piercing.
"Calypso," he whispers, grinning.
The girl's eyes widen. "How do you know my name? Are you a spy for Gaea? Were you sent here by the Gods? Do you work for my father? Are you here to torture me?"
"Woah. Calm down, girl! Don't you recognize me?" Leo asks, astonished and rather sad that she had forgotten him. His face, he was sure, showed quite a bit of hurt, because Calypso tilts her head slightly and steps back a little, her face doubtful.
She squints at him, taking in every feature of his face. When her gaze rests upon his eyes, her expression changes. Her eyes slowly widen. "I know you. You came here two months ago."
"I sure did."
She gasps, looking at his hair, the realization dawning upon her face. "You're the Carribbean music boy. Lionel! No, Leroy! Nope, nope, nope…..um, Lennon?"
Leo shakes his head in bewilderment. Calypso strangles her hands and wraps them into fitfuls of her hair. She stomps across the beach, smacking her head from time to time and muttering all possible names that began with 'L'. From where Leo was standing, she look slightly deranged. Leo blinks his eyes, standing with his mouth open.
"I'll give you a hint. You thought I was the most annoying punishment from the Gods. But later, you fell in love with my hot self and awesome skills. And you couldn't watch me leave. Most heartbreaking story ever but now I'm back!"
"How could I possibly not remember?" Calypso says, her voice threateningly sweet."Leo! I see you're no less obnoxious than you were last time…perhaps even a little more." Calypso folds her arms and raises her eyebrows.
"Well, good to know, when one racks their brain hard enough, the answer can be found."
"You took your time, Leo Valdez." She entangles him in a hug "But I'm glad you're back."
"I happen to be the one and only, right?" He grins.
Calypso bites her lip. "But you're friends, the war, everything...what about them? I thought you were their Captain. Aren't you supposed to be there?"
"So you're telling me you're not happy to see me?" Leo pretends to look hurt.
"What?! Of course not, I'm delighted! I haven't seen you for so long, and I didn't seem to remember you at first, but I couldn't stop thinking about you after you had left! You were the only friend I had, other than Percy and Drake and Odysseus. But those were years ago."
Leo smiles. "I missed you Calypso. I wanted to come back to you all this time, but I didn't have the chance. I was working on my raft. See, I had to outline the morphactins and inject the crystal into the machinery." Seeing Calypso's confused face, he blushes. "What? This isn't rocket science. If you know what you're doing, it's just a matter of deputation."
Calypso smiles. "The last time you were here, you weren't half as confusing as you are right now. Guess we'll have to work on that. I missed you too."
"Really? How'd you forget my name?"
"I didn't!" she replies defensively "I have bad memory…"
"500 years stuck in the same island gives you a lot of things to remember, does it?"
"No, but you look different. Taller, less scrawny, more hair."
"I'm really feeling the love." Leo says. "But all's said and done. Getting back on track, I'm staying here for a couple days. Until I figure out how to lift your curse."
"You are? But, Leo, my curse is impossible to lift. I've been bearing it for like five hundred years. It's probably become permanent." Calypso insists "You are needed back there. Who's going to defeat Gaea? What's going to happen to the Argo II?"
"It's not permanent enough for me. I'm here to save you, and I won't leave without finishing my job. Besides, I swore upon the River Styx. I'll die if I don't do it." He declares, ignoring the last part. Calypso decides not to push it any further.
"Fine." she relents.
"I love you, Calypso." Leo says, looking at her face and taking in every single detail.
"I love you too, Leo." Calypso sighs, "Come on, let's get you cleaned up now, yes?"
"Cleaned up? What for?" Leo looks down at his torn clothes, muddy and and-covered body.
"Oh, that! OK, I guess." Leo answers shrugging.
"Leo, how is it you are always so dirty when you come to Ogygia?"
"Ask the odds, Calypso, ask the odds."
So about ten minutes later, Leo and Calypso were sitting by her garden looking at the moonlace and eating some bread and soup. "Sorry for the food. I think I'm running out. Usually Hephaestus or Hermes drop by and deliver some but they've gone silent for months and I'm trying to salvage all that I can." Calypso says before taking a shaky breath.
"Let's go collect some, then." Leo offers.
"From where?" Calypso asks, confused.
"You haven't explored anything outside your house? The last time that I came, I was going around, I saw lots of berries. How do you think I stumbled across the metal?"
"Right…the metal. It really disturbed the birds. After you left, it took weeks to coax them."
"Not the birds again. They disturbed me. All the crowing and flapping of wings were too noisy. I was working on something important and they were annoying me. So, I stepped outside to shoo them and one pecked my nose. But anyways, I'm sorry about it." Leo narrates.
He gets the expected response. Calypso bursts into laughter. "OK, you've made your point. Let's explore." She uses the last word with such gentleness and delicacy, it was as if the word was foreign to her. Leo gets up and dust the fireproof trousers that Calypso had made for him. Calypso runs into her house and comes out with two sleeping bags, one empty basket, a handful of tools which Calypso staggered to hold and a thick, brown book.
"What's all that for?" Leo asks. "I'm fine with my tool belt."
Calypso sighs. "Sometimes you can be really stupid, you know…The basket's for collecting the food, the book's something to keep me from dying of boredom and incase it gets late, I brought sleeping bags. You have to think about the essentials, Leo."
"Whatever….what's the book?"
"A Look Around The Universe. Hermes brought me a book last year about the continents and it's cosmopolitan cities. After I finished it, he said I might want to know more about stuff outside Earth. I didn't have much time after that. But after you left, I couldn't even look at my garden without flinching, so I gave it a read." She shrugs.
"Quite interesting, I suppose?" The sarcasm in Leo's voice cannot be missed.
Leo guesses that Calypso didn't learn much on how to understand sarcasm from her cosmopolitan book, because she nods energetically. "Quite! Like did you know Mercury andVenus are the only plants in our solar system that do not have any moons? Or that there are a total of 14 black holes in space? Or that because of Uranus's tilt, one night can last for 21 years?"
Leo nodded, trying to shut Calypso up who began to spout facts like a human Wikipedia.
It didn't work. Calypso looked delighted to have another supporter of space. "I love space. It's so mysterious and so beautiful at the same time." She began to walk forward into the denser forests of her island "Aren't you coming?" She called to Leo, who stood frozen.
"Yeah." Leo runs up to keep up with her pace.
"Jupiter has 63 moons. One of Pluto's moons called Charton is nearly as big as the planet itself. Some guy called Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. Sources say he first stepped on it with his left foot. His pal, Buzz Aldrin came second. Did you know the galaxy closest to us is called 'Andromeda Galaxy'? Quasar OJ287, the biggest black hole ever, has an expected mass of 18 billion times that of our own sun." rambled Calypso.
"Enthralling." Leo says.
"I know! The sun is actually the biggest star in space! Astronauts can't burp in space either. Saturn happens to be the lightest planet with a density so low, if you put it in water, it would float!" Calypso's smile is extremely wide. To Leo's shock, he realizes she memorized it all.
"If you shouted in space, the person next to you wouldn't be able to hear a thing."
"Uh huh…."
"The universe has 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars!"
"Great…."
"The highest mountain known to man is the Olympus Mons, which is located on Mars. It's peak is 15 miles or 25 Km high, making it nearly 3 times higher than Mt Everest."
"STOP!" Leo covers his ears "Honestly, Calypso how do you finds these facts interesting?"
"You don't?" Calypso asks, bewildered. "I thought you enjoyed it. If I was not trapped in this..prison, I would have become an astronaut. Imagine the feeling of...wait for it...flying!"
"Pfft. Then you'd have to learn physics and all that crap about mass and acceleration and multiply the velocity and all those units like ms-1 or ms-2. And the way you speak clearly enlists me to acknowledge the fact you have never heard of tragic space accidents. People get lost in space, their rockets can explode and -"
He is cut off by Calypso.
"Bah! Here it says, no one has got lost or left in space, with the exception of rockets that have gone astray, far from any help."
"You're just clarifying my point."
"Am not!" She looks indignant.
Leo has spotted a ripe hedge nearby. "Oh look! Blackberries! Phew."