❝ Mother Forked Tongue ❞

      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 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 watch for the rest of the night, daughter of the god of Dusk, the perfect job for me and I was stronger at night.

Annabeth curled up on the blankets and was snoring as soon as her head hit the ground. Grover fluttered with his flying shoes to the lowest bough of a tree, put his back to the trunk, and stared at the night sky.

"Go ahead and sleep," I told him. "I'll wake you if there's trouble."

He nodded, but still didn't close his eyes. "It makes me sad, Aquila."

"What does?" I asked.

"This makes me sad." He 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 satyr."

"True," I agreed. "Humans should pay more attention to nature, they're so annoying."

"Oh, yeah. I thought you both would be environmentalists." Percy said. I rolled my eyes.

Grover glared at him. "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?" he asked, he's getting on my nerves.

"Pan!" Grover cried indignantly. "P-A-N. The great god Pan! What 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," Percy said. Grover looked at him cautiously, as if he were afraid he was just making fun.

"The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago," he told Percy. "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 our lord and master. He protected us and the wild places of the earth. We refuse to believe that he died. In every generation, the bravest satyrs pledge their lives to find 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."

"It's my life's dream," he said. "My father was a searcher. And my Uncle Ferdinand...the statue you saw back there-"

"Oh, right, sorry." Grover shook his head. "Uncle Ferdinand knew the risks. So did my dad. But I'll succeed. I'll be the first searcher to return alive."

"Hang on the first?"

Grover took his reed pipes out of his pocket. "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."

"And your dad? You have no idea what happened to him?"

"None."

"But you still want to go," he said, amazed. "I mean, you really think you'll be the one to find Pan?"

"I have to believe that, Percy. 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."

"How are we going to get into the Underworld?" Percy asked. "I mean, what chance do we have against a god?"

"I don't know," Grover admitted. "But back at Medusa's, when you were searching her office? Annabeth was telling me-"

"Oh, I forgot. Annabeth will have a plan all figured out."

"Don't be so hard on her, Percy. She's had a tough life, but she's a good person. After all, she forgave me...." His voice faltered.

"What do you mean?" Percy asked. "Forgave you for what?"

Suddenly, Grover seemed very interested in playing notes on his pipes.

"Wait a minute," he said. "Your first keeper job was five years ago. Annabeth has been at camp for five years. She wasn't...I mean, your first assignment that went wrong-" I cut him off,

"Couldn't you just shut up, Percy?" This stupid does have some brains, but why does he have to it use for things unnecessary to him? I'm pretty sure Annabeth wouldn't like to talk about that or Grover.

"I can't talk about it," Grover said, and his quivering lower lip suggested he'd start crying if Percy pressed him. "But as I was saying, back at Medusa's, Annabeth 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," Grover 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."

Grover shook his head. "They were screeching at us: 'Where is it Where?'"

"Asking about me," he said.

"They seemed to be asking about an object," I said, picking the dirt under my nails.

"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...." He looked at me like he was hoping for answers, but I didn't have any. There was something we hadn't figured out yet.

"I haven't been straight with you," Percy told us. "I don't care about the master bolt. I agreed to go to the Underworld so I could bring back my mother."

Grover blew a soft note on his pipes. "I know that, Percy. But are you sure that's the only reason?"

"Your mother?" I asked him.

Percy tried to look neutral, but I saw it in his eyes. He'd lost his mother. I didn't push him any further, I didn't know if I would feel much if I lost my own but I assumed he loved his mother, and she loved him back.

"I'm not doing it to help my father. He doesn't care about me. I don't care about him."

Grover gazed down from his tree branch. "Look, Percy, I'm not as smart as Annabeth. I'm not as powerful as Aquila. I'm not as brave as you. But I'm pretty good at reading emotions. You're glad your 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'shead to Olympus. You wanted him to notice what you'd done."

"Yeah? Well, maybe satyr emotions work differently than human emotions. Because you're wrong. I don't care what he thinks."

Grover pulled his feet up onto the branch. "Okay, Percy. Whatever."

"Besides, I haven't done anything worth bragging about. We barely got out of New York and we're stuck here with no way west."

Grover looked at the night sky like he was thinking about that problem.

"How about I take watch, huh? You both get some sleep."

"Sleeping and I don't get along, you better sleep, Grover. I'll take care." I said.

Grover started playing a tune, and Percy immediately fell asleep. If Grover thought a tune from his reed pipes would make me sleep, he was wrong- not even the sweetest lullaby could do that.

After a few minutes, Grover too fell asleep. I couldn't help but think about Grover describing me as powerful. Sure, I was powerful, to put it bluntly, but when had I done justice to it? I could win a duel in a heartbeat, I could beat up people to a pulp if I wanted but where was that getting me?

Deep down, I knew the three of them were better than me. They had potential. Percy as annoying as he was, still was pretty good in combat, Annabeth was intelligent as hell and knew her calculations. Grover's selflessness and kindness, I could never be.

The rest of the night passed by overthinking. The first to wake was Grover, he went somewhere to find something. Soon after Annabeth woke up she started cooking, I had no idea how to cook, after she was done, she started shaking Percy furiously. And then he opened his eyes.

"Well," Annabeth said, "the zombie lives." He was trembling.

"How long was I asleep?"

"Long enough for me to cook breakfast." Annabeth tossed him a bag of nacho-flavored corn chips from Aunty Em's snack bar. "And Grover went exploring. Look, he found a friend."

The pink poodle aka Grover's friend yapped at Percy suspiciously. Grover said, "No, he's not."

Percy blinked. "Are you...talking to that thing?"

The poodle growled.

"This thing," Grover warned, "is our ticket west. Be nice to him."

"You can talk to animals?" Grover ignored the question. "Percy, meet Gladiola. Gladiola, Percy."

He stared at me, figuring I'd crack up at this practical joke we were playing on him, but I looked at him dead seriously.

"I'm not saying hello to a pink poodle," he said. "Forget it."

"Percy," Annabeth said. "I said hello to the poodle. You say hello to the poodle."

"It won't kill you to say hello to a cute poodle," I remarked. Percy warily eyed the poodle and then stared at me.

"You too, miss logic?" He asked me in disbelief. I rolled my eyes.

The poodle growled. He said hello to the poodle.

Grover explained that he'd come across Gladiola in the woods and they'd struck 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 Grover.

"How does Gladiola know about the reward?" Percy asked.

"He read the signs," Grover said. "Duh."

"Of course," he said. "Silly me."

"So we turn in Gladiola," Annabeth explained in her best strategy voice, "we get money, and we buy tickets to Los Angeles. Simple."

"Not another bus," he said warily.

"No," Annabeth agreed.

She pointed downhill, toward train tracks. "There's an Amtrack station half a mile that way. According to Gladiola, the westbound train leaves at noon."

We spent two days on the Amtrak train, heading west through hills, over rivers, past amber waves of grain. We weren't attacked once, but I didn't relax. I felt that we were traveling around in a display case, being watched from above and maybe from below, that something was waiting for the right opportunity.

The Trenton Register News showed a photo taken by a tourist as Percy got off the Greyhound bus. He had a wild look in his eyes. His sword was a metallic blur in his hands. It might've been a baseball bat or a lacrosse stick. The picture's caption read:

Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson, wanted for questioning in the Long Island disappearance of his mother two weeks ago, is shown here fleeing from the bus where he accosted several elderly female passengers. The bus exploded on an east New Jersey roadside shortly after Jackson fled the scene. Based on eyewitness accounts, police believe the boy may be traveling with three teenage accomplices. His stepfather, Gabe Ugliano, has offered a cash reward for information leading to his capture.

"Don't worry," I told him. "Mortal police could never find us." But I wasn't sure myself. I figured his mother should've died right before he entered camp. He didn't seem like he was in grief.

The rest of the day I spent daydreaming because I had no other thing to do. And then I was pacing the length of the train.

Once, I spotted a family of centaurs galloping across a wheat field, bows at the ready, as they hunted lunch. The little boy centaur, who was the size of a second-grader on a pony, caught my eye and waved. I looked around the passenger car, but nobody else had noticed. The adult riders all had their faces buried in laptop computers or magazines.

Another time, toward evening, I saw something huge moving through the woods. I could've sworn it was a lion, except that lions don't live wild in America and this thing was the size of a Hummer. Its fur glinted gold in the evening light. Then it leaped through the trees and was gone.

Our reward money for returning Gladiola the poodle had only been enough to purchase tickets as far as Denver. We couldn't get berths in a sleeper car, they all dosed in the seats, but I stayed awake like I just woke up from a long sleep. Percy tried not to drool in his sleep, I too drooled in my sleep, but no one would ever get a chance to see that sight.

Since Annabeth was sitting right next to Grover kept snoring and bleating and waking others up. Once, he shuffled around and his fake foot fell off. Annabeth and Percy had to stick it back on before any of the other passengers noticed.

"So," Annabeth asked him, once they'd gotten Grover's sneaker readjusted.

"Who wants your help?"

"What do you mean?"

"When you were asleep just now, you mumbled, 'I won't help you.' Who were you dreaming about it?"

He finally told us, something evil and wanted him to defeat the Olympians and bring him back. Percy suspects it was Hades, but I might have known who that was.

Annabeth was quiet for a long time. "That doesn't sound like Hades. He always appears on a black throne, and he never laughs."

"He offered my mother in trade. Who else could do that?"

"I guess...if he meant, 'Help me rise from the Underworld.' If he wants war with the Olympians. But why ask you to bring him the master bolt if he already has it?"

"You know that, right? He's deceitful, heartless, and greedy. I don't care if his Kindly Ones weren't as aggressive this time-"

"This time?" he asked. "You mean you've run into them before?"

Her hand crept up to her necklace. She fingered a glazed white bead painted with the image of a pine tree, one of her clay end-of-summer tokens. the year Thalia was turned into a pine tree...

"Let's just say I've got no love for the Lord of the Dead. You can't be tempted to make a deal for your mom," she said.

"What would you do if it was your dad?" he asked.

"That's easy," she said. "I'd leave him to rot."

"You're not serious?"

Annabeth's gray eyes fixed on him. "My dad's resented me since the day I was born, Percy," she said."He never wanted a baby. When he got me, he asked Athena to take me back and raise me on Olympus because he was too busy with his work. She wasn't happy about that. She told him heroes had to be raised by their mortal parent."

"But how...I mean, I guess you weren't born in a hospital...."

"I appeared on my father's doorstep, in a golden cradle, carried down from Olympus by Zephyr the West Wind. You'd think my dad would remember that as a miracle, right? Like, maybe he'd take some digital photos or something. But he always talked about my arrival as if it were the most inconvenient thing that had ever happened to him. When I was five he got married and totally forgot about Athena. He got a 'regular' mortal wife, and had two 'regular' mortal kids, and tried to pretend I didn't exist."

I stared out the train window. The lights of a sleeping town were drifting by. I wanted to make Annabeth feel better but I didn't know how. I was in the same situation as her.

"My mom married a really awful guy," he told us. "Grover said she did it to protect me, to hide me in the scent of a human family. Maybe that's what your dad was thinking."

Annabeth kept worrying about her necklace. She was pinching the gold college ring that hung with the beads.

"He doesn't care about me," she said. "His wife-my stepmom-treated me like a freak. She wouldn't let me play with her children. My dad went along with her. Whenever something dangerous happened-you know, something with monsters-they would both look at me resentfully, like, 'How dare you put our family at risk.' Finally, I took the hint. I wasn't wanted. I ran away."

"How old were you?"

"Same age as when I started camp Seven."

"But...you couldn't have gotten all the way to Half-Blood Hill by yourself."

"Not alone, no. Athena watched over me, guided me toward help. I made a couple of unexpected friends who took care of me, for a short time, anyway."

"What about you Aquila? wouldn't you make a deal with Hades to save your mother?" Percy asked hopefully, thinking I would support him.

I let out a sarcastic laugh. "Yeah, totally."

My mother disowned me. She never even tried to hide the fact that she hated me. She hated me for a mistake she'd made. If she were to die, I wouldn't even attend her funeral, much less risk my life to bring her back. A part of me wanted to say it out aloud but I stopped myself. I was glad Percy didn't push it.

I Gazed out the train windows as the dark fields of Ohio raced by. Toward the end of our second day on the train, June 13, eight days before the summer solstice, we passed through some golden hills and over the Mississippi River into St. Louis. Annabeth craned her neck to see the Gateway Arch, it looked creative.

"I want to do that," she sighed, changing the topic.

"What?" he asked.

"Build something like that. You ever see the Parthenon, Percy?"

"Only in pictures."

"Someday, I'm going to see it in person. I'm going to build the greatest monument to the gods, ever. Something that'll last a thousand years."

He laughed. "You? An architect?"

"Yes, an architect. Athena expects her children to create things, not just tear them down, like a certain god of earthquakes I could mention."

I watched the churning brown water of the Mississippi below.

"Sorry," Annabeth said. "That was mean."

"Can't we work together with a little?" he pleaded. "I mean, didn't Athena and Poseidon ever cooperate?"

Annabeth had to think about it. "I guess...the chariot," she said tentatively. "My mom invented it, but Poseidon created horses out of the crests of waves. So they had to work together to make it complete."

"Then we can cooperate, too. Right?" he asked.

We rode into the city, Annabeth watching as the Arch disappeared behind a hotel.

"I suppose," she said at last.

"Aquila? Are you asleep?" Percy asked.

"No,"

"Well, what about your life?" I take my words back, I wasn't glad.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Your mortal family?"

I was silent for a while, I couldn't just tell him they were witches and wizards. Not when we were trying to stop a war anyway.

"We don't get along that well." I shifted in my seat.

"Oh, so you lived in the camp for all your life?" He yawned.

"No, just the past three years."

"Then who did you live with?"

"I was with my mother until I was six, and then I moved to Astrelaia to live with my father and siblings." I wished Percy would just shut up.

"But gods don't raise their children,"

I shrugged "Astraeus is not just a god, he is a Titan."

"I mean, the divine parent in general doesn't take in the child. Why you left your mother?' He mused.

I sighed, swinging my legs. "I just know that my Dad loves me enough to not care about customs,"

"So your mother, she hates you?"

"Mhm-hm."

Percy raised his eyebrows. "Why?"

I shrugged evasively.

"I didn't know mothers could hate their child- I thought...." he trailed off.

I didn't know why Ellie didn't just give me up on birth, I could've lived with Dad my whole life.