The Silver Archer 2️⃣ (Percy Jackson)

10. An Unexpected Turn

Adira

It was still light when we got into the woods, but the shadows from the trees made it feel like midnight. It was cold, too, even in summer. Percy and I found tracks almost immediately—scuttling marks made by something with a lot of legs. We began to follow the trail.

We jumped a creek and heard some twigs snapping nearby. We crouched behind a boulder, but it was only the Stoll brothers tripping through the woods and cursing. Their dad was the god of thieves, but they were about as stealthy as buffaloes.

Once the Stolls had passed, we forged deeper into the west woods where the monsters were wilder. We were standing on a ledge overlooking a marshy pond when I tensed.

"This is where we stopped looking."

Last winter, when we'd given up hope of finding him, Grover, Brett, Percy, Annabeth, and I had stood on this rock. Percy convinced us not to tell Chiron that Nico was a son of Hades. At the time it seemed the right thing to do. Percy wanted to protect his identity.

"I remember how I saw him last night," I said.

"Saw who?" someone asked.

I turned around, my sword pointed.

Annabeth and Brett both held up their hands.

Annabeth knit her eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

I told her about my dream, then the Iris-message. When I was done, they both stared into the shadows of the woods. "He's summoning the dead? That's not good."

"The ghost was giving him bad advice," Percy said. "Telling him to take revenge."

"Yeah... spirits are never good advisers, they've got their own agendas. Old grudges. And they resent the living," I said.

"He's going to come after me," Percy said. "The spirit mentioned a maze."

Annabeth nodded. "That settles it. We have to figure out the Labyrinth."

"Maybe," Percy said uncomfortably. "But who sent the Iris-message? If Nico didn't know I was there—"

A branch snapped in the woods. Dry leaves rustled. Something large was moving in the trees, just beyond the ridge. Annabeth and Brett took off deeper into the woods.

"That's not the Stoll brothers," I whispered.

Together we drew our swords.

🪨

We got to Zeus's Fist, a huge pile of boulders in the middle of the west woods. It was a natural landmark where campers often rendezvoused on hunting expeditions, but now there was nobody around.

"Over there," I whispered.

"No, wait," Percy said, grabbing my hand, stopping. "Behind us."

It was weird. Scuttling noises seemed to be coming from several different directions. We were circling the boulders, our swords drawn, when someone right behind us said, "Hi."

We whirled around, and the tree nymph, Juniper yelped.

"Put those down!" she protested. "Dryads don't like sharp blades, okay?"

"Juniper," I exhaled. "What are you doing here?"

"I live here."

I lowered my sword. "In the boulders?"

She pointed toward the edge of the clearing. "In the juniper. Duh."

It made sense, and I felt kind of stupid. I'd been hanging around dryads for years, but I never really talked to them much. I knew they couldn't go very far away from their tree, which was the source of life. But I didn't know much else.