Arsonist's Lullabye ──── Leo Valdez

𝟑𝟏: 𝐌𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐞

─────𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐮𝐬. Coach Hedge kept yelling encouragement (Move it, cupcakes, only a few thousand more steps!), but it did nothing to help. 

Jason seemed to be in solemn mood. Piper, Vincent and Leo left him to his thoughts and the golden magic bag on his back. Vincent didn't have any family left alive, but he knew what it was like to lose people. He couldn't imagine what Jason must have been thinking. He gained and lost a sister, all in the span of half an hour. 

Finally, they arrived at the top of the island. Bronze walls marched all the way around the fortress grounds, though Vincent couldn't imagine who would possibly attack this place. Twenty-foot-high gates opened for them, and a road of polished purple stone led up to the main citadel—a white-columned rotunda, Greek style, like one of the monuments in Washington, D.C.—except for the cluster of satellite dishes and radio towers on the roof.

"That's bizarre," Piper said.

"Guess you can't get cable on a floating island," Leo said. "Dang, check this guy's front yard."

The rotunda sat in the center of a quarter-mile circle. The grounds were amazing in a scary way. They were divided into four sections like big pizza slices, each one representing a season.

The section on their right was an icy waste, with bare trees and a frozen lake. Snowmen rolled across the landscape as the wind blew, so Vincent wasn't sure if they were decorations or alive.

To their left was an autumn park with gold and red trees. Mounds of leaves blew into patterns—gods, people, animals that ran after each other before scattering back into leaves.

In the distance, Vincent could see two more areas behind the rotunda. One looked like a green pasture with sheep made out of clouds. The last section was a desert where tumbleweeds scratched strange patterns in the sand like Greek letters, smiley faces, and a huge advertisement that read: watch aeolus nightly!

"One section for each of the four wind gods," Vincent guessed. "Four cardinal directions."

"I'm loving that pasture." Coach Hedge licked his lips. "You guys mind—"

"Go ahead," Jason said. No one argued. It would be hard enough getting on Aeolus's good side without Coach Hedge waving his club and screaming, "Die!"

While the satyr ran off to attack springtime, Vincent, Jason, Leo, and Piper walked down the road to the steps of the palace. They passed through the front doors into a white marble foyer decorated with purple banners that read Olympian weather channel, and some that just read ow!

"Hello!" A woman floated up to them. Literally floated. She was pretty in that elfish way Vincent associated with nature spirits at Camp Half-Blood—petite, slightly pointy ears, and an ageless face that could've been sixteen or thirty. Her brown eyes twinkled cheerfully. Even though there was no wind, her dark hair blew in slow motion, shampoo-commercial style. Her white gown billowed around her like parachute material. Vincent couldn't tell if she had feet, but if so, they didn't touch the floor. She had a white tablet computer in her hand. "Are you from Lord Zeus?" she asked. "We've been expecting you."

Vincent tried to respond, but it was a little hard to think straight, because he'd realized the woman was see-through. Her shape faded in and out like she was made of fog.

"Are you a ghost?" Jason asked.

Right away Vincent cringed. Jason knew about Venti and storm spirits, but couldn't tell a cloud nymph when he saw one? She looked like she had just been insulted. The smile turned into a pout. "I'm an aura, sir. A wind nymph, as you might expect, working for the lord of the winds. My name is Mellie. We don't have ghosts."