"Just write a book" they said. "It'll be easy," they said, "Everyone gets published these days." Yeah, well, it's a little harder when your editors are gods that will turn you into a gecko and use you as a ping pong ball if you don't write them exac...
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I SLEPT ON AND OFF. Annabeth and Veerle kept insisting that I needed to rest, and they weren't wrong, but we sort of didn't have any oars. Only Annabeth's makeshift sail from torn uniforms. So, even if they didn't say it, it sort of fell on me to keep the boat going.
It wasn't like sleep was better. Every time I closed my eyes, my brain went straight to Kronos. The further we went, the more his taunting weighted on my shoulders. I hadn't seen a sign of Poseidon. since the hippocampi. I told myself that that had been help. We wouldn't have been able to leave without them, and after that we'd been able to get ourselves out. But...what? Would he only help us at the very last minute?
I remembered what Tyson had told us, back at camp the night before we left. He'd always thought Dad had been protecting him. And I know gods can't play favorites or whatever but...why hadn't Dad protected him? It would have been easy. We were on a boat. Tyson believed in him.
Veerle seemed equally on edge. She refused to talk to us, instead poking at the water with a broken piece of wood. I wish I knew what she was thinking about. Clarisse was Veerle's sister, like Tyson was our brother, and even though we'd seen her alive we had no idea where her and Pat had ended up. Where they might go. Her quest had blown up in her face – literally – and as far as we knew she could be the only one who remained.
We were all awake when Percy came around. We had to tell him Tyson was gone (that we just hadn't found him, Annabeth kept insisting, but I didn't believe her. I'd seen the explosion.)
Annabeth tried to distract us with sorting the things we'd salvaged. Hermes's thermos was now empty, but it could be come useful for water. We could collect rain (and, maybe, Percy and I filter the sea water to be drinkable? We decided to wait on that one.) There was a Ziploc bag full of ambrosia (at least we had something for healing), a couple of sailors' shirts (used for the flag), and a bottle of Dr. Pepper (our current drink supply.) Percy had been able to keep Hermes's bottle of multivitamins in his pocket and, of course, Riptide always returned to him.
We sailed for hours after that. The only way to tell, of course, was my ocean senses and the moving sun. The sun that was beating down on us non-stop. You couldn't look up without it burning your eye sockets out.
There was no where to shade ourselves, either. The sail gave minimal protection. Water stretched around all of us, glittering and green. There was a strange smell in the air. Typical sea stuff – salty, clear, and vaguely fishy – but also a strange metallic scent, like right before a lightening strike. Even with the magical ability to orient myself, I felt terribly lost.
Annabeth guessed that we had less than twenty-four hours to find Grover. Assuming that Percy's dreams were accurate, and that Polyphemus didn't decide to try to marry him sooner.
