Wildflowers, Percy Jackson ₁

037, a maze ing

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

₊˚࿐࿔ 𖥧‧₊⚘ ❀༉. 𓏲｡

They made it a hundred feet before they were hopelessly lost.

The tunnel looked nothing like the one Sylvie and Annabeth had stumbled into before. Now it was round like a sewer, constructed of red brick with iron-barred portholes every ten feet. Sylvie and Annabeth's flower crowns illuminated like fireflies on their heads. Sylvie also shined her flashlight through one of the portholes out of curiosity, but she couldn't see anything. It opened into infinite darkness. Sylvie thought she heard voices on the other side, but it may have just been the cold wind.

Annabeth tried her best to guide them. She had this idea that they should stick to the left wall.

"If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," she said, "we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course."

Unfortunately, as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared. They found themselves in the middle of a circular chamber with eight tunnels leading out, and no idea how they'd gotten there,

"Um, which way did we come in?" Grover said nervously.

"Just turn around," Annabeth said.

They each turned toward a different tunnel. It was ridiculous. None of them could decide which way led to camp.

"Left walls are mean," Tyson said. "Which way now?"

Annabeth swept her flashlight beam over the archways of the eight tunnels. As far as Sylvie could tell, they were identical. "That way," she said.

"How do you know?" Sylvie asked.

"Deductive reasoning."

"So... you're guessing."

"Just come on," she said.

The tunnel she'd chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to gray cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon they were hunching over. Tyson was forced to crawl.

Grover's hyperventilating was the loudest noise in the maze. "I can't stand it anymore," he whispered. "Are we there yet?"

"We've been down here maybe five minutes," Annabeth told him.

"It's been longer than that," Grover insisted. "And why would Pan be down here? This is the opposite of the wild!"

They kept shuffling forward. Just when Sylvie was sure the tunnel would get so narrow it would squish them, it opened into a huge room. Percy shined his light around the walls and said, "Woah."

The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but Sylvie could still make out the colors—red, blue, green, gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There was Poseidon, with his trident, holding out grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine. Zeus was partying with satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air on his winged sandals. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren't very accurate. Sylvie had seen the gods. Dionysus was not that handsome, and Hermes's nose wasn't that big.