Eye of Hecate

Jason

I found my sister and lost her in less than an hour. As we climb the cliffs of the floating island, I keep looking back, but Thalia is gone.

Despite what she said about meeting me again, I wonder. She found a new family with the Hunters, and a new mother in Artemis. She seems so confident and comfortable with her life, I'm not sure if I'll ever be part of it. And she seems so set on finding her friend Percy. Did she ever search for me that way?

Not fair, I tell myself. She thought I was dead.

The golden backpack of winds is strapped over my shoulders. The closer we get to Aeolus's palace, the heavier the bag gets. The winds struggle, rumbling and bumping around.

The only one who seems in a good mood is Coach Hedge. He keeps bounding up the slippery staircase and trotting back down. "Come on, cupcakes! Only a few thousand more steps!"

"I'm gonna ha-di him if he doesn't shut up." Ozzy grumbles. 

As we climb, Leo, Ozzy, and Piper leave me in my silence. Maybe they can sense my bad mood. Piper keeps glancing back, worried, as if I'm the one who almost died of hypothermia rather than her. Or maybe she's thinking about Thalia's idea. We told her and Ozzy what Thalia said on the bridge—how we can save both her dad and Hera—but I don't really understand how we're going to do that, and I'm not sure if the possibility made Piper more hopeful or just more anxious.

Leo keeps swatting his own legs, checking for signs that his pants are on fire. He isn't steaming anymore, but the incident on the ice bridge really freaked me out. Leo hadn't seemed to realize that he had smoke coming out his ears and flames dancing through his hair. If Leo starts spontaneously combusting every time he gets excited, we're going to have a tough time taking him anywhere. I imagine trying to get food at a restaurant. I'll have a cheeseburger and—Ahhh! My friend's on fire! Get me a bucket!

Ozzy looks concerned about him too. She keeps glancing back and chewing her thumbnail. I imagine she's thinking about bridges too. Now there have been three occurrences where she's compared to a demigod. Hedge said she smelled like one. Hecate said she could choose Egyptian or Greek. And she was able to drink the nectar. I don't know if it was her magic that protected her, or if she's her own kind of bridge. Maybe she's meant to be a connection between Greeks and Egyptians. Of course, that's a problem for later, but I'd feel a bit better if she and I were in the same boat here. It sure would take some heat off of me. 

Mostly, though, I'm worried about what Leo said. I don't want to be a bridge, or an exchange, or anything else. I just want to know where I came from. And Thalia looked so unnerved when Leo mentioned the burned-out house in my dreams—the place the wolf Lupa told me was my starting point. How did Thalia know that place, and why did she assume I can find it?

The answer seems close. But the nearer I get to it, the less it cooperates, like the winds on my back.

Finally we arrived at the top of the island. Bronze walls march all the way around the fortress grounds, though I can't imagine who would possibly attack this place. Twenty-foot-high gates open for us, and a road of polished purple stone leads 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 says.

"Guess you can't get cable on a floating island," Ozzy says.

"Dang, check this guy's front yard."Leo says. 

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

The section on our right is an icy waste, with bare trees and a frozen lake. Snowmen roll across the landscape as the wind blows, so I'm not sure if they're decorations or alive.

To our left is an autumn park with gold and red trees. Mounds of leaves blow into patterns—gods, people, animals that run after each other before scattering back into leaves.

In the distance, I can see two more areas behind the rotunda. One looks like a green pasture with sheep made out of clouds. The last section is a desert where tumbleweeds scratch strange patterns in the sand like Greek letters, smiley faces, and a huge advertisement that reads: WATCH AEOLUS NIGHTLY!

"One section for each of the four wind gods," I guess. "Four cardinal directions."

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

"Go ahead," I say. I'm actually relieved to send the satyr off. It'll be hard enough getting on Aeolus's good side without Coach Hedge waving his club and screaming, "Die!"

While the satyr runs off to attack springtime, Ozzy, Leo, Piper, and I walk down the road to the steps of the palace. We pass 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 floats up to us. Literally floats. She's pretty in that elfish way I associate with nature spirits at Camp Half-Blood—petite, slightly pointy ears, and an ageless face that could be sixteen or thirty. Her brown eyes twinkle cheerfully. Even though there's no wind, her dark hair blows in slow motion, shampoo-commercial style. Her white gown billows around her like parachute material. I can't tell if she has feet, but if so, they don't touch the floor. She has a white tablet computer in her hand. "Are you from Lord Zeus?" she asks. "We've been expecting you."

I try to respond, but it's a little hard to think straight, because I've realized the woman is see-through. Her shape fades in and out like she's made of fog.

"Are you a ghost?" Ozzy asks, staring in awe.

Right away I know she insulted her. The smile turns into a pout. "I'm an aura, ma'am. A wind nymph, as you might expect, working for the lord of the winds. My name is Mellie. We don't have ghosts."

Piper comes to the rescue. "No, of course you don't! My friend simply mistook you for Helen of Troy, the most beautiful mortal of all time. It's an easy mistake."

Wow, she's good. The compliment seems a little over the top, but Mellie the aura blushes. "Oh...well, then. So you are from Zeus?"

"Er," I say, "I'm the son of Zeus, yeah."

"Excellent! Please, right this way." She leads us through some security doors into another lobby, consulting her tablet as she floats. She doesn't look where she's going, but apparently it doesn't matter as she drifts straight through a marble column with no problem. "We're out of prime time now, so that's good," she muses. "I can fit you in right before his 11:12 spot."

"Um, okay," I say.

The lobby is a pretty distracting place. Winds blast around us, so I feel like I'm pushing through an invisible crowd. Doors blow open and slam by themselves.

The things I can see are just as bizarre. Paper airplanes of all different sizes and shapes speed around, and other wind nymphs, aurai, occasionally pluck them out of the air, unfold and read them, then toss them back into the air, where the planes refold themselves and keep flying.

An ugly creature flutters past. She looks like a mix between an old lady and a chicken on steroids. She has a wrinkled face with black hair tied in a hairnet, arms like a human plus wings like a chicken, and a fat, feathered body with talons for feet. It's amazing she can fly at all. She keeps drifting around and bumping into things like a parade balloon.

"Not an aura?" Ozzy asks Mellie as the creature wobbles by.

Mellie laughs. "That's a harpy, of course. Our, ah, ugly stepsisters, I suppose you would say. Don't you have harpies on Olympus? They're spirits of violent gusts, unlike us aurai. We're all gentle breezes."

She bats her eyes at me.

"'Course you are," I say.

"So," Piper prompts, "you were taking us to see Aeolus?"

Mellie leads us through a set of doors like an airlock. Above the interior door, a green light blinks.

"We have a few minutes before he starts," Mellie says cheerfully. "He probably won't kill you if we go in now. Come along!"