madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-the palace staircase scene in howls moving castle-

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They walked up the mountainous staircase in silence.

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

As they climbed, through a silent unanimous vote, the three of them left Jason to his silence. Bad mood, or maybe just a mood, compared to the amnesiacs usual lack of.

He was thinking. There was a lot to think about. He'd recounted Thalia's last shouts before she'd raced away. That Jason needed to 'Find out where the giant is keeping Piper's dad. Save him!' and that she would 'take the Hunters to the Wolf House and hold it' that they could 'do both'.

And that Jason would understand what she meant. Because no one could ever be straightforward.

This of course, was the aftermath of Leo's smoking and bridge melting revelation. Teqi could practically see the waves of guilt coming from him. He'd come to the conclusion that Jason was a bridge himself, one half of a trade, pawn of the Gods, or something along those lines. Then he'd nearly fallen from the sky.

Leo kept swatting his legs, checking for signs that his pants were on fire.

Teqi had her own swirl of thoughts, like the angry winds in Jason's backpack. Banging around and knocking things over inside her skull. Leaving piles of unhappy things she'd have to sort through and put away later.

Piper seemed satisfied with her. She didn't know if Leo and Jason would ever look at her the same. And none of them even knew. They'd only seen the... what was the word. The reaction, the output, the consequences. They didn't know why. They didn't know what. And who.

Finally, they arrived at the top of the island.

Twenty-foot-high gates opened for them, and they were standing in front of an enormous white columned rotunda. It looked perfectly in place for an ancient god's crib. 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 centre of a quarter-mile circle. The grounds were divided into four sections like big pizza slices, each one quite obviously representing a season.

An icy waste, with bare trees and a frozen lake. To their left was an autumn park filled 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, Teqi could see two more areas behind the rotunda. One looked like a green pasture with sheep made 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," Jason guessed. It wasn't hard to put it together. "Four cardinal directions."

On the other hand, Teqi had never heard the word cardinal before.

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

"Go ahead," Teqi said encouragingly, and everyone sent her a look of relief as he bounded off to attack springtime. It was in their best interest, and Aeolus's, to have this conversation without Coach Hedge waving his club and screaming, "Die!"