Annabeth Chase and the Battle of the Labyrinth

Chapter 21 - Do red cows taste better?

There's nothing I like better than waking up in a creepy Labyrinth that is secretly trying to kill you and having nothing else to eat for breakfast other than a few granola bars. If it even was breakfast. It was so dark all the time that it was impossible to tell what time of day it was. It could still be midnight for all we knew. 

Once all of us had woken and eaten something we started off again, finding the usual complications of the Labyrinth changing around us. Every time I was starting to feel confident that we were going the right way, the walls changed drastically. One moment they were stone tunnels that were starting to look distinctively medieval, and then the next they were earthen walls with beams holding up the roof like a gold mine. 

"This isn't right," I said, feeling frustrated. "It should still be stone."

The boys shrugged helplessly and I huffed as I kept pushing forward, hoping that it would become stone again. Instead we came to a cave with stalactites so long we had to walk around them. In the centre of the cave was a rectangular pit, dug shallow but long. 

"It smells like the Underworld in here," Grover whispered, looking uncomfortable. 

Percy stiffened. I followed the light of his flashlight to see a cheeseburger wrapping floating in the muck of the pit. As I swept my flashlight around, I could see more wrappers were dumped on the edge of the pit. 

"Nico," Percy said, still staring at the pit. "He was summoning the dead again."

Tyson whimpered. "Ghosts were here. I don't like ghosts."

"We've got to find him." An urgent look seized Percy's face and he starting looking around frantically, like he expected Nico to just be standing there in the dark nearby. Suddenly he took off, running towards a corridor on the other side of the cave. 

"Percy!" I yelled, taking off after him with the other two close behind me. 

I lost sight of him for a few moment - I wouldn't ever admit it out loud but he had started to become faster at running than me - but quickly caught up with him. He was standing in a patch of daylight, staring up at the bars that formed the roof of the maze. 

As I reached his side and looked up also, a cow's head peered over us, followed by the rest of it's body as it circled the bars. It looked like an ordinary cow, except for the fact that it was bright red, as red as Thalia got after spending too much time in the sun without putting on sunscreen. The cow mooed mournfully, like we were having more fun being down here than it was having out in the sunshine. It went to place a hoof done on the bars, then seemed to think better of it before moving away. 

"It's a cattle grid," Grover said, joining us with Tyson. 

"A what?" Percy asked. 

"They put them at the gates of ranches so cows can't get out. They can't walk on them."

"How do you know that?"

Grover huffed indignantly. "Believe me, if you had hooves, you'd know about cattle grids. They're annoying!"

Percy looked over at me. "Didn't Hera say something about a ranch? We need to check it out. Nico might be up there."

I hesitated, thinking it through. My gut instant said not too, as we had no idea what we were going to be walking into. Just because a goddess told us to do something, didn't mean that it wasn't a trap. I knew that from experience. 

But then I looked at Percy's pleading face and felt my opposition to the idea crumble. I had no idea how he did it - maybe it was the desperation, or maybe the big green eyes - but I was finding it harder to say no to him. Besides, if Nico was up there, then we should at least try to find him, I reasoned.