Crossroads of Two Worlds

32- Omitted Truths

I was chomping down on ambrosia to numb the pain of the cut on my chest, humming "Hit the Road Jack," when Maya finally returned from the convenience store with bandages, a needle and thread, and a new shirt for me. Though I was in a fair amount of pain, I savored the taste of my grandmother's special cookies that the ambrosia put in my mouth. Adrian had explained earlier that ambrosia and nectar tasted like your favorite food and drink.

We had miraculously found an abandoned barn and farmhouse somewhere in the middle of Utah, just outside of a very small town that I didn't care enough about to find out the name. I had flown me and my friends on the wind for a few miles before my energy was gone, probably from blood loss and exhaustion equally. Adrian had to carry me for a while when we landed. But when we found the farmhouse, we discovered that it had a well that Adrian had summoned water from, and the barn was warm with all of the hay still in it, a stack of which I was currently collapsed on. By abandoned, I meant that no one was home, not that it was ancient and falling apart.

Adrian had sent his sister a while ago to the town for stitching materials and bandages, as he didn't think my wound would heal fast enough with just ambrosia and nectar. Who was I to know whether or not he was right?

Maya came closer to me and knelt beside me, looking concerned as she gazed at my wound. Adrian had helped me clean it with water and sterilize it with alcohol we found in the house, but now it was easy to see how deep the scratch was. There were three of them, diagonal across my chest, but the deepest one was higher up, across my collarbone and wrapping across to under my armpit. I had spent the last half hour trying to ignore it. The task became easier one the ambrosia numbed the pain, but it was still not healed.

"Alana?"

"Yes, Maya?"

"I can see your bone."

I tilted my head towards her to glare, "Thank you for pointing it out, I hadn't noticed! That's what the supplies we sent you to get are for! Now please hurry, we really can't afford to stay here long, and the more sleep we get, the better we'll be able to function in the morning."

She leaned backwards with wide eyes, "Me, hurry? I don't know how to give stitches! I'm smart but I'm not a doctor!"

I paused, thinking about how I hadn't, in fact, asked her if she could do it before assuming that she would know how to do this like she seemed to know everything else. I guess it was a little bit my fault. But I was in pain, wasn't really thinking straight, and just wanted to not be in pain. And to my credit, usually when I asked her if she knew how to do something, she usually got offended at my doubt.

"I suppose I didn't think about that," I turned my gaze towards Adrian, "Do you know how?"

He shrugged, "Not really, but I have sewn clothes before... and don't ask why."

I sighed, "Well that's fine! Clothes are just like skin, right?"

"Uh, not really," he said with a glint of laughter in his eyes, along with a small spark of concern. Probably because I was bleeding... a lot, while simultaneously cracking jokes.

He stood from his spot in the corner and walked over to my other side, kneeling next to me and bending his head close enough to my wound that I almost started blushing. Why was I blushing? This was Adrian we were talking about! Same kid who'd knocked me on my butt hundreds of times while beating me with a sword.

His keen eyes, the stormy grey muted in the lack of light, ran over the length of the cut.

He looked up at my face, "You're pretty lucky, actually. It's a deep cut but the thing must've had pretty sharp claws, it's a very clean cut."

I rolled my eyes, "I think "lucky" would've meant not getting hit at all. But whatever you say."

He held out his hand to Maya and she put the needle and thread in his hand without him having saying a word. Siblings and their wordless communication.

He met my eyes once again as he sterilized the needle with a lighter he had in his bag, "This is going to hurt... a lot. Whatever you do, don't stop breathing."

I answered by leaning my head back against the hay and closing my eyes. I just wanted him to get it over with.

And in true Jackson fashion, he didn't warn me in the slightest as to when he was going to pierce my skin with that dreaded needle. And gods of Olympus! It hurt!

Adrian, still pulling the needle through my skin and pulling the cut closed, started speaking, probably to distract me, "Tell me something no one knows."

I hesitated, because the only thing I could think of to tell him, I'd never told anyone. And that included my mother, Rose, and Kaley. It wasn't a secret that would get me in trouble or anything that would be strange and cost me my friends. It was just... personal. But this kid was stitching me together, who was I to withhold it from him?

"I like to sing."

The movement of his hands and the needle paused but I didn't open my eyes. Soon enough, his hands against my skin resumed their pushing and pulling of the needle and the temporary relief had ceased.

So I kept talking.

"My grandmother, she was a witch, and she loved music. She's the one who taught me how to sing, and how to play instruments. We used to do it all the time when I lived in Hawaii. Whenever I would go over to her house on the beach, we would sit on the porch and watch the sunset, singing and playing ukulele until dark. My mother never knew about it because she didn't really like music."

Maya interrupted briefly, reminding me that there were indeed, other people in the room, "She doesn't like music?"

"Didn't," I corrected her, "When my grandmother passed away, she began to listen to music all the time, it became her solace, the only thing she had left of her mother."

I paused, but went on when I realized that talking was helping get my mind off of the pain, "Grandmother's house burned down a few years ago. That was how she passed away. Everything she had was in that house, including all of her instruments. I suppose, now that I'm looking back on it with all that I know now, that it makes total sense why Apollo fell in love with her."

"My mum never knew that I stopped singing after Grandmother died, because she never knew I sang in the first place."

"Will you sing for us?"

I smiled through my pain and Maya's question, made of pure curiosity, "Maybe someday."

We woke ourselves up at dawn and I found that my cut already hurt a great deal less, and it didn't break open again when I sat up from the bed I'd made in the hay. Progress was being made.

We filled up our water bottles and stocked up on food that we took from the farm house. Maya had said that there was a train station in the town nearby that she named as "Midway," and before we could think about what happened the last time we were on a train, we bought tickets and loaded up.

On the road again, I just can't wait to be on the road again...