ʙᴏᴏᴋ ɪ : 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙇𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙚𝙛 | 𝙿𝚎𝚛𝚌𝚢 𝚡 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛

Chapter 11

The demigods were pretty miserable that night.

They camped out in the woods, a hundred yards from the main road, in a marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties. The ground was littered with flattened soda cans and fast-food wrappers.

They'd taken some food and blankets from Aunty Em's, but they didn't dare light a fire to dry the damp clothes. The Furies and Medusa had provided enough excitement for one day. They didn't want to attract anything else.

They decided to sleep in shifts. Percy volunteered to take first watch.

Annabeth curled up on the blankets and was snoring as soon as her head hit the ground. Y/N stayed awake for sometime looking at her arrow, more like inspecting it but then gave up and went to sleep. Grover fluttered with his flying shoes to the lowest bough of a tree, put his back to the trunk, and stared at the night sky.

"Go ahead and sleep," Percy told him. "I'll wake you if there's trouble."

He nodded, but still didn't close his eyes. "It makes me sad, Percy."

"What does? The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?"

"No. This makes me sad." He pointed at all the garbage on the ground. "And the sky. You can't even see the stars. They've polluted the sky. This is a terrible time to be a satyr."

"Oh, yeah. I guess you'd be an environmentalist."

He glared at him. "Only a human wouldn't be. Your species is clogging up the world so fast ... ah, never mind. It's useless to lecture a human. At the rate things are going, I'll never find Pan."

"Pam? Like the cooking spray?"

"Pan!" he cried indignantly. "P-A-N. The great god Pan! What do you think I want a searcher's license for?"

A strange breeze rustled through the clearing, temporarily overpowering the stink of trash and muck. It brought the smell of berries and wildflowers and clean rainwater, things that might've once been in these woods. Suddenly he was nostalgic for something he'd never known.

"Tell me about the search," Percy said. Grover looked at him cautiously, but told him everything nonetheless. Percy thought it was insane how his friend thought he can find Pan when so many before him couldn't. But then again, he was going against some gods in the first place.

He stared at the orange haze of the sky and tried to understand how Grover could pursue a dream that seemed so hopeless. "How are we going to get into the Underworld?" he asked him. "I mean, what chance do we have against a god?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "But back at Medusa's, when you were searching her office? Annabeth was telling me-"

"Oh, I forgot. Annabeth will have a plan all figured out."

"She's had a tough life, but she's a good person. After all, she forgave me...." His voice faltered.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Forgave you for what?"

Suddenly, Grover seemed very interested in playing notes on his pipes.

"Wait a minute," Percy said. "Your first keeper job was five years ago. Annabeth has been at camp five years. She wasn't ... I mean, your first assignment that went wrong-"

"I can't talk about it," Grover said, and his quivering lower lip suggested he'd start crying if he pressed him. "But as I was saying, back at Medusa's, Annabeth and I agreed there's something strange going on with this quest. Something isn't what it seems."

"Well, duh. I'm getting blamed for stealing a thunderbolt that Hades took."

"That's not what I mean," Grover said. "The Fur-The Kindly Ones were sort of holding back. Like Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy ... why did she wait so long to try to kill you? Then on the bus, they just weren't as aggressive as they could've been."