Jason had found his sister and lost her in less than an hour. As they climbed the cliffs of the floating island, he kept looking back, but Thalia was gone.
Despite what she’d said about meeting him again, Jason wondered. She’d found a new family with the Hunters, and a new mother in Artemis. She seemed so confident and comfortable with her life, Jason wasn’t sure if he’d ever be part of it. And she seemed so set on finding her friend Percy. Had she ever searched for Jason that way?
Not fair, he told himself. She thought you were dead.
He could barely tolerate what she’d said about their mom. It was almost like Thalia had handed him a baby—a really loud, ugly baby—and said, Here, this is yours. Carry it. He didn’t want to carry it. He didn’t want to look at it or claim it. He didn’t want to know that he had an unstable mother who’d gotten rid of him to appease a goddess. No wonder Thalia had run away.
Then he remembered the Zeus cabin at Camp Half-Blood—that tiny little alcove Thalia had used as a bunk, out of sight from the glowering statue of the sky god. Their dad wasn’t much of a bargain, either. Jason understood why Thalia had renounced that part of her life too, but he was still resentful. He couldn’t be so lucky. He was left holding the bag — literally.
The golden backpack of winds was strapped over his shoulders. The closer they got to Aeolus’s palace, the heavier the bag got. The winds struggled, rumbling and bumping around.
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, Leo and Piper left Jason in his silence. Maybe they could sense his bad mood. Piper kept glancing back, worried, as if he were the one who’d almost died of hypothermia rather than she. Or maybe she was thinking about Thalia’s idea. They’d told her what Thalia had said on the bridge—how they could save both her dad and Hera—but Jason didn’t really understand how they were going to do that, and he wasn’t sure if the possibility had made Piper more hopeful or just more anxious.
Leo kept swatting his own legs, checking for signs that his pants were on fire. He wasn’t steaming anymore, but the incident on the ice bridge had really freaked Jason out. Leo hadn’t seemed to realize that he had smoke coming out his ears and flames dancing through his hair. If Leo started spontaneously combusting every time he got excited, they were going to have a tough time taking him anywhere. Jason imagined trying to get food at a restaurant. I’ll have a cheeseburger and—Ahhh! My friend’s on fire! Get me a bucket!
Mostly, though, Jason worried about what Leo had said. Jason didn’t want to be a bridge, or an exchange, or anything else. He just wanted to know where he’d come from. And Thalia had looked so unnerved when Leo mentioned the burned-out house in his dreams—the place the wolf Lupa had told him was his starting point. How did Thalia know that place, and why did she assume Jason could find it?
The answer seemed close. But the nearer Jason got to it, the less it cooperated, like the winds on his back.
Finally they arrived at the top of the island. Bronze walls marched all the way around the fortress grounds, though Jason couldn’t imagine who would possibly attack this place. Twenty-foot-high gates opened for them, and a road of polished purple stone led 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 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 center of a quarter-mile circle. The grounds were amazing in a scary way. They were divided into four sections like big pizza slices, each one representing a season.
The section on their right was an icy waste, with bare trees and a frozen lake. Snowmen rolled across the landscape as the wind blew, so Jason wasn’t sure if they were decorations or alive.
To their left was an autumn park 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, Jason could see two more areas behind the rotunda. One looked like a green pasture with sheep made out 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. “Four cardinal directions.”
“I’m loving that pasture.” Coach Hedge licked his lips. “You guys mind—”
“Go ahead,” Jason said. He was actually relieved to send the satyr off. It would be hard enough getting on Aeolus’s good side without Coach Hedge waving his club and screaming, “Die!”
While the satyr ran off to attack springtime, Jason, Leo, and Piper walked down the road to the steps of the palace. They passed 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 floated up to them. Literally floated. She was pretty in that elfish way Jason associated with nature spirits at Camp Half-Blood
—petite, slightly pointy ears, and an ageless face that could’ve been sixteen or thirty. Her brown eyes twinkled cheerfully. Even though there was no wind, her dark hair blew in slow motion, shampoo-commercial style. Her white gown billowed around her like parachute material. Jason couldn’t tell if she had feet, but if so, they didn’t touch the floor. She had a white tablet computer in her hand. “Are you from Lord Zeus?” she asked. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Jason tried to respond, but it was a little hard to think straight, because he’d realized the woman was see-through. Her shape faded in and out like she was made of fog.
“Are you a ghost?” he asked.
Right away he knew he’d insulted her. The smile turned into a pout. “I’m an aura, sir. A wind nymph, as you might expect, working for the lord of the winds. My name is Mellie. We don’t have ghosts.”
Piper came 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 was good. The compliment seemed a little over the top, but Mellie the aura blushed. “Oh … well, then. So you are from Zeus?”
“Er,” Jason said, “I’m the son of Zeus, yeah.”
“Excellent! Please, right this way.” She led them through some security doors into another lobby, consulting her tablet as she floated. She didn’t look where she was going, but apparently it didn’t matter as she drifted straight through a marble column with no problem. “We’re out of prime time now, so that’s good,” she mused. “I can fit you in right before his 11:12 spot.”
“Um, okay,” Jason said.
The lobby was a pretty distracting place. Winds blasted around them, so Jason felt like he was pushing through an invisible crowd. Doors blew open and slammed by themselves.
The things Jason could see were just as bizarre. Paper airplanes of all different sizes and shapes sped around, and other wind nymphs, aurai, would occasionally pluck them out of the air, unfold and read them, then toss them back into the air, where the planes would refold themselves and keep flying.
An ugly creature fluttered past. She looked like a mix between an old lady and a chicken on steroids. She had 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 was amazing she could fly at all. She kept drifting around and bumping into things like a parade balloon.
“Not an aura?” Jason asked Mellie as the creature wobbled by.
Mellie laughed. “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 batted her eyes at Jason. “’Course you are,” he said.
“So,” Piper prompted, “you were taking us to see Aeolus?”
Mellie led them through a set of doors like an airlock. Above the interior door, a green light blinked.
“We have a few minutes before he starts,” Mellie said cheerfully. “He probably won’t kill you if we go in now. Come along!”
