The next afternoon, I came back with reinforcements.
When I told Annabeth and Grover where we were going, they looked at
me funny, but they didn’t ask questions. Downtown Yonkers was well within our standard deviation for weirdness.
I’m not sure what the other passengers thought about me carrying the staff of Iris on the subway train. Maybe they figured I was a shepherd commuting to my pastures. Grover, being Grover, had brought a backpack full of snacks along with his panpipes. Because you never know when you might want to dance a jig while eating sour-cream-and-jalapeno corn squiggles. Annabeth had packed a bunch of practical things, like her knife, flashlights, and a thermos of something that I hoped was more potable than the river water.
By four o’clock, we were standing in the creek bed, peering into the mouth of the tunnel.
Grover sniffed the air. “Cleanest river in the world?” “This is after the Furies and snakes bathed in it,” I said. “And who knows what else,” Annabeth added.
Grover dipped his shoe in the brown water. “I guess we can’t just roll the staff around in this muck and call it a day.”
I’d had the same thought, but I was glad Grover said it instead of me. “We’ll have to go inside,” said Annabeth, distributing the flashlights.
“Hope it’s cleaner upriver. Let’s hug the bank and try to stay out of the water.”
That was advice even I could recognize as wise. But staying out of the water proved hard to do.
As we forged ahead into the tunnel, the sides turned narrow and slippery. I found it impossible not to slosh around in the stream. My shoes didn’t start smoking, and my pants didn’t catch on fire, so I guessed the water wasn’t that toxic. Still, I added really hot shower to my to-do list, assuming I made it home that evening.
About a hundred yards in, Annabeth stopped. “Check it out,” she said.
She moved the beam of her flashlight across the tunnel’s ceiling, which was coated with moss and lichen so thick I couldn’t tell if there was man-made asphalt or natural rock underneath. Wherever Annabeth’s light passed, it left behind a streak of blue-green luminescence.
“Cool.” I used my flashlight to draw a glowing smiley face on the wall. “How old are you?” Annabeth asked.
“Eight just last week.”
That got a smile. I loved making her smile when she was trying not to. It always felt like a victory.
We spent a few minutes painting light graffiti. Grover wrote Pan 4ever. I wrote AC+PJ. Annabeth traced concentric arcs until she’d made a blue-and-green rainbow. The moss kept glowing for quite a while, filling the tunnel with a cool turquoise light.
Up ahead, the channel widened into a much larger space. The sound of the current became louder and throatier. We stepped into a cavern so massive it seemed like a different world.
Under a cathedral-high ceiling covered with glowing stalactites, the river wound north between rolling plains of yellow grass. Ash-colored trees dotted the landscape, leafless and stunted, their branches curled like arthritic fingers. The scene reminded me of the Fields of Asphodel down in Hades’s realm—and the fact that I can make that comparison the same way you might say Oh, yeah, looks like Midtown is a really sad statement about my travel history.
Here and there, outcroppings of granite made islands in the grass, but the main attraction was the river itself. It wound lazily through the cavern, making big loops as if it were in no hurry to reach the daylight. Thick stands of reeds edged its banks. The current glimmered darkly in the blue moss light. The water did look cleaner here. The putrid smell was gone. But in a pool about twenty yards upstream, dozens of slithery, slimy whiplike
creatures were rolling and writhing in the shallows, making me never want to eat spaghetti again.
“Gross,” Annabeth muttered.
“Hey, now, check your mammalian prejudices,” Grover whispered. “Reptiles are people, too.”
“With poison,” I said. “And cold blood. And a nasty bite. And . . . okay, maybe that also describes humans.”
Grover nodded. Thank you.
“Lights-out,” Annabeth whispered.
We switched off our flashlights, though the snakes didn’t seem to have noticed us yet. They were too busy frolicking and power-washing their scales.
I scanned the horizon. “You think we can sneak around them, go farther upstream?”
Grover sniffed the air. “This whole place smells like monsters. I can’t tell if there’s more besides the snakes nearby. Anything could hide in that tall grass.”
“Including us,” Annabeth said. “If we can’t fight the serpents, sneaking around them sounds like our best option.”
“Okay,” Grover agreed. “Let me go first, though. I might be able to pick out a safe trail through the fields.”
It used to be a rare day when Grover volunteered to go first through dangerous territory. I was too impressed to argue. Look at my old friend . . . taking charge and kicking grass. Sometimes I forgot he wasn’t a scared junior satyr protector anymore, but a scared Cloven Council elder. I guess we’d both grown up a lot.
At least here, Grover was in his element, assuming this creepy cave still counted as nature.
We waded through neck-high grass as sharp as hacksaw blades. Grover managed to navigate us around the thickest patches, but I winced every time a wisp of yellow snagged my arm. To make matters worse, the field crackled like bubble wrap as we walked through it. I imagined we’d be audible to any monsters hiding in the undergrowth.
Finally, we reached one of the boulder islands. Grover scrambled to the top as only someone with goat legs could do, then peered toward the river. “That’s not good.”
“What?” I asked.
He helped us up.
From the summit, I could see the whole course of the river stretched out before us. The Elisson poured into the cavern from a crevice in the northern wall, then cascaded down a series of rocky ledges before widening and meandering across the plains. Everywhere you might be able to access the banks, in every shallow pool or swimming hole where you might want to wash off a grungy kerykeion, the water was full of snakes. Hundreds of them.
“At least I don’t see any Furies,” Grover offered.
“Yeah,” I said. “But spaghetti is definitely off the menu this week.” “What?” Grover sounded hurt. He loves spaghetti.
“Nothing,” I said.
Annabeth scanned the river. “What about there?” She pointed to the northern end of the cave, where the river carved a ravine through jumbled heaps of granite. “That’s where the water will be cleanest. No easy access for snakes. Probably the current is too treacherous for them.”
“But not for a Poseidon kid?” I asked. She shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
“Except there’s no way we can make it all the way over there without getting spotted. And if the snakes start chasing us . . . how fast do you think they can go?”
Grover shivered. “Through this grass? A lot faster than we can.” “I kind of wish we had Luke’s flying shoes,” Annabeth said.
Grover winced. “Too soon.”
Five years ago, that pair of cursed shoes had almost dragged Grover into Tartarus. Trauma like that can leave a scar. But what surprised me most was that Annabeth mentioned Luke Castellan, our old friend-turned-enemy. Since the Battle of Manhattan, she’d almost never said his name. It seemed like a bad omen that she was bringing him up now.
“I have an idea,” Grover said. “It’s terrible, but it might work.” “I love it already,” I said.
He pulled out his panpipes. “You guys head for the cliffs. I’ll keep watch from here. If you make it, great. But if the snakes start heading in your direction, I should be able to see them moving through the grass. Then I’ll distract them with my pipes. I know some pretty good snake songs.”
Chalk up another talent I didn’t know Grover had: serpent entertainer.
“As soon as you start playing, they’ll come for you,” Annabeth said. “Which I guess is the terrible part.”
“It’ll be even worse than the chickens at Hebe Jeebies,” I guessed. “Yeah, I don’t love it,” he admitted. “But like Annabeth said before, I
can run the fastest. Maybe I can buy you some time. If you hear the pipes, know that the clock is ticking, and it would be great for you to hurry. Get Iris’s staff washed. I’ll meet you back at the exit.”
Annabeth and I exchanged looks. We’d been on plenty of dangerous missions just the two of us, but we wouldn’t be able to move so stealthily without our super-goat nature guide. I also didn’t like the idea of making Grover our decoy for the second time.
On the other hand, Grover was on a roll with the courageous-satyr stuff.
I didn’t want him to think I doubted him.
“Okay,” I said. “Be safe.” Which was like telling Grover to win the lottery, because we all knew the odds.
Annabeth gave him a hug. “Hopefully it won’t come to the snake songs.” She climbed down the rocks and waded through the grass. I followed,
because I was the guy with the grungy messenger’s staff.
Within a few yards, the grass was over our heads. The jagged reeds tore at my clothes. Every time we moved, the stalks swayed and rustled. If we’d held up flashing signs that read FREE SNAKE FOOD, we might have drawn more attention to ourselves, but not much.
We used the sounds of the waterfall to navigate north. I kept my eyes on the ground, trying to make each step as careful and quiet as possible. We walked so slowly I wanted to crawl out of my skin from impatience. It didn’t help that I kept imagining snakes darting out of the grass, sinking their fangs into my ankles.
I flashed back to the time basilisks had chased my buddies Frank and Hazel and me through a similar grassy field in California. Come to think of it, I’d spent entirely too much of my life playing hide-and-seek with deadly reptiles.
It felt like it took us approximately twelve years to reach the river. Then again, since our experience in Hebe Jeebies, I’d stopped trusting my sense of time.
Finally, we emerged from the grass near the base of the waterfall. We climbed a series of boulders until we stood on a slippery ledge overlooking a wide pool twenty feet below. The water was as clear as glass, free of snakes,
and just begging to be cannonballed into. On the downside, it was ringed by sheer cliffs, with no obvious way to get out again unless I wanted to ride the rapids downriver through Serpent Splash Town.
“You could jump in with the staff,” Annabeth suggested.
“Sure,” I said. “The problem is climbing back up when I’m done.” Annabeth pulled a rope from her backpack and smiled.
“You think of everything,” I said, trying to sound happy about it. That pool was looking a little too inviting . . . and I remembered Iris mentioning an angry river god, which seemed like the sort of detail that would bite me in the podex later. “Maybe we should plan this out a little bit first. That’s your thing right, planning?”
Then I heard the music—the unmistakable trill of panpipes in the distance. It was a song I recognized from my mom’s LP collection: Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake.” The clock had started. Grover was in trouble.
“Time’s up,” Annabeth told me. “Bon voyage.” And she pushed me over the side.
