THE HEALER| Heroes of Olympus

five

"Sounds similar to Leo and Hazel." Annabeth noted. 

Suddenly the entire ship listed to port. The demigods stumbled. Percy almost spilled his bucket of tar.

"Uh, what was that?" he demanded.

"Oh..." Hazel looked embarrassed. "We may have angered the nymphs who live in this lake. Like...all of them."

"Great." Percy handed the bucket of tar to Frank and Annabeth. "You guys help Leo. I'll hold off the water spirits as long as I can."

"On it!" Frank promised.

The three of them ran off, leaving Hazel at the cabin door. The ship listed again, and Hazel hugged her stomach like she was going to be sick.

"I'll just..." She swallowed, pointed weakly down the passageway, and ran off.I stayed below as the ship rocked back and forth. I unwrapped Jason's old bandages and gave him new ones, and gave him some more ambrosia. Waves crashed against the hull as angry voices came from above deck—Percy shouting, Coach Hedge yelling at the lake.

Festus the figurehead breathed fire several times. Down the hall, Hazel moaned miserably in her cabin. In the engine room below, it sounded like Leo and the others were doing an Irish line dance with anvils tied to their feet. After what seemed like hours, the engine began to hum. The oars creaked and groaned, and I felt the ship lift into the air.

The rocking and shaking stopped. The ship became quiet except for the drone of machinery. Finally Leo emerged from the engine room. He was caked in sweat, lime dust, and tar. His T-shirt looked like it had been caught in an escalator and chewed to shreds. The TEAM LEO on his chest now read: AM LEO. But he grinned like a madman and announced that they were safely under way.

"Meeting in the mess hall, one hour," he said. "Crazy day, huh?"

***

After everyone had cleaned up, Coach Hedge took the helm and the demigods gathered below for dinner. It was the first time they'd all sat down together—just the nine of them. Maybe their presence should've reassured me, but seeing all of them in one place only reminded her that the Prophecy of Nine was unfolding at last. No more waiting for Leo to finish the ship. No more easy days at Camp Half-Blood, pretending the future was still a long way off. They were under way, with a bunch of angry Romans behind them and the ancient lands ahead. The giants would be waiting. Gaea was rising. And unless they succeeded in this quest, the world would be destroyed.

The others must've felt it too. The tension in the mess hall was like an electrical storm brewing, which was totally possible, considering Percy's and Jason's powers. In an awkward moment, the two boys tried to sit in the same chair at the head of the table. Sparks literally flew from Jason's hands. After a brief silent standoff, like they were both thinking, Seriously dude?, they ceded the chair to Annabeth and sat at opposite sides of the table.

The crew compared notes on what had happened in Salt Lake City, but even Leo's ridiculous story about how he tricked Narcissus wasn't enough to cheer up the group. Jasper recounted what happened with Nemesis, he also left the part out about me being knocked unconscious as I had before. He seemed to understand that I had done it for a reason. 

"So where to now?" Leo asked with a mouthful of pizza. "I did a quick repair job to get us out of the lake, but there's still a lot of damage. We should really put down again and fix things right before we head across the Atlantic."

Percy was eating a piece of pie, which for some reason was completely blue—filling, crust, even the whipped cream. "We need to put some distance between us and Camp Jupiter," he said.