Stay Right Here

xxvii

everyone had an emo phase

🌊🌊🌊

Despite the warnings of a dangerous journey, Arion had no trouble running across the water.

Hadley didn't understand why Hazel loved horseback rising so much. Her stomach felt like the inside of a magic 8 ball. At least on the chariot, they had a smooth ride- until it collapsed. Percy's arms remained around Hadley's waist, his forehead pressed against her shoulder, but she couldn't even think about that at the moment. She held on to Frank so tightly, that she thought he might split in two. Hadley worried that if they fell off, Hazel wouldn't notice until she was already at the glacier. At least the younger girl was having a good time.

They raced through icy straits, past blue fjords and cliffs with waterfalls spilling into the sea. Arion jumped over a breaching humpback whale and kept galloping, startling a pack of seals off an iceberg.

It seemed like only minutes before they zipped into a narrow bay. The water turned the consistency of shaved ice in blue sticky syrup. Arion came to a halt on a frozen turquoise slab. 

Hadley could see Hubbard Glacier from where they stood, but she couldn't quite process what she saw. Purple snowcapped mountains marched off in either direction, with clouds floating at their middles like fluffy belts. In a massive valley between two of the large peaks, a ragged wall of ice rose out of the sea, filling the entire gorge. The glacier was blue and white with streaks of black, so that it looked like a hedge of dirty snow left behind on a sidewalk after a snowplow had gone by. 

As soon as Arion stopped, Hadley felt the temperature drop. All that ice was sending off waves of cold, turning the bay into the world's largest refrigerator. The eeriest thing was a sound like thunder rolling across the water.

"What is that?" Frank gazed at the clouds above the glacier. "A storm?"

"No," Hazel said. "Ice cracking and shifting. Millions of tons of ice."

"You mean that thing is breaking up?"

As if on cue, a sheet of ice silently calved off the side of the glacier and crashed into the sea, spraying water and frozen shrapnel into the air. A millisecond later the sound hit them- a BOOM almost as jarring as Arion hitting the sound barrier.

"We can't get close to that thing!" Frank said.

"We have to," Percy said. "The giant is at the top."

"Why don't we just drop the glacier on him?" Hadley suggested.

Arion nickered.

"Jeez, Hazel," Percy said, "tell your horse to watch his language."

Hazel tried not to laugh. "What did he say?"

"With the cussing removed? He said he can get us to the top."

Frank looked incredulous. "I thought the horse couldn't fly!"

"Don't call him 'the horse'," Hadley whispered as if Arion couldn't hear regardless. "It will just make him mad."

This time Arion whinnied so angrily, even Hadley could guess he was cursing.

"See?"

"Dude," Percy told the horse, "I've gotten suspended for saying less than that. Hazel, he promises you'll see what he can do as soon as you give the word."

"Um, hold on then, you guys," Hazel said nervously. "Arion, giddyup!"

Hadley's curse of surprise was lost to the wind as Arion shot up the glacier like a runway rocket, barreling straight across the slush like he wanted to play chicken with a mountain of ice.