-Ayme-
I was standing speechless in front of Ann. Care to explain where you are going? No, I really didn't want to explain, especially not to her. Next to me Eve was starting to fume with his hands, clearly showing he was getting anxious about this whole quest already.
'Well?' Ann demanded.
I blew out a breath. 'We're going on a quest,' I answered.
'What for?' she asked.
'It's none of your business.'
Ann sighed and shook her head. 'As much as I would let you slip away, I can't. You're still my niece, and I don't think my brother would approve you going on a quest with a friend.'
I swallowed. 'My dad does approve actually. He's the one that sent me.'
Ann's eyebrows rose up. 'Really? And you just expect me to believe you?'
I crossed my arms. 'You're the expert on keeping the lies and truths apart. Why don't you tell me?'
Ann pursed her lips a moment before speaking. 'You're telling the truth. But why would Percy send you on a quest? From what I've heard it's one of the most dangerous things for a demigod to do?'
I shook my head. 'First of all, I'm not a demigod. My parents are. Second, I need to do this. I don't have a choice.'
'Everyone has a choice.'
'Not me,' I whispered.
'Why not?' Ann asked confused.
I looked at Eve, who nodded encouragingly. 'My dad is sick. The only way to save him is to find a cure of which I don't even if it truly exists.'
'The only way?' Ann said. 'Are you saying that Percy might be.. dying?'
I swallowed and looked away. 'Not might be, is. My father is dying. I need to go and find a way to save him.'
It was silent for a while. 'Let me come with you,' Ann suddenly said.
I certainly didn't expect that, I thought. 'Why?' I asked her.
She laughed a humourless laugh. 'Are you joking? My brother is dying. I want to actually have the chance of getting to know him before I lose him again. Besides, Camp is nothing for me. I feel like I'm waiting my time doing nothing. I can help you find a cure, and perhaps find a purpose along the way.'
I smiled as I remembered our talk about finding a new purpose.
'I guess you can come, judging by the look on Ayme's face,' Eve said.
He was right, as he had always been.
I nodded. 'Pack your stuff. We're leaving in a moment,' I told Ann.
She nodded and took only a minute before returning to where we were waiting.
'Is that all?' I asked as I motioned to the small bag in her hands.
Ann smiled bitterly. 'I don't have much. I don't need it either.'
I nodded and exchanged a look with Eve. He hoisted his bag up his back to emphasize he was ready, and with nothing more than the sound of the wind and the soft glance of the stars shining at the sky we left camp.
---
I fell down exhausted in one of the chairs while we were waiting for our plane to board. If I had known getting tickets at an airport was that hard, I would have gone by train.
Eve sat down next to me. 'Good Gods, that woman just went on and on and on..' I blew out a breath.
'Yeah. How hard can it possible be to give a bunch of teenager a flying ticket to the middle of nowhere.’
Eve grinned at me. 'You don't think it's a bit suspicious if three teenagers come up to you and ask for a flying ticket to the Northern Rocky Mountains?'
I laughed. 'Okay, it's a bit suspicious. But whoever thought of living in the Rocky Mountains must be really nuts.'
Eve nudged me with his elbow. 'Don't be mean. You haven't even met this people yet and you're already starting to judge them.'
I blushed and ducked my head in. 'Sorry, bad habit. I haven't learned to stop judging people just yet.'
Eve ruffled my hair and I slapped his hand away 'Then start trying already, because it's not just coming to you in a second. You need to start working on it to achieve what you want to do.'
I laughed at him, knowing he was completely right, but it would probably never work. 'I'll try, okay?'
Eve smiled at that.
Ann came back from the information desk holding three tickets triumphantly in her hand. 'It worked. Hallelujah. Now come on,' she said, as she grabbed her bag from the chair next to mine. 'We have twenty minutes to get on board.'
Eve and I stood up, following Ann to the right gate.
We got on board without too many questions about our age and why we were going to the Rocky Mountains, but ten minutes after we sat down the plane took off and we were on our way. We weren't going straight to the Rocky's. There was no flight that went straight from Manhattan to the Mountains. So we would fly to Chicago and from there rent a car and drive our way there. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. We welcome you to Chicago Flying. You are now boarded on the flight to Chicago. We will arrive there in a little less than five hours. For your information...
The rest what was being said through the intercom I didn't even hear anymore. I had already zoned out, thinking about what was doing. I'm on a plane in the mortal world trying to achieve one of the dangerous quests there have ever been. I smiled a little bit, knowing that if I would have told my mom, she would never have let me go.
I looked to my right, watching Eve and Ann sleeping already, even on a trip this short. I watched Ann for a while, just simply thinking how grateful I already was for her coming with us. Perhaps without her, we wouldn't even have gotten on the plane. Gods, I start thinking like some of those Disney movies where your opinion changes in one day. I had to smile at that. Maybe I was starting to think like that. But I had to admit, I couldn't have been more grateful for Eve and Ann to come along with me.
-----
'Remind me to never..' I started saying when I had to lean over the toilet again. I emptied my already stomach and saw dinner of yesterday evening floating at the bottom. 'Ever travel by plane again!' I managed to say when I felt another urge to vomit come up.
Eve stood behind me and soothed me by rubbing my back. Ann seemed a little sick herself now that she had seen what had come out of my mouth.
'Next time, I will believe my dad when he says it's not safe for a descendant of Poseidon to fly in Zeus' domain,' I said as I stood up and flushed the toilet.
I went to the tap and washed my mouth with water for what felt like a hundred times before I had the feeling my mouth was a little more cleaned up again.
'Are you okay now?' Eve asked worriedly.
I nodded. Now that there was nothing in my stomach left, my body was starting to start over again. 'What's next?' I asked Ann.
She was standing in the door opening, keeping an eye on our little luggage and pointed to the exit of the airport. 'We rent a car.'
I looked at her curiously. 'You have a driving license?'
Ann grinned at me and held up a pass. 'Only four the last four-hundred-and-fifty years.'
'Don't you have to renew it like, every ten years or something?' Eve asked, hoisting his bag on his back.
'Yeah,' Ann answered. 'But I've had over fifty driving licenses. This one is on my real name again.'
'Real name?' I asked as we started walking towards the exit.
Ann nodded. I've had a few fake ID's along the way. With those ID's came driving licenses too.'
'What did you do with them?' Eve asked.
'I burned each one after I received a new one. Couldn't have anyone finding out, right?' Ann grinned while saying it, but somewhere behind the smile I saw the truth.
She had hated it. She hated not being herself and having to have to live with a fake identity every time must have been hard on her.
I decided not to bring it up as we walked out of the airport, into the open sky.
I looked around, finding the company that was renting cars almost immediately. We walked over, not knowing what to expect when we would enter, but we certainly didn't expect some weird dude welcoming us like we hadn't seen each other in years and offering us a cup of coffee.
We glanced at each other, but none of us seemed to have seen this guy ever before. All of this seemed wrong. The alarm bells started ringing in my head when the guy came up to us with three cups of coffee that seemed to glow.
'We're going to have to recline,' Ann said carefully, 'because we are in a bit of a hurry. We want to rent a car because we need transport to visit our family.'
The guy seemed to brush her off with a shake of his hand. 'Oh nonsense. I believe we can discuss which car you want to rent while enjoying a drink, don't we?'
I almost couldn't hear anything because of the ringing sounds in my head. 'No. We came here for a car, anything else we're not interested in.'
The guy looked at me with narrowed eyes, the fake welcoming expression completely vanished off his face. I'm going to be deaf, I thought as I watched him.
Suddenly his eyes started to flicker, changing colour and leaving only one eye. 'Oh darling, I'm not interested in anything you say either. But it doesn't matter, because I already have you where I wanted you to be. In my kitchen for dinner!'
Gods, why didn't I think of this any sooner, I thought when the dude changed into an 8 feet tall Cyclops.
The store seemed to grow with him, although the part we had been standing in changed into a kitchen, just like he had said it.
'I didn't know Cyclopses have gotten smarter these past five hundred years,' Eve suddenly said.
'What? Are you doubting my intelligence?' the Cyclops boomed.
'Well certainly I'm not,' he replied.
What was he doing? We were standing in the middle of a giant kitchen, ready to be served as dinner for a hungry Cyclops!
'But I think I heard some of your brothers say you were the stupidest of all. They thought you didn't have it in you to catch a few simple humans.'
'They did not say that!' the Cyclops yelled.
'They really did,' Eve insisted. 'So I would go up to them and tell them you are capable of doing so. Because otherwise you will always be looked upon by your family.'
The Cyclops' eye lit up. 'You're right. Stay here,' he pointed at the ground. 'I will get my brothers and show you I've caught you myself, and then we will have a feisty meal on your bones!'
'I'm not going anywhere,' Eve promised.
'Finally!' the Cyclops shouted, 'someone who's willing to get eaten instead of bawling his eyes out.'
The giant walked out of the kitchen leaving us on the floor.
'You were kidding right? About getting eaten?' Ann asked Eve suspiciously.
'Come on, like I would ever want to be eaten by that thing. And besides, I was only distracting him from eating us. Now he will try to get his brothers to show off, but by that time will be long gone.'
I watched him curiously. 'What did you use to persuade him like that?'
Eve looked away. 'My grandmother is the goddess of revenge, remember? I used the little persuasion I had to convince him his brothers were messing with him behind his back, and he wanted revenge on them. Now can we please go? I don't want to be the first to see a Cyclops' stomach from the inside.'
'Yeah, sure,' I said, and I walked past him, out of the kitchen and into the showroom, which seemed to be the same when we came in.
'All right, which one do you prefer?' I asked Ann, who was eyeing all of the cars.
She pointed to a dark grey Ford 4x4. 'That one, over there.'
We wasted no time and got into the car as fast as possible. I opened the big doors to let our car pass through and we got away as fast as we could.
-----
After five hours of driving, I was starting to get restless. The only thing that was interesting was watching Eve sleep, and even then that was only for half an hour, because he woke up every five minutes.
'How long until we reach the first village?' I asked Ann.
She was looking at the road and pointed to something. 'I think we've reached it.'
I took a look at the town starting to appear and was surprised when I saw a mark saying Welcome to Hanvin Town. Number of inhabitants: 47.
That's not much, I thought as we crossed the first buildings.
'Stop here,' I said to Ann, 'I can ask that man over there.' Ann stopped the car and I got out, asking the man if he knew where to find Eva.
'No idea,' he said. 'No one living with that name in Hanvin.'
I thanked him and got into the car again. 'Keep on driving,' I said. 'We can try the next place.'
It took us eight different towns to find someone who could tell me where to find Eva. And even then it was with the vaguest directions. Up the hill, down, left, right, I had no idea how we had gotten there, but we got there, and that was all that mattered right now. It took us another half hour to reach our final destination, since the bookshop was actually pretty hard to find.
It sat at the end of a small street, almost invincible if you didn't know it wasn't there. I looked at the graceful letters drawn on the window. Sil's Shop was written in a sparkling white, although time must have done its job, for the colour had lost its sparkle.
We went in, and almost the first thing to notice was the huge amount of books. There were books on every shelf, and still it looked like there wasn't enough space to store them all. At the back of the shop was a woman standing behind a desk, mindlessly browsing through a magazine. Only half of her face was visible for us, but her eyes had a dark navy blue colour and they seemed to observe everything.
'Excuse me,' I said as we came up to her.
She looked up to as from the corner of her eye and stood up.
'Hi,' the woman said with a smile. 'How can I help you?'
I looked at Ann and Eve for help, but they had as much ideas as I had.
None.
'Well, I'm looking for someone called Eva.'
The woman smiled at us. 'That would be me.'
I nodded as I continued. 'I have heard you are an outstanding scientist, and I need a way to find the antidote for this serum,' I said as I took the vial out of my bag. I held it up to here and the woman, Eva, watched it silently.
'So the poison has finally gotten up to him,' she murmured. Her eyes shot to me and widened a bit as realization started to dawn upon her. 'You're Percy's daughter, aren't you?'
I swallowed. 'How did you know?' I said as my eyes narrowed a bit.
'I have had a few encounters with him. After the first time we crossed paths he visited me four times, the last time being two years ago.'
Something started to unfold in my head as I watched her. 'You're the woman he talks about? You're Sylvester?'
Eva turned around, reviling the other half of her face, and I couldn't help but gasp. The right side of her face was entirely burnt, leaving nothing but scars behind.
'What happened to you?' Ann asked.
'I have had some trouble along the way. Percy was the one to help me out eventually.'
I closed my eyes as I remembered the way my dad would come home after one of his encounters with Sylvester, and how devastated he always was for weeks.
'What did you do to my father?' I asked Eva.
She turned to me. 'I didn't do anything,' she said.
I felt the tears well up in the corners of my eyes, but I refused to let them out.
'What, Sylvester, did you do to my father?' By then I had my silver sword pointed at her throat, not being aware of what was happening around me.
Suddenly we were surrounded by armed men, having their guns pointed at us. 'Put the sword down, girl,' someone said.
No, I thought, not before I get an answer.