Page 39 of The Chalice of the Gods

“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 readFREE 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 littletooinviting... 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.

Find someone who loves you the way my girlfriend pushes me off a cliff.

Without hesitation. With full confidence in your abilities, with the rock-steady belief that your relationship can handle it, and with complete faith that when you come out of the water, assuming you survive, you will totally forgive them for the push. Almost certainly forgive them. Probably.

Bonus points if you find someone with enough chutzpah to sayBon voyagewhile they do it.

Somehow, I held on to Iris’s staff as I plunged into the pool. The water hit like an arctic blast, freezing the blood in my capillaries and curling my fingers and toes. I could breathe underwater, but the cold in my lungs felt like the worst case of heartburn ever. Is chest freeze a thing?

As the cloud of bubbles dispersed, I found myself floating in the clearest turquoise water I’d ever seen. Light filtered from the surface, casting shimmering blue fish-scale patterns across the walls of the ravine so they looked like they were clad in living chain mail.

I seemed to be alone. No horned serpents. No Furies lolling around in swimsuits. A cloud of grass, dirt, and sweat was starting to bloom around me, though. The staff appeared to be smoking, its centuries of grunge slowly loosening.

On one hand: hooray, it was getting clean! On the other hand, I felt terrible for polluting this pristine water.

Then a voice said, “Oh,Hadesno.”

The guy floating in front of me was sapphire blue, which made him almost invisible in the water. I could barely lock my eyes on him even though he was within spitting distance. (But I don’t spit underwater, because that’s just rude.)

He wore a tank top and loose pants and had the most magnificent man bun in the history of man buns. I could see how he might be a yoga instructor, except that he didn’t have that calm, meditative energy. With his scowling bearded mouth and his dark angry eyes, he looked ready to sun-salute me right across the face.

“Hi,” I said. “You must be the river god Elisson.”

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