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{ 🔮 } · what if. . . . ݁ ٬٬ ࣪
PERCY WOKE UP FEELING like he was still on fire. His skin stung. His throat felt as dry as sand. He saw blue sky and trees above him. The boy heard a fountain gurgling, and smelled juniper and cedar and a bunch of other sweet-scented plants. He heard waves, too, gently lapping on a rocky shore.
Percy wondered if he was dead, but he knew better. He'd been to the Land of the Dead, and there was no blue sky.
The boy tried to sit up. His muscles felt like they were melting.
"Stay still," a girl's voice said. "You're too weak to rise."
She laid a cool cloth across his forehead. A bronze spoon hovered over him and liquid was dribbled into his mouth. The drink soothed his throat and left a warm chocolaty aftertaste. Nectar of the gods.
Then the girl's face appeared above him. She had almond eyes and caramel-color hair braided over one shoulder. She was. . . fifteen? Sixteen? It was hard to tell. She had one of those faces that just seemed timeless. She began singing, and Percy's pain dissolved. She was working magic. Percy could feel her music sinking into his skin, healing and repairing his brain.
"Who?" Percy croaked.
"Shhh, brave one," she said. "Rest and heal. No harm will come to you here. I am Calypso."
The next time Percy woke he was in a cave, but as far as caves go, he'd been in a lot worse. The ceiling glittered with different-color crystal formations ─ white and purple and green, like he was inside one of those cut geodes you see in souvenir shops. The boy was lying on a comfortable bed with feather pillows and cotton sheets. The cave was divided into sections by white silk curtains. Against one wall stood a large loom and a harp. Against the other wall were shelves neatly stacked with jars of fruit preserves. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling: rosemary, thyme, and a bunch of other stuff. His mother could've named them all. There was a fireplace built into the cave wall, and a pot bubbling over the flames. It smelled great, like beef stew.
Percy sat up, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his head. He looked at his arms, sure that they would be hideously scarred, but they seemed fine. A little pinker than usual, but not bad. He was wearing a white cotton T-shirt and cotton drawstring pants that weren't his. His feet were bare. In a moment of panic, the boy wondered what happened to Riptide, but he felt his pocket and there was the pen, right where it always reappeared. Not only that but the Stygian ice dog whistle was back in his pocket, too. Somehow it had followed him. And that didn't exactly reassure him.
