Daughter of Wine

Callida

Everything seems to be going fine. Piper and Hedge are across the bridge now, and Jason, Leo, and Thalia are about halfway. My lower back hurts from the fall I took when I teleported up here, but I hope that proved my point about teleporting to places I'm unsure about. I would have loved to just shoot us all up here, but it wouldn't be safe. 

I watch intently, just in case someone falls. Suddenly, Leo stops. I tense, awaiting a fall that I hope doesn't happen. It looks like they're talking. Leo is waving his arms excitedly, while Thalia looks terrified. 

Suddenly, Leo starts smoking. I watch as the bridge begins to melt, and Leo falls. Exactly what I hoped wouldn't happen. I calculate his fall and suddenly, with a burst of purple flames, I'm there, falling with him. I wrap my arms around him tightly, and he grabs onto me like a tick on a dog. 

I catch a glimpse of the mountain and aim there, doing my best to calculate the right aim. We're suddenly falling again, but I land hard on my back on the floating rock, right in front of Jason, Piper, and Gleeson. 

The wind is knocked out of me, and for a few moments I can't take a breath. Leo is on top of me, still clinging tightly and shaking. I realize I'm holding him tightly too. 

With embarrassment, I push him off of me. 

"What happened?" Piper demands. "Leo, why are your clothes smoking?" 

I still can't get up. My world is spinning and I'm still catching my breath. 

"I got a little heated." He gasps. "Sorry, Jason, Calli, honest. I didn't-"

"It's alright." Jason says, his expression grim. He looks down at me. "Calli, you okay?" 

I give shaky thumbs up, breathing heavily. "Does anyone have any orange slices, or a Gatorade, or something?"

Coach Hedge very excitedly hands me a Gatorade. 

"Oh, gods, Calli, sorry, I really am-" Leo insists. 

"It's fine." I tell him. "That's why I was watching, right? Now, we've got less than twenty-four hours to rescue a goddess and Piper's dad." I sit up, and Piper pulls me to my feet. I try very hard not to fall back down. "Let's go see the king of the winds. If he's anything like Boreas, I am not excited at all." 

As we climb the cliffs, I drink the Gatorade and manage to regain a bit of my energy. The only one who seems to be in a good mood is Gleeson Hedge. He keeps bouncing up the slippery staircase and trotting back down. "Come on, cupcakes! Only a few thousand more steps!" 

We're silent as we go. Jason had told us what Thalia and Leo had said on the bridge, and it's sinking in for all of us. Jason is a bridge between what? And Hera is at the Wolf House? It's a lot to figure out. Piper keeps looking back at Jason worriedly. Leo keeps swatting at his legs like he might still be on fire. 

Finally, we arrive at the top of the island. Bronze walls march all the way around the fortress grounds. Twenty-foot gates open for us, and a road of polished purple stone leads up to the main citadel. A white columned rotunda, Greek style, like one of the monuments in Washington D.C., except for the cluster of satellite dishes and radio towers on the roof. 

"That's bizarre." Piper notes. 

"Guess you can't get cable on a floating island." Leo says. "Dang, check out this guy's front yard." 

The rotunda is in the center of a quarter-mile circle. The grounds are amazing in a terrifying way. They're divided into four sections like big pizza slices, each one representing a season. 

The section on our right is an icy waste, with bare trees and a frozen lake. Snowmen roll across the landscape as the wind blows. To our left is an autumn park with gold and red trees. Mounds of leaves blow into patterns. Gods, people, animals that run after each other before scattering into leaves. 

In the distance, I can see two more areas behind the rotunda. A green pasture with sheep made out of clouds, and a desert where tumbleweeds scratch strange patterns in the sand like greek letters, smiley faces, and a huge advertisement that reads Watch Aeolus Nightly!

"One section for each of the four cardinal wind gods." Jason guesses. "Four cardinal directions." 

"I'm loving that pasture." Hedge licks his lips. "You guys mind-"

"Go ahead." I tell him. It's kind of a relief. It would be hard to gain Aeolus's favor with Hedge screaming at him to die. 

Jason, Leo, Piper and I walk down the road to the steps of the palace. We pass through the doors into a white marble foyer decorated with purple banners that read Olympian Weather Channel and some that just say OW!

"Hello!" A woman floats up to us. An aura. "Are you from Lord Zeus? We've been expecting you." 

Jason stares for a few moments before speaking. "Are you a ghost?"

I can't help but grimace. I don't have much experience with aurai, but I know they hate that. 

Her smile turns into a pout. "I'm an aura, sir. A wind nymph. My name is Mellie. We don't have ghosts."

Piper chimes in. "No, of course you don't! My friend simply mistook you for Helen of Troy, the most beautiful mortal of all time. It's an easy mistake." 

It's a bit overkill, but Mellie blushes. "Oh, well, then. So you are from Zeus?" 

"Er, I'm the son of Zeus, yeah." Jason offers. 

"Excellent! Please, right this way." She leads us through some security doors into another lobby, consulting her tablet as she floats. She doesn't look where she's going, but apparently it doesn't matter as she drifts straight through a marble column with no problem. "We're out of prime time now, so that's good. I can fit you in right before his 11:12 spot." 

"Um, okay." Jason says. 

The lobby is an incredibly distracting place. Winds blast around us, sp it feels like we're pushing through an invisible crowd. Doors blow open and slam shut by themselves. Paper airplanes of all different sizes and shapes speed around, and other aurai occasionally pick them out of the air, unfold them, read them, and toss them back, where the planes refold and keep flying. 

A harpy flutters past, and my questmates all stare in shock. 

"Not an aura?" Jason guesses

Mellie laughs. "That's a harpy, of course. Our, ah, ugly stepsisters, I suppose you would say. Don't you have harpies on Olympus? They're spirits of violent gusts, unlike us aurai. We're gentle breezes." 

She bats her eyes at Jason. 

"Course you are." Jason replies. 

"So." Piper interrupts. "you were taking us to see Aeolus?"

Mellie leads us through a set of doors like an airlock. Above the interior door, a green light blinks. 

"We have a few minutes before he starts." Mellie says cheerfully. "He probably won't kill you if we go in now. Come along!"