¹Royal Cries.

014.

ROYAL CRIES
━━ chapter fourteen

━━ ELISA ALREADY KNEW before that she didn't like pigs, or anything similar to them. Pigs and boars were too messy, too noisy, too smelly, and too eager to run her through with their canoe-sized tusks.

Or maybe that last part was just the Erymanthian Boar, the boar that liked to run people through with its canoe-sized tusks.

It was unfortunate for Elisa, though, they had to ride the boar until sunset. She wasn't sure how many miles they had covered, but eventually, the mountains faded into the distance and were replaced by miles of flat, dry land. The grass got sparser until they were traveling across the desert.

If Elisa's geography was any good she could say they were in Arizona or the outskirts of New Mexico. She thought it was pretty unlikely they were in New Mexico anymore considering Cloudcroft isn't terribly far from the border of Arizona and New Mexico.

As night fell, the boar came to a stop at a creek bed and snorted. He started drinking the muddy water, then ripped a saguaro cactus out of the ground and chewed, needles and all.

"This is as far as he'll go," said Grover. "We need to get off while he's eating."

Nobody needed convincing. Elisa slipped off the boar's back while it was busy ripping up another cactus. She felt the blood rushing back to her feet as she stumbled away.

After the boar's third saguaro and another drink of muddy water, it squealed and belched, then whirled around and galloped back toward the east.

"It likes the mountains better," Percy guessed.

"I can't blame it," Thalia said. "Look."

Ahead of them was a two-lane road half covered with sand. On the other side of the road was a cluster of buildings too small to be a town; a boarded-up house, a taco shop that looked like it hadn't been open since the stone age, and a white stucco post office with a sign that said GILA CLAW, ARIZONA hanging crooked above the door. Beyond that was a range of hills ... but they couldn't have been regular old hills. This part of Arizona was too flat for hills, especially hills that tall. The hills were enormous mounds of old cars, appliances, and other scrap metal. It was a junkyard that seemed to go on for miles.

"Whoa," Percy gasped.

"You know," Elisa said, "something tells me it's gonna be even harder to find a car rental here than back at Cloudcroft." She looked at Grover. "Got any other wild animals we could hitch a ride with? Any that aren't boars?"

The satyr was sniffing the wind, looking nervous. He fished out his acorns and threw them into the sand, then played his reed pipes. They rearranged themselves in a pattern that Elisa couldn't make sense of, but Grover looked concerned at the pattern.

"That's us," the satyr said. "Those six nuts right there."

"Which one is me?" Percy asked.

"The deformed, ugly one," Elisa answered at once. "The resemblance is uncanny, Fish Boy!"

Percy flushed. "I hate you," he grumbled.

Elisa grinned. "Feeling's mutual."

"That cluster right there," Grover said, pointing to the left, "that's trouble."