The Shadow Archer Twins

I dreamed that I was falling. Falling hard, faster than a comet. And someone was laughing at me, chuckling softly as if in her sleep. Wait, a sleeping, laughing woman? That was all too familiar. The recognition of Gaea’s presence sent a cold chill of fear up my spine, jolting back to the present, where I could hear my name being called, faintly, as if from far away.

My eyes opened slowly, and I saw the face of a girl with dirty blonde hair that went just past her shoulders, and bright green eyes, that were full of concern. Green eyesThat’s important, I think. What was I trying to remember about green eyes? Looking at her face again, I thought that she looked cute, and that made me smile, still in a daze. The girl blushed, and then turned away, calling to someone. Someone named ‘Tox’? Okay, that was a weird name. Then, I remembered, and my daze went away, and I gasped, sitting up abruptly and banging my head into something hard.

“Ow,” I said, a bit sleepily, “What was that for?”

“Oh my goodness!” The girl said, “I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m fine.” For some reason, I couldn’t place a name to her face, like I had had some kind of short-term memory loss. Then, the girl offered me some water, and I nodded my head. She pulled me into a more upright position against a pine tree, and held the bottle while I drank icy cold water greedily. The sharp cold of the water broke my daze, and everything started to come back into focus, including the pain.

Everything hurt. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Every bone, muscle, and ligament in my body ached like I had just fallen out of a plane and landed face-first. Now that I think about it, I actually had fallen out of a plane. I remembered the metal screeching noise, the plane breaking in half, and then…nothing. I guess I had blacked out. Jeez, I thought, blacking out when I’m supposed to be the leader.

I remembered their names next. Katie and Tox, was it? I still thought of that was a weird name, but both of them looked okay, albeit a bit shaken up. Tox’s shadow-black hair was dirty and messy, and his dark blue eyes shone with a glint of panic and fear. He looked like a cornered animal, but he noticed me looking at him, and scowled, like he didn’t approve of me or something, masking his fear.

With the world finally coming back into focus, I asked, “Where are we?”

The cute girl, Katie, responded, “As far as Tox and I can make out, we are in the ‘Moraine State Park,' Pennsylvania. Tox saw a sign pointing south for Pittsburgh, and that’s the biggest city we could find a way to. We were waiting until you woke up to move. We didn’t want to do anything we didn’t know how to. Like getting to Long Island from a forest in Pennsylvania.”

“That’s smart,” I remarked, and then added, “Hey, Tox, do you still have my bag?”

Tox nodded and reached behind him, grabbing the Camp Half-Blood go-bag that everyone leaving the camp usually brought with them on long trips or missions.

“Reach inside and bring out the red med-kit that’s inside, I need some ambrosia and nectar.”

“Woah,” Tox said, “Like food of the gods?”

“Exactly,” I replied, “In small quantites, it can heal any ailment, but trust me, you never want to eat too much, because it will literally burn you to ashes.”

After that, Tox lifted the med-kit out and brought me the ambrosia as if it were radioactive, ready to explode. I opened the Ziploc bag with the squares of ambrosia and took a bite. It tasted like ballpark French fries, from when my dad was around and would take me to the local minor league baseball games in upstate New York. But that memory was sad, seeing as I hadn’t been to a ballgame in over five years. A warm feeling spread throughout my whole body, energizing me and urging me to get up and find a way back to camp. As I was about to stand up, Katie put her hand on my chest and said,

“Are you sure you’re fine? You just fell from a plane unconscious.”

I looked at her hand on my shirt, then up at her, and she removed it, blushing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tox, looking irritatedly at Katie and I, but I didn’t worry about it. She was just worried about me, that’s all. I mean, it’s not like she liked me or anything, right?

“Really, I’m fine,” I assured her, “You underestimate the healing power of ambrosia.” I thought about what to do next, and what steps I should take to get to camp.

“Form a plan,” I said to myself, “Form a plan. Okay, first things first, I need to send a message to camp explaining our situation so that they can come pick us up. Luckily, I know this area well from when I was really young, so I can get us to the nearest Camp safehouse, which is in Harrisburg, about 200 miles from here.”

I walked over to the nearest patch of sunny ground, and took out a golden drachma, an Ancient Greek coin. A little puddle on the ground created a rainbow when the sun hit it, and I tossed the drachma into the rainbow, starting an Iris-message. I relayed our position and situation to Connor Stoll, one of the head counselors for the Hermes cabin, and he said that he would try to secure a rescue squad for us to pick us up in Harrisburg.

When I came back, I said, "Alright, that's done, so what's next?"

“Wait, you said 200 miles to Harrisburg?” Tox asked, “Isn’t that going to take forever?”

“Don’t worry,” I told him, “We’ll rent a car or take the bus or some other form of transportation. But about the ‘taking forever’ thing, you’re right. We need to make Harrisburg by the end of tomorrow, or the local population of monsters will start to pick up our scent.”

They took that in silence, with their faces looking worried. I realized that this must be a lot for them, seeing as it was their first encounter in the real world with real monsters. I thought about all of the new campers who looked just as confused, panicked, and worried when they arrived, and I felt bad for getting them into this predicament.

“Hey,” I said, and they both looked up at me, “Don’t worry. We’ll get out of this, and once we get to Harrisburg, we can stay as long as we need to at the safehouse, and then it’s another 200 miles to Long Island. We should get there within a week. But, with Gaea almost awake, I think it might take a bit longer.”

Katie, with a worried look, asked, “Why would that matter?”

“Well,” I said, trying to act calm, “She controls the earth, and, if we have to travels by land, she’ll do some stuff to try to slow us down.”

“What do you mean by ‘some stuff’?” Tox asked.

“Most likely,” I said, breaking it to them, “She’ll send monsters, have the ground pull at our feet, slow our cars down, make trains act funny, little things to mess with us. Now that we’ve survived her first test, she’ll be more persistent.”

“Great,” Tox said, looking frustrated, “First a dude in a trench coat, then Mother Earth herself, what’s next? Are aliens from Mars going to start following us too?”

I started to smile, trying to hold in my laughter. Katie, who had looked scared a second before, started to crack up, and eventually, I joined in. Tox stopped looking so angry and smiled as well. We were glad to be alive.

“C’mon,” I said, “We need to head into Pittsburg first to rent a car, pick up supplies and get some rest. We’ll leave in the morning.”

At that, we all stood up, I, a bit shakily, and started walking towards the highway going south into Pittsburg. Once we got into the outskirts of town, we found a motel called, ‘Kai’s B&B’ which was made up of a row of three separate buildings, all surrounded by a low chain-link fence. They were all painted weirdly, as if some hippy artist had come in with a spasmodic brush and decorated the buildings as he pleased. The first one, closest to the road, was painted brown-orange, like the coat of a lion, and to top it off, had a huge lion’s head panted on the front facing side, with two windows serving as the eyes. The middle building was painted white, with grey wavy lines, making it look like a goat’s fur. I couldn’t tell from where I was standing, but it looked like the building was also actually covered in real fur. Weird. The back building was painted combination of dark greens, looking like the scaly skin of a viper, and from the far end, had a chimney sticking up into the shy, from which smoke was coming out, like a wispy tail.

We entered the front lion building and walked up to the front desk, where a man in a red suit, white dress shirt, and green pants stood, looking like the only staff there. He walked behind his desk and started typing things in his computer as he greeted us, saying, in a voice that was so smooth it almost purred,

“Welcome to Kai’s B&B, I’m Kai, how can I help you?”

He licked his lips while he was looking at us, which kind of creeped me out. I mean, who licks their lips while trying to check in a motel guest? But, I said, in a calm tone,

“Two rooms for one night, please.”

The man behind the counter, Kai said, in that purring voice, “No problem. Would you like the two rooms to be connected?”

“That would be great,” I said, but in the back of my mind, a cold chill went down my neck. Why did this guy seem familiar? I put that thought aside. He was being helpful, why should I be worrying? He tapped a couple of more times on his keyboard, and said,

“Alright, all done. You guys will be in rooms 7 and 8 respectively, on the second floor.” Then he said, in a creepy tone, “I hope your stay will be absolutely perrrrrfect.”

He actually was purring then. But, I didn’t think it mattered. We were so tired, we went up to our rooms and crashed. I had my own room, and Tox and Katie were sharing. Once we had put our things down, I went next door to their room and said,

“Hey guys, get some rest while you can. I’ll rent us a car in the morning and we should try to leave by around noon to get to Harrisburg by evening.”

Sleepily, the both said, “No problem.”

I went back to my room and slumped onto my bed.

“What a day,” I mumbled to myself, “What a day.”

As I fell asleep, I finally remembered what I had been thinking about earlier. Green Eyes. I thought about Camp, and maybe how it connected to that. My final thought landed on the Oracle of Delphi, a mortal named Rachel. I realized, she had green eyes too.

Notes