The Rebirth

The bus ride was calm, at first.
Elena had been practically bouncing in her seat, her heart hammering, twitching. Her first quest. Not her first time killing monsters, or anything, but her first quest!!! With an actual mission!!! An actual purpose!!!
But slowly, the feeling started to dull. She was beginning to slip into sleep, once again. And whenever they hit a bump, her shoulder would jolt, reminding her that it wasn’t perfect, wasn’t healed, wasn’t useful.
Behind her sat Greywyn and Benji, while she sat alone, which was kind of a small, nudging, awkward reminder that she wasn’t one of them. Not one of the Egyptians, not magical, not best friends like they were. And she shouldn’t- no, wouldn’t- ever get to be a part of that.
Someone mumbled a little tiredly- public transportation and the cloudy skies will do that to you- “Are we there yet?”
Elena shifted in her seat, turning her shoulders in an uncomfortable position so she could get a glance of Benji behind her, who said it. Wyn was a soft snorer, leaning her head on his shoulder with a dreamy, open, clear, happy expression that showed: she was far, far, far away in dreamland. Maybe she was playing with the penguins.
“London’s a big city. We have some more stops to go,” Elena responded, apologetically.
He gave her a tired smile with a little roll of his eyes. She rewarded him with a small smile back.
It faded as a thought struck her. Her eyebrows furrowed. “Why… are you…”
She stopped. Benji raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”
“Why do you hate the Greeks and Romans, exactly?”
Benji stared. “Hate them?”
“Yes, hate them. You just… really seem to hate the idea of Egyptians coming together with them. That’s all.”
“Well, I don’t hate them.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” That sentence was meant to stay in Elena’s head, but Benji had this weird effect of pulling words out from under her tongue.
“I don’t! It’s just the whole Setti thing. You have to agree that this is a terrible idea to go through with, when we can easily avoid it. If we never mix, there won’t be any Chaos. Problem solved.”
Elena was quiet in thought, sending out rays of disagreement. He watched her, uncertain smiles playing at his cheeks and expression, before sighing and saying, “What?”
Elena hesitated. “I don’t think we can easily avoid it. We… We’ve already recognized each other’s existence. Sooner or later, one of us was going to need the other’s help. Cultures mix. They do it all the time. I see it happening all the time. London- and even when I go to Spain for vacation- is a rainbow of different cultures, spirits, everything all coming together… I just don’t see how it would be good to separate all of that.”
“We can prevent it for as long as we can.” But the confidence in his voice was wavering.
“You don’t have to, like, invite the Greeks and Romans to be magicians or anything, right? You just have to help them when they need help. And ditto for us. It makes sense.”
“What about war? Between all of us? Isn’t that a good reason to stay separate?”
“Not if there’s no danger of any real war happening.”
Benji lapsed into silence. Elena chose this moment to turn around, a little uncomfortably. Maybe she’d made her point too strongly. She curled up on the side of the window. A little sun peeked out from the gray swirling cauldron that was the sky.
“I guess I just don’t like change,” came the voice from the other side of the chair.
She had no idea why, but something skipped underneath her skin. There was something so vulnerably sweet about him admitting that. She watched the outside world for a while, focusing her Sight on different layers, seeing little fairies twitter around, catching glimpse of a guy with one eye strolling happily down the street.
She remembered once, when she was younger, that she wanted all of this to go away. How many good things she let slip out of her hands just because there was an underside of nastiness to them. But wasn’t that life? Wasn’t there always an underside?
For the millionth time in two days, she thought back to the time when they were both twelve, and how crazy it was that they met again.
That coincidence must be some sort of magic.
Elena thought to how she felt when she realized- for the second time- that this world wasn’t the way she thought it was. Fear. Total fear. And disgust, at all the things that were happening to her.
And she remembered how quickly her feelings changed.
“Don’t worry,” Elena without turning around. Her lips stretched across her face, and she closed her eyes, basking in her sudden, surprising happiness. “You’ll learn to love it.”
***
For the second time in two days in being with strange people in strange places, Elena realized she’d forgotten her parents.
She picked up the pace, walking briskly through the crowd and down the street, her mind clouded. She almost left her friends- friends? Was she allowed to call them friends?- behind when she heard shouts.
“Elena!” Wyn called, high and clear above the buzz and the chatter of London. “Elena! Wait for us!”
She waved her pale, translucent hands up in the air. Elena caught sight of them, nodded, and waved back. She stopped in her tracks, closing her eyes. How was she such a terrible daughter?
And what if she ran into them here? Elena’s eyes snapped open, suddenly terrified. How awful would that be if her own parents interfered her mission?
Oh, god. But they couldn’t. Because they might be in danger.
She’d forgotten, in the excitement. Again. Oh, my goodness, how could she-
“What the heck?” commented Benji, breezily, grinning from ear to ear. He seemed to like the city, and all the nonsense that came with it. “What’s wrong with you?”
Elena turned to Wyn. “Um… I gave you your phone back, right?”
Wyn’s eyes clouded dreamily. She frowned. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
Elena groaned, putting her hands to her forehead. So it was at the sanctuary. Which means that she won’t hear from them in days, and by then they could already be in danger.
“Why?” Concern wiped Wyn’s open, light face into a scrunched expression of knots and worry. “Why? What happened?”
“I just… I gave them a ring, but they didn’t answer.”
The other two waited. Elena, remembering their mission, turned around and continued walking. They followed.
“So…?”
“They always answer.” Elena continued, her steps going faster. Her expression didn’t change, becoming emotionless. She tried to force the feeling to the back of her mind. “Always. Except when they’re at work.”
“Did you try their cell phones?”
“My mama’s mobile is broken. My papa’s mobile is wired to his work. He gets about a million rings a day.”
“Well, were they at work?” Benji pressed further. Elena shook her head, biting her lip.
“Their work is at 8. It was 6:30 when I….”
Something ticked in Elena’s eyes- a light. She clapped a hand to her mouth.
“What’s the time difference from New York to London?”
A silence, and Wyn squealed behind her. “Three hours!”
It must have been the oddest thing to watch, if you cared enough to watch it. Elena put her hands in her face and almost cried, Wyn throwing her arms around her and jumping up and down. “Three hours!” she sang, dancing away. “They were at work! They’re safe! They’re safe! Three hours!”
Benji started laughing, hard, very hard, doubling over, as Wyn continued to dance and Elena allowed herself one sob, two sobs, six sobs of relief. Finally, she straightened up, and Wyn danced her way over to Benji and Elena, linking her dainty fairy-freckled arms between them, skipping down the street. And Benji was still laughing.
“Three hours!” Elena sang along with Wyn, embarrassed at herself, embarrassed at this situation, unbelievably happy and unbelievably dizzy. “Three hours!”
When Elena was coming back down to reality, she recognized the small, narrow street way that was coming up. She stopped the trio just as they were about to blast past it.
“This,” she nodded her head towards it. “This is where we start.”
Benji raised his hand, his black shirt pulling up with it. “Technically, I think we started at Cl-“
“Shh,” Elena smiled at him. She gently pulled Wyn- along with Benji- into the little street.
Oh, yes. This was right.
The graffiti swerved into a small, abandoned parking lot, where the columns, walls, and even the ceilings were covered. All of it was fairly recent- pops of gold, red, bright, bright blues, inappropriate words and pretty beautiful murals sung out at her…
“Why-“ Benji started to blurt, but Wyn stopped him, taking his arm and pointing. “Look.”
Hieroglyphs. Once you started seeing one, you starting seeing them everywhere. Phrases. Runes. Sphinx faces. All of them, decorating this little corner of the universe, edging out into the streets, painted onto some benches. Elena had followed some monsters here once, and examined all of this before. When she waited for a whole day, skipping school to do so, and nothing showed up, she gave up on this place. But now that she knew some background…
Elena was sure this had something to do with Setti. Sure of it.
“And-“ Wyn traced her fingers along a broken column. It looked slashed, not smashed, to pieces. “Do you think…?”
“The baby lion bird?” Elena said softly. She coughed. “I mean, the Sphinx?”
She realized something, furrowing her face into recognition. Elena turned. “Um, wait. You were the one who stabbed Baby, right? With my own knife? Just out of curiousity.”
Benji blinked. Twice. “Oh. Oh, yeah.”
“Huh,” Elena said noncommittally. “That’s funny. Because I believe I had it under control. Until you got me knocked out.”
“What? I had it under control!”
Elena’s voice stayed sweet, any real feelings pushed back. “Oh. Yes. So you were the one that sang the thing to sleep while dangling off its oily back?”
“You didn’t have your knife! I thought I’d use it for you!”
Wyn interjected, finished looking around. “Are we waiting for something?”
Elena was snapped back to reality, brushing her ebony waves from her eyes. She concentrated, dipping her Sight into the magical layers.
The effect was almost immediate.
They’d been here. Setti'd been here. And recently. Maybe an hour, maybe seconds before they walked in. And they left a trail for them to follow, without realizing it.
The golden, sandy magic slugged across the sky.
Elena smiled. “No waiting. Now we can go.”
***
“What time is it? I feel… like we’ve been walking for ages,” Nico admitted. Because he did. But the deeper they got into the Duat (the more he staggered), the more agitated Sadie got.
She shrugged. “There’s an internal clock here, for Ra’s nightly journeys. But even with that, time is different within the actual hours. This is so weird,” she added to herself, worriedly. A bubble from the river floated in front of her and popped. She almost shrieked. “This is so weird…”
A looming hand reached out, grabbing Sadie Kane and Nico with two fists, a head appearing out of the water. As Nico struggled, Sadie looked annoyed. “Shezmu. Not in the mood. Just set us down over there, please.”
Shezmu sighed, like this request was incredibly saddening. “Would you like a perfume sample?”
Sadie thought about, halfway glancing towards Nico, before shaking her head. “We’ll give the poor guy a break. Look at me, Shezmu. My gods. I’m all grown up!”
He didn’t respond to that, simply choosing to drop the two people on the ground in front of the gates instead. Nico rubbed his neck, and his chin, where he pricked stubble. He arched his hand away.
“Shezmu,” Sadie asked, in wonder, and disgust, as she looked at the area around her. Nico didn’t seem to find anything wrong with this gloomy, river and the floating ghosts and items and the sulfurous smell to the air, but apparently she did. “What’s happening? The gods… they haven’t been here in ages...”
“Chaos comes closer, Sadie Kane,” Shezmu says darkly, before starting to retreat.
“Shezmu!” Sadie shrieked. “What do you mean-”
“Chaos comes closer,” Shezmut called unhelpfully, before disappearing back underneath the water.
Openmouthed, Sadie looked back at Nico, and the gates to where the Land of the Dead lay. She got out a piece of paper and started furiously writing directions.
“Uh, hey,” Nico said, awkwardly. “What exactly is happening, here-”
“I’m sorry,” Sadie said so miserably, so sincerely, that Nico said “It’s okay” without even hearing for what she was apologizing for. “You’ll have to be on your own from here on out.”
“Um... what?”
“There’s something bad happening, son of Haiti,” Sadie shook her head so solemnly that Nico felt like it’d be inappropriate to correct her. “And I have to get to my husband first-hand to see what’s going on… as well as First Nome…”
“Sadie, how am I supposed to get back up to actual earth?”
“My father will help you,” she called out, already jogging away. She pointed at the piece of paper. “Instructions are there!” Her voice became a fading sound in the distance. “I have to warn Carter!”
“Wait- Sadie!” Nico called out, disbelievingly. But she was gone.
Nico had been left alone in front of a Land of the Dead that wasn’t his.
It’s rare that he’s ever felt this awkward, this uncomfortable.
He closed his eyes, counted to ten, tried to not strangle himself to death, and slowly unfurled the paper.

Notes

WHY WAS THIS EASIER TO WRITE THAN MY NOVEL:((