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chapter fifty ☄︎. *. ⋆
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"I DON'T GET IT," I said. "Why do we have to get.. wherever we're going by sunset?"
"As I said before," Zoë said harshly, "we are going to the garden of my sisters. My old home. And we must get there by sunset because the Hesperides are the nymphs of the sunset. We can only enter their garden as day changes to night."
"What about, like, daylight savings?"
The look Zoë gave me told me not to ask any more questions.
"If we miss it, our next chance will be after the winter solstice has already passed," Thalia said. "We have to free Artemis by tonight."
Or Annabeth will be dead, I thought, but I didn't say that.
"We need a car," Thalia said. "And.. something to do with the Ophiotaurus. We can't leave him here."
Grover stopped in his tracks. "I've got an idea! The Ophiotaurus can appear in different bodies of water, right?"
"Well, yeah," Percy said. "I mean, he was in Long Island Sound. Then he just popped into the water at Hoover Dam. And now he's here."
"So maybe we could coax him back to Long Island Sound," Grover said. "Then Chiron could help us get him to Olympus."
"But he was following Percy," I pointed out. "If he's not there, how will Bessie know where to go?"
"Moo," Bessie said forlornly.
"I... I can show him," Grover said. "I'll go with him."
We all stared at him. Grover was no fan of water. He'd almost drowned last summer at the Sea of Monsters, and he couldn't swim very well with his goat hooves. It meant a lot that he would offer to go instead of any of us.
Percy gave Grover and Bessie an oceanic blessing on behalf of his father. After a melancholic goodbye, the odd pair submerged beneath the waves and headed for Long Island. It was now up to Percy, Thalia, Zoë, and me.
"Well, that is one problem addressed," Zoe said. "But how can we get to my sisters' garden?"
"Thalia's right," Percy said. "We need a car. But there's nobody to help us here. Unless we, uh, borrowed one."
"Not opposed," I threw in.
Percy rolled his eyes. "We're not committing a felony. Anybody else have anything?"
"Wait," Thalia said. She started rifling through her backpack. "There is somebody in San Francisco who can help us. I've got the address here somewhere."
