Elementals 3: The Head of Medusa (6 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hypatia, the Head Elder of Greece, was already at Darius’s when my parents and I got there, so they were able to meet her as well. Once introduced, they went upstairs to speak with her and Darius privately. I waited downstairs with the others and updated them on what had happened last night.

My parents only talked with Darius and Hypatia for about ten minutes. I paced around the living room the entire time, too anxious to sit still. I was afraid that when they came back downstairs, they were going to grab me and try to force me to move far away from here.

Instead, they simply hugged me goodbye, wished me luck, and headed out the door. I watched their car back out of the driveway, suspicious that they’d left so quickly, and with so little fuss.

“You didn’t wipe their memories, did you?” I asked Darius and Hypatia once their car was gone.

“Of course not,” Darius said. “You asked us not to, and I respect that.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Then how’d you convince them to let me go so easily?”

“You never asked us not to use gray energy on them at all,” Hypatia said. “So we reinforced everything you told them last night, and helped them accept your decision to do what is right. They now fully understand how important it is for you to complete your mission, and will respect and support all of your future decisions on the matter.”

I thanked them, grateful that they’d respected my wishes. But I wasn’t sure how I felt about what they
had
done. Because on one hand, I wanted my parents to respect my decision by their own free will. On the other hand, it made everything easier to know that I wouldn’t have to fight them on this any further, and that I could be honest with them while focusing on what was important—making sure this mission was a success.

It was a lot to think about, but since there was nothing I could do about it now, I did my best to brush it aside. I could worry about it later. Right now, we had more important matters to deal with. Mainly—going to Antarctica, entering Chione’s ice palace, and acquiring the Golden Sword.

“Now, I trust that you all are dressed properly, in multiple layers to guard against the cold?” Hypatia asked. “Even though Chris will be able to control the temperature around you, you still must be prepared for anything.”

“Yes,” I said, since last night we’d all looked up what to wear for such extreme temperatures. The others nodded as well. Luckily, since we lived in Massachusetts, we owned enough winter clothes that we were able to layer properly. My wardrobe that I’d had in Georgia would never have been up for the task. It was sweltering inside, and all the clothing made me feel clunky and less nimble, but we would be grateful for the layers once we stepped through the portal. 

“Good.” Hypatia nodded. “Since you won’t have cell phone service to let me know when to open the portal for your return, and I can’t go with you since I would be a burden during your fight with the ice nymphs, I’ve devised a plan. I will open the portal in intervals after your arrival. The first interval will be after five minutes. That is your emergency portal back home, in case something goes wrong immediately after your arrival. The second interval is after one hour. If you’re unable to win against the ice nymphs, this is your chance to return. I’ll open it again two hours after that, just in case the fight takes longer. After that, I’ll assume that you’ve won against the ice nymphs and are in Chione’s ice palace, or have found cover in the nearby South Pole station. There’s a witch who works at the South Pole station—his name is Jeffrey Feldman, and he’s the breakfast chef there. He’s been alerted that you might arrive and seek him out. If you end up in the South Pole station, find him and he’ll contact me so I can send a portal to you there.”

“And if we’re in Chione’s ice palace?” I asked. 

“Then Chione will be able to create a portal leading back here,” she said. “Now, are you ready?”

We told her that yes, we were.

“Take note of the time when the last person comes through,” she said. “I’ll create the interval portals according to that time.”

With that, she held her hands out and created the swirling portal on the wall of Darius’s living room. Portals were always foggy, making it difficult to see what was on the other side of them. This one was cloudier than usual—as if all that waited on the other side was ice, as far as the eye could see. Which, I supposed, it was.

Chris walked through first, because he would be heating the air for when the rest of us arrived. Kate followed him, and Danielle went after her. Which left only Blake and me.

“Together?” he asked, holding out his hand.

“Together,” I repeated, placing my hand in his. His eyes met mine, he gave my hand a squeeze, and together, we stepped through the portal.

CHAPTER TWELVE

My stomach dropped with the roller coaster sensation that I had every time I walked through a portal. I would never get used to it. Which was saying a lot, because I
loved
roller coasters. But there was something terrifying about it when you weren’t strapped into anything, and felt like you were free-falling into nothingness.

At least, this time, I had Blake’s hand to hold me steady.

My feet touched solid ground, and icy wind cut into my face. It was freezing—all the way down to my bones. I wanted to get inside and enjoy a steaming mug of hot chocolate. But I opened my eyes, and in front of me, as far as I could see, was a flat, endless expanse of white snow. There were no mountains, no buildings—nothing. It was like a desert, but with snow instead of sand. The sun hung low in the sky, as if preparing to set. But I knew from reading an article last night about Antarctica that the sun wouldn’t set until two weeks from now, on the spring equinox. In Antarctica, the sun rose on the fall equinox, and stayed up until setting on the spring equinox. They had two seasons—day, which was summer, and night, which was winter. I was glad that our trip here was during their day, and not during their night.

“Welcome to the South Pole!” Chris said with a huge smile, as if he owned the place. “Turn around and check out the sign.”

I turned around, and sure enough, there was a big white sign that said “Geographic South Pole” with a map of where we were. Next to it was an American Flag, and far behind it was a cluster of industrial-looking buildings that I assumed made up the station where we would find the witch who could contact Hypatia in case of an emergency.

I rubbed my hands over my arms, trying to keep warm. “I thought you were going to warm it up for us before we got here?” I asked Chris.

“Trust me—I
did
warm it up.” He laughed. “By about forty degrees. I would guess that right now it feels like zero degrees Fahrenheit. It’ll take too much energy to warm it up much more, and I figured that this was tolerable.”

“Barely,” I muttered, my teeth chattering.

“Spoken like a southerner.” Danielle rolled her eyes. “This feels fine to me.”

Blake wrapped his arms around me, and I sunk into his embrace, letting him attempt to warm me up. It helped, but it didn’t change the fact that it was
freezing
out here. Literally. I couldn’t imagine what it would have felt like if Chris hadn’t been warming it up for us. Negative forty degrees was beyond my comprehension. The people who voluntarily worked on this frozen continent must be out of their minds.

“So… any idea where the ice palace is?” Kate asked.

“Are you kidding?” Danielle said, looking out into the open plain of snow. “It’s right there.”

I squinted at where she was looking, just in case I was missing something. But there was nothing there. Only untouched snow that went on for miles and miles, until it disappeared into the clear blue sky of the horizon.

“Right where?” Blake asked. “All I see is snow.”  

“Right. There.” She pointed where we were all already looking, but as hard as I strained, I couldn’t see anything resembling a palace.

“Is it really far in the distance or something?” I’d always had perfect vision, but maybe it was time to get my eyes checked again.

Danielle glared at us and crossed her arms, although she didn’t look very intimidating, given all the layers of padding she was wearing. “Now isn’t the time to try being funny,” she said.

“Cool it, Ice Princess.” Chris held his hands out, as if trying to stop her from lashing out. “I don’t see anything either.”

Danielle stared him down, like she was waiting for him to say that he was kidding. When it was clear that he wasn’t taking it back, and that none of us were sticking up for her, she dropped her arms to her sides in defeat. “Seriously?” she asked, looking around at each of us. “
None
of you can see that huge ice palace out there?”

“Nope,” Blake said. “We aren’t just saying that we can’t see it for the hell of it.”

“Well, this is just great.” Danielle huffed. “How are any of you supposed to be helpful in getting into the palace when you can’t even see that it exists?”

“Let’s calm down and think this through logically,” Kate said. “The gods can create shields around anything magical—that’s why the Islands of Old Mythology appear deserted to humans. But anyone who has magic—witches, demigods, or gods—can see through the shields to the Islands. We know that the ice palace is heavily guarded because the Sword of Athena is kept there. The gods don’t want
anyone
getting their hands on that sword. Is it too out there to think that they might create a shield around the ice palace so that
no one
—except for other gods, perhaps—can see it at all?”

“It would make sense,” I said. “No one would be able to steal the sword if they can’t see where it’s kept.”

“So why can
I
see it?” Danielle asked. “I’m not a god, or even a demigod.”

“Because of your element,” Blake said smoothly. “If there’s fire anywhere near me, I can always feel its presence. Like it’s a part of me. It’s the same for you with water, right?”

“Yeah,” Danielle said. “Of course.”

“So because the palace is made of ice—Danielle’s element—she’s able to see it through the shield,” Kate said.

“Got it,” I said. “But if only Danielle can see the palace, then what are
we
supposed to do?”

“Easy,” Blake answered. “We need to pass through the shield. Once we’re through the perimeter, we’ll be able to see what’s behind it.”

Before anyone could respond, the sign that marked the location of the Geographic South Pole rippled and shimmered. A swirling circle was now in the place where the writing had been before.

“The first portal,” I said, looking into it. As always, the portal was foggy, but I could vaguely make out of the warm browns of Darius’s living room.

“Yes,” Kate said, checking her watch. “Which means the next one will be in one hour, and then the next one two after that. If this takes us longer than three hours, we need to hope that we’re either in Chione’s ice palace, or we need to get back here and find that witch at the station.”

“So then what are we standing around here for?” Danielle turned in the direction of the supposed ice palace, her hand on the grip of her sword. “Follow me to the palace.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I didn’t know
where
Danielle was taking us, but this walk was lasting much longer than expected. After about fifteen minutes, Chris had to stop using his power to heat the air around us, because he needed to conserve energy for the eventual fight. So—we had to brave the hike in negative forty-degree weather.

It was impossible. At those temperatures, I coughed with each breath I tried to take, as if the air was a knife stabbing my lungs. We’d been careful to cover up every bit of our skin, but even so, the wind whipped against my body, the cold ripping into every inch of my flesh. Everything hurt—my scalp, my fingers, my nose… even my
eyeballs
hurt, as if they were thickening into ice cubes within my skull. I could barely even blink. The air burned, like cold fire, and dug all the way to the marrow in my bones. My skin felt like it was about to crack into a million different pieces, and I couldn’t think to put one foot in front of the other. Perhaps my brain was freezing, too.

After this, I would never,
ever
complain about the winter in Kinsley again. All I wanted was to run back to the sign, jump through the portal, and warm up near Darius’s fireplace. But I didn’t think I had the energy to move that much. The cold had sapped everything out of me. It was tempting to drop down to the ground, huddle in a ball, close my eyes, and try to wish myself away from here.

This weather was going to
kill
me.

It was too cold to talk, but Blake must have been as miserable as I was, because after ten minutes of trying to brave the cold, he flicked on his lighter and used his power to grow the fire. We all huddled around it, and I leaned closer to the flames and took a deep breath, glad that the air no longer froze my lungs.

“Thank you,” I said, once I was able to speak again. “That was absolute torture.”

“I know,” he said, wrapping his other arm around me to protect me from the cold. I leaned into him, grateful for the additional warmth. “But we have to keep moving. The sooner we get to that palace and fight off those ice nymphs, the sooner we can go inside. Danielle—how much farther do we have to go?”

“We’re almost there,” she said, her voice shaking from the cold. “Maybe about twenty more minutes.”

“Good,” Blake said. “I can hold the fire for that long. We’ll huddle around it as we walk. Once we’re there, Chris can take over and warm the air while we fight the nymphs.”

Fifteen minutes later, we walked through the shield. One minute, I was staring out at a plain of snow, as far as the eye could see. Then, with my next step, a towering snow palace materialized out of thin air.

I froze in place, gazing at the palace. It reminded me of the
Emerald City
in
The Wizard of Oz
, except that instead of being green, it was made of ice, and it was surrounded by a moat of freezing water. Its many turrets rose up like icicles, glimmering in the sunlight. The tallest turret reached so high that I wondered if a person standing up there could see across the entire continent.

“Wow,” I finally said, looking over to Danielle. “You’ve been seeing
that
this entire time?”

“Yep,” she said, looking out at the palace. “It’s pretty incredible, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “It is.”

But we didn’t have much time to admire it, because ice nymphs on white horses surfaced out of the moat, galloping straight in our direction.