The Heir of Olympus and the Forest Realm (23 page)

But the stars and the large moon were both visible in all their glory here, and soon his path was illuminated as fully as if it were midday. Growing up in a small town, he thought he had been privileged enough to see the galaxies in their completeness, but being out here, eons from the lights of civilization, he was aware of how little he had truly seen.

The duskiness of space was nearly eradicated by the absolute blanket of burning diamonds. Gordie gazed in wonder, incapable of even finding a single constellation due to the great density of the astrological envelope. The very real fear he had felt was gone again, dispersed into the heavens.

As he searched the star field, Gordie finally landed upon a familiar grouping: the same stars that led him out of the Underworld twinkled in his eyes. He could not be sure, but they somehow seemed brighter than the other stars, so he followed them. The constellation almost looked like a mouse, with a long tail raised up, as if in alert. Some small part of his brain told him that it was
not
a rodent, but whether or not he knew its true essence, he could not recall.

Gordie walked on, not even looking down at the earth beneath his feet, but placing one foot in front of the other, striding towards his stellar guide. A flock of bats fluttered overhead, squeaking at one another. An owl hooted in a nearby tree, coming to life and preparing for a night of hunting. The next sound to reach his ears made him smile blissfully as the rushing water of the river sang to the night. Ahead he saw shimmering lights bouncing off the ground, writhing and dancing, and he realized it was not the earth, but the water of the river reflecting the starlight.

As Gordie approached the bank, he experienced another jolt of excitement as he saw his bat lying in wait. He snatched it up and inspected it, looking at the smooth wood grain and running his hand over it to ensure it was unharmed. It appeared to be intact and he wondered how it might have arrived there. Unable to come up with a reasonable conclusion, he gave it up and moved closer to the river, hoping to see a naiad floating beneath the surface, waiting to give him a ride home.

“Hello?” Gordie called over the water. “Naiad lady?” he asked, wishing that he had been able to read her Greek name when they had met. There was no response, so he dropped to his hands and knees, took a deep breath, and stuck his head in the water.

“Herrrooooo!” he called into the current. Gordie pulled his head out and waited, but again no response.

“Crap.”

The old sense of discomfort returned. He looked around and saw no movement, no living things to help or harm him. He crossed his legs and waited in hopes that the water nymphs would return. Hunger gripped him again and, after taking inventory, he decided he had enough fruit to treat himself, so he munched on a couple of each variety. And he waited some more.

After what seemed like an hour, Gordie gave up on waiting for a guide to arrive and reluctantly started searching for shelter. A large pine tree nearby lifted its skirt far enough off the ground that he could slide underneath. When he got inside he released an awed whisper in spite of himself, “Whoa!”

The diameter of the tree between the most distant needles had to be forty feet—being inside the canopy felt like he had stepped into a circus tent. Great, powerful branches radiated from the center like the spokes on a bicycle tire, and spiraled upwards into the dark green gloom.

The needles beneath the tree were soft and forgiving, making a cozy little bed. Gordie rested his back against the trunk and looked out through the branches, still eying the river in case a rescuer came searching for him. He was comforted by the covering, feeling confident that he would have a much easier time observing whatever shuffled around outside the tree without being discovered in his hiding spot.

A sliver of the moon was visible through the dense branches above and he was grateful for the night-light. He remained on watch with a steady fear lingering, but he was still in control. After the moon had shifted its position above him, he began to feel more uneasy, hoping that Chiron and his family were out there looking for him.

Fear started to wrestle with fatigue and soon the pendulum shifted from wanting to remain on guard despite tiredness, to wanting to rest despite anxiety. His lids started to droop, but he fought for some time to remain vigilant.

“Maybe I’ll just rest my eyes,” Gordie whispered aloud, trying to convince himself that he would not fall asleep. He nestled down into the cushy needles and spooned his bat like a child cuddling a teddy-bear. His eyes flickered open with every creek of the wind or scuffle of small creatures, but more lazily every time, until he fell asleep.

Unidentifiable horrors populated Gordie’s dreams. Dark shapes, dark shadows, following him as he ran through thick darkness, unable to escape his hunters. He tried to scream as he ran, but his voice was swallowed by the nothingness. Running through a thick pine forest, dark needles scratching him in his angst, a prowler running a parallel path on the other side of a piney thicket, just out of reach, but always too close for comfort.

He jolted awake. A little puff of steam escaped his panting mouth before it evaporated into the crisp air. He heard the rustle of needles and twisted around, but breathed a sigh of relief when he realized it was just the wind. And then he heard a snarl.

Gordie went rigid. Every hair on his body was standing up, trying to run from their follicular prisons. His skin erupted with goose bumps. He could hear a gravelly panting coming from outside his needled hideout. His eyes widened as he glimpsed four thick, black, hairy paws under the pine’s skirt, stalking the outside of the massive tree. He could hear sniffs and snuffles as the creature searched for the origin of his scent. Some instinct—however unrecognizable in Gordie’s terror—told him that the distance between the front and back paws of this canine was too great for it to be an ordinary wolf, especially because the front paws were not paws at all, but giant, shaggy hands.

Gordie gripped his bat so tightly he thought it might crack, holding his breath as his panic rose with the rapid tune of a death march drummed by his heart. Then the front legs of the creature disappeared. The back feet pivoted until the yellow curving nails pointed directly at his location and the boughs just above his head began to part. He sidled back against the tree trunk as his pants filled with hot liquid that immediately started to cool in the late-night chill, leaving him feeling colder than he had ever been in his life.

Unable to move, unable to think, Gordie sat, looking up as the needles rustled. “Please, God. Please, God. Please, God,” he chanted to his bat, almost as if he were whispering into the ear of a lover. He was unsure of what he pleaded for, but he continued to do so until his voice was stolen by the appearance of a wide, dark snout, baring its many teeth beneath menacing yellow eyes.

The werewolf held the boughs apart with its enormous hands, the pine needles appearing to frame its horrific visage like drapery. The snarl transformed into a toothy grin before the wolf licked its lips and pulled its head out of the pine. For one hopeful second, Gordie believed that the monster decided to leave him be, but then one of the massive hands shot back into the tree, grabbed one of the branches like it were strangling a boa, and pulled.

An explosion of cracking wood sounded over Gordie’s head as he was showered with splinters. The monster had ripped the fifteen-foot-long branch right out of the trunk, with the ease of plucking a flower, before it reached in another paw and repeated the process.

Gordie sat immobilized by fear as branch after branch was pulled out above his head, not even flinching as wood chips fell into his hair and eyes. Finally, the creature stood in relief, backlighted by the moon in an arched portal that had not existed in the pine’s perimeter until seconds earlier.

On its hind legs the werewolf stood seven feet tall, with veins bulging out of its enormous biceps. The forearms of the creature were disproportionately long and slender compared to the girth of the upper arms and bulbous shoulders that formed a straight line with the head, as the monster’s neck jutted forward, not up. Its torso was its most human feature, the only bestial element of it was the matted hair inching in on the chiseled abdominal and pectoral muscles. This hair ran down the sinewy legs all the way to the clawed feet, which Gordie then realized were more humanoid than canine.

The werewolf dropped to all fours and began to saunter towards him. The hunter seemed confident that its prey was paralyzed by fear. It took its time closing the fifteen-foot gap.

A tear ran down Gordie’s face as the monster approached, and he started to appreciate the truth of his situation: he was not a superhero. His life was never going to be about winning glorious battles over superhuman foes and standing atop their lifeless bodies as the media snapped pictures. He was not going to be celebrated by seven billion people who lauded him as a hero. These demons he was to face—the demon he was facing now was real, powerful, and deadly. It was not a game. None of it was. And he finally knew it. Gordie became furious with himself when he finally understood what his mom had warned him of, and now it was too late.

The werewolf fixed him with its bloodthirsty gaze and stopped three feet from him. Through the smell of fresh cut wood, Gordie also inhaled the damp mustiness of the monster, as well as a more frighteningly metallic scent emanating from its panting maw.

The werewolf cocked its head, almost as if to ask, ‘Are you really not going to defend yourself?’ and then it opened its mouth to release a throaty growl, its ears pinned back and its eyes narrowed.

Gordie wrung his hands on the clammy wood of his bat, angry with himself for being such a child, angry with Chiron for sending him here to die, angry with Zeus for killing his father . . . and he resolved to fight.

He met the stare of the werewolf, sending as much hate and fury into its eyes as he could muster, and the monster grinned again. Still seated, Gordie shifted the bat to his right hip like a samurai readying his blade, angry at himself again for not standing when he had the chance. His hands tightened on the handle as he prepared to take a seated swing, wishing that he just had his batting gloves. Both parties remained still, coiled like snakes, waiting for their opponent to make a move. The werewolf lunged first.

As the monster sprang, Gordie roared and swung his bat in an arc like he was trying to chop off the creature’s head. He felt the reverberations in his hands as the bat struck the beast in the jaw, sending it crashing into a branch with a roar of anger as Gordie spun in the opposite direction to crawl underneath a low-hanging limb. One of the werewolf’s claws tore through Gordie’s pant leg as he tried to escape, cutting open his thigh, but he didn’t register the pain as he scrambled out of harm’s way.

The werewolf snapped back to its feet, snarling as it tore after its prey. Gordie heard a branch behind him shatter as the monster broke after him, and renewed panic burst in his mind. He stood up between two thick branches, on the opposite side of the vast trunk, and started to climb.

At first his climbing was hampered as he held his bat in one hand, but he quickly got the hang of it—it helped that the branches were thick enough for him to stand on. He pulled himself up and up, rising through the boughs with stunning speed in his adrenaline fueled frenzy, ignoring the raw feeling in his palms. He climbed faster as he heard crashing branches beneath him, the powerful scent of pine filling his lungs as the needles smacked him in the face. He glanced down to see the salivating wolf-man picking his way up after him. Gordie screeched and climbed faster still.

Twenty feet. Thirty feet. His hands were sticky from sap. They climbed and he could feel the beast closing. Gordie planted his feet on a thick limb and wrapped his arm around another, freeing an arm to wield his bat. The monster sprang from ten feet below him and he took a golf swing at its face. But the werewolf was prepared this time. It bit down on the wood of the bat, tearing it out of Gordie’s hand with one violent neck-jerk and spitting it out. They watched as the bat tumbled downward, careening off branches, until it made a harmless plinking sound as it rattled to rest on the ground.

The wolf looked back at Gordie with a devilish smile, showing every jagged tooth. Gordie gulped and climbed again. The werewolf hopped from limb to limb behind him until Gordie could see it in his periphery as he climbed, leaping almost monkey-like through the branches. He saw the wolf stop and coil ten feet to his left before it sprang at him, now fifty feet above the forest floor.

Gordie saw the bogey coming in on his flank and looked around wildly. Ten feet to his right a sturdy branch beckoned him and he launched towards it. His arms windmilled through the air as his eyes widened and his mouth opened in a silent scream of anticipation. He stretched out his right arm as his left arm circled around back once more, propelling him onward. When his fingers were less than a foot away, he knew he was going to make the leap, until his left arm was yanked downward, pulling the shoulder out of the socket with an audible pop as he whipped around in midair to face his doom.

For a split second, Gordie and the wolf made eye contact as they began to tumble. Gordie was pulled towards the werewolf like he was a marlin being reeled into a boat. Furious triumph burned in the wolf’s eyes, its jaw clamped on Gordie’s left wrist and forearm, while its arms reached out to wrap him in a bear hug. Gordie felt terror and anger and sadness before he felt the confusion of an impossible victory.