Only what if they’re already far ahead? What if we’re wasting time? And what in the name of Hades happens at night?
“Did you hear that?” I call up to Zai.
He doesn’t look away from whatever has his attention but tosses me a thumbs-up. I go back to hacking sticks of bamboo with my axe.
“I’m telling you, taking this long is going to get one of us murdered,” Amir says from behind me in a tone riddled with arrogance. I don’t know if it’s coming from being a teenager, being a rich kid, dealing with fear, or all three, but his constant brand of critical commentary has made the thirty minutes we’ve taken so far even longer than it had to be.
Amir is seated on a log, his booted foot stuck out, helping Trinica strip the leaves off vines and tie the ends together to make rope. The twine I had stashed in my vest only went so far. She bumps him with her shoulder. “Not much longer.”
Amir makes a face. Gods save me from sixteen-year-old boys.
“Why don’t you gather more vines,” Trinica suggests, holding up the one she’s working on.
Amir looks from me, to Trinica, then back to me. “I’d rather chop up bamboo.”
I can practically hear Hades growling at me to not hand over my weapon, my relic, to one of my competitors. Even my own common sense says it’s a bad idea. But Trinica and Amir took a risk by sticking with us for this Labor. And building trust needs to start with the first stone. “You’ll probably do a better job of it, anyway.”
I hold my axe out to him.
Amir blinks, and Trinica sits back just a tad. Clearly, I surprised them. But Amir recovers quickly.
“Well…” he says as he takes it, solemn as a temple priest, “the gods blessed me with all these muscles for a reason.”
I can’t look at Trinica or Meike or I’ll laugh, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings.
Amir starts hacking at the bamboo, doing a better job than I was, as expected. I look over my shoulder and catch Trinica watching. She shrugs. I shrug.
“Verdammt!” Meike exclaims in a harsh whisper as she stumbles back from the stream where she was getting a drink of water.
All of us freeze. “What?” Trinica asks.
Meike plunges her hand into the river, whimpering a little. Trinica and I rush over to her just as she pulls it back out. A hiss escapes me at the sight of an angry red blister the size of a silver dollar rising on her palm.
“What the hells happened?” I ask as she sticks her hand back in the water.
Tears trickle down her cheeks, her face tight with pain, but she manages to point at a plant. More poison ivy peeking out from under a broad leaf. “It’s not normal,” she says.
Fuck me. I knew this Labor couldn’t be this easy. We’ve just been lucky that we haven’t already tangled with the stuff.
“Be very careful!” Trinica calls out to Amir. “The poison ivy causes terrible blisters. Don’t touch it at all costs.”
Then she pulls a roll of self-adhesive bandage out of a pocket. Noticing my stare, she shrugs. “Mortal tools.”
After that, we work more carefully. But the damn ivy hides everywhere, and by the time Zai finishes assembling the entire pallet with the bamboo, twine, and vines we gathered, he’s the only one who doesn’t have at least one blister somewhere on him. Mine is on the side of my neck and feels like acid is eating its way through my skin.
Daylight dwindling, we load up and start dragging, swapping out to share the work. Two at a time can use the bamboo bar that extends wider than the pallet on either side.
It takes about five minutes to realize that this is going to suck worse than we thought.
It’s rough going, having to stop to hack through underbrush, maneuver around increasingly large patches of poison ivy, and lift the pallet over larger rocks. Sometimes we have to unload it completely to get over obstacles, then reload on the other side. One kilometer is going to take for-fucking-ever.
And every second, the cavern we’re in gets dimmer.
But we keep going, plodding along toward the darkened tunnel or cave Dionysus pointed us to, the entrance to it growing larger and larger as we get closer. Until we crest a fall of rocks and can see down into it.
“What in the Underworld?” Trinica snaps as we stare.
The tunnel to the second doline is a fall of rocks that leads from where we stand to a small underground stream that shouldn’t be too deep. I can’t see what the other side looks like, but there’s a circle of dim light far off in the deep darkness. That has to be the other doline.
But that’s not what we’re staring at.
Poison ivy is…everywhere.
51
Building A Team
“Well, at least the poison ivy is only on the ceiling and the walls,” Meike says.
Trinica side-eyes her. “Are you always this cheerful?”
Meike shrugs. “I decided a while ago that I can go one of two ways in life. Become angry and bitter, or deliberately choose to look at each day as an adventure. I chose the latter.” She winks at Trinica. “And this is certainly an adventure.”
Is that what we’d call this?
The light shifts around us, dimming even more, as if the dying sun is reminding us to hurry up.
