Annabeth Neverending Read Online Free PDF Page A

moved it here.
    My stomach drops to the floor and then flops right over.
    Did I unlock the hope chest and set it on my bed without realizing it? That’s the only explanation that makes sense, but it isn’t exactly a comforting one. Because it basically means I’m losing my mind. But doesn’t questioning one’s own mental health effectively rule out insanity? Or does believing that I’m sane simply because I question my mental health make me even more crazy?
    As proof of my nervous breakdown, before I can stop myself, I take hold of the necklace and feel myself falling away…

4
    M oments fly past; time truly is fleeting. I step down from a wooden chariot painted with gold, and Sethe, his hair now beginning to grow out into more of a crew cut, helps me descend onto the sand. We’re surrounded by faceless others, people who cease to exist when he’s in my presence, yet the world closes in, and we don’t speak to one another. But the looks we share are so charged: the heat runs through me.
    We walk side by side through a crowded bazaar where merchants are peddling their wares. We stroll through the ornate palace and gaze at the battle scenes depicted on the mural - covered walls. We amble through the bright green gardens as flower petals dot the air, never speaking, always watching each other — wanting each other? His hair continues to lengthen; are our feelings growing as well? Are they quietly deepening as the moments pass?
    I know they are.
    Things are shifting. The time, the place. I’m pushed and pulled, only to find myself in a vast and elaborate set of rooms. The place is filled with the gifts that were presented to me by the pharaoh, antiquities that any museum would now fight to display.
    I hear the sound of scratching at my chamber door. The body I’m inhabiting rushes to investigate and finds an Abyssinian cat. She’s sleek, with exaggerated, triangular ears, and her brown coat is ticked with black. I take the animal into my arms. I peer into her little face and find that she’s odd - eyed. One is green, and the other is gold.
    “Her eyes are two different colors. How unusual! Thank you, Bastet, oh beloved feline goddess, for sending her to me.”
    I allow the cat to sit in my lap as a young slave girl, probably my personal maid, liberally applies and then wipes away a thick paste of deep red from my fingernails. This must be a primitive attempt at nail polish. I admire her handiwork.
    “Such a cat is an omen of good things to come,” my vessel states with confidence.
    “I would imagine so,” the girl says almost inaudibly, though it’s doubtful she’d voice her dissent. “What shall you name her?”
    “Kitty Kitty,” I reply.
    Though I understand the meaning implicitly, I realize that to unfamiliar ears the words would sound like “Mew Mew.”
    After blowing on my nails to dry them, I set the cat down and move to a cavernous closet, where I assess the vast array of clothing in my wardrobe. I pull out a long and flashy gown made of netted blue beads.
    “Just what jewelry shall I wear this evening? The ankh is my favorite, but I do not know…”
    The maid skulks off, muttering something about having to clean her ceramic basin.
    Sethe is standing against the wall, stoic, yet engaged. He scans the rooms as he keeps watch. Thick straps of mahogany leather crisscross over his ample biceps. A dagger hangs by his side, at the ready.
    I slink over and stand right in front of him, making it difficult for him to look away.
    “Tell me what to choose. Surely you have seen every piece I own.”
    Sethe pauses. This probably isn’t the kind of information a princess generally extorts from a slave guard, but he doesn’t seem embarrassed. This is clearly a sorry, immature stab at flirting. He looks at me — or whoever I am within this vision — and I feel like the wind has been knocked from my chest.
    Before Sethe can respond, a squat young woman, whose sense of entitlement is so obvious I feel it