Zeus’s voice boomed from up high: “You’ll never find her.”
I will
, Gonzalo thought in spite of everything he was seeing.
I will
.
Gonzalo mustered his last ounce of bravery and stepped
forward, but the ground began to tilt like a seesaw. It was as if
he were walking up a forty-five-degree incline, and the angle
grew steeper by the second. Gravity betrayed him. Before he
knew it, the mattress floor was now a wall and he clung to the
edge of a mattress for dear life. His feet dangled.
Mattresses around the one he was clinging to began to fall
away and whip past him. Thunder members were stuck to
some, oblivious to what was happening. He heard splashes
below, and when he looked down, he saw a lake of blood. The
blood bubbled and frothed into a pink foam, its surface swept
by a wind he couldn’t feel.
Gonzalo started to scream. Zeus laughed at him. Gonzalo
looked up and saw that gravity still functioned normally for
Zeus. He stood perpendicular to Gonzalo, his huge feet only
inches from Gonzalo’s fingers.
“Do you see how he trembles before my power?” Zeus said.
Gonzalo was convinced now. Zeus was doing all of this,
somehow. He was making the world go haywire. He really was
magic, like Nelson had said.
“Make it stop!” Gonzalo said.
“No.”
Zeus stepped on Gonzalo’s fingers, and his precarious hold
275
