Chapter 4: My Dad Teaches Me to Milk a Cow

I'd like to thank Angeloid for leaving a nice review of this fic the other day! That was just the inspiration I needed to make this update I hope y'all enjoy this chapter, and don't forget to review!

We tore through the night along the dark road, wind and rain slamming the Avon car as Dad put the pedal to the medal. Every time a flash of lightning illuminated the backseat, I looked at Grove and wondered if I was going insane, or if the ears were just some sort of really realistic cosplay. But fake ears couldn't bleed, and so I couldn't explain the nick on Grove's left ear, or the faint smell of blood. I wondered how she'd come by that minor injury on her way to find me – and why she was looking for me in the first place. I had so many questions.

But, all I could think to say was, "So, you and my dad….know each other?"

"Not exactly," Grove said, looking out the rearview mirror anxiously. "I mean, we never actually met, but he knew I was watching you."

"Watching me?" I repeated.

"Keeping tabs on you," Grove clarified. "Making sure you were safe. But, I wasn't faking being your BFF," she added hastily. "I am your best friend forever."

"Um…..what are you, exactly?"

"It doesn't matter right now."

"It doesn't matter?!" I cried. "My friend is a friggin' elf –"

Grove's face took on a greenish cast.

I always thought it meant she was nauseous from nerves, but now I wondered if perhaps it was more like those people whose faces turn red when they're angry.

"Nymph!" she cried.

"What?"

"I'm not an elf, I'm a nymph."

"You just said it didn't matter!"

Grove's face got even greener. "There are dryads who would turn you into grass and mow you for such an insult!"

"Whoa. Wait. Dryads? You mean like….Mrs. Brunner's myths?"

"Were those old guys at the bait shop a myth, Perci? Was Mr. Dodds a myth?"

"So you admit there was a Mr. Dodds!"

"Of course-"

"Then why –"

"The less you knew, the less monsters you'd attract," Grove explained, resisting the urge to add Like, duh in a Valley Girl voice. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it didn't work. You started to realize what you are."

"What I – wait, what do you mean?"

Then, suddenly the bellowing noise I'd heard earlier got louder, and I realized that whatever it was was still on our tail.

"Perci," my dad warned, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We need to get you to safety. I have to protect you."

"Protect me from what? I'm not some weak little girl, so just tell me who's after me!"

"Oh, nobody much," Grove said, obviously still miffed about the elf comment. "Just the Queen of the Dead and a few of her blood-thirstiest minions."

"Grove!"

"Sorry, Mr. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please, sir?"

I tried to wrap my brain around what was happening. I'd say it was a dream, but I knew my brain could never come up with anything this crazy. My dad turned left, swerving past farmhouses and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"The summer camp I told you about," my dad said through gritted teeth, seemingly furious that he was forced to even suggest leaving me. "The one your mother wanted to send you to."

"The place you didn't want me to go."

"Listen, sweetheart," Dad commanded, trying not to sound too stern – his anger wasn't at me. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger. I have to keep my little girl safe."

"Because some old dudes cut a piece of a net."

"They weren't old dudes," Grove said. "They were the Fates. Do you know what it means, when you see them? It means that you….that someone is about to die."

"Wait, I thought the Fates were old women," I protested.

"One translation error a thousand years ago," Grove sighed, "and everyone still thinks that. I guess it's because sexist writers saw the word 'weaving' and assumed they were talking about thread."

"Whatever," I shook my head. "More importantly – did you just say I was going to die?!"

"No, I said someone was going to die."

"You meant 'you'. As in me."

"I meant 'you' like 'someone'. Not you 'you'."

"Girls!" my dad cried.

He took a hard right, and I got a glimpse of the shadowy figure in the distance that was following us.

"What was that?" I asked.

"We're almost there," my dad said, ignoring my question. "C'mon, Sal," he told himself. 'You can do this. Just like NASCAR. Come on. Come on."

I didn't know where there was, but I found myself eager to arrive. I was about to ask Grove when suddenly there was a blinding flash and a BOOM! and the car exploded.

I remember feeling weightless and crushed, burning and freezing, at the same time. "Ow," I said, peeling my forehead off the seat in front of me.

"Perci!" my dad cried.

"I'm ok," I muttered weakly.

Ok so the car didn't actually explode. We'd swerved into a ditch and the roof had cracked open. Lightning, I realized. We'd been blasted off the road. Something fell into my lap. It was a head covered in long, curly, earth-colored hair. "Grove!"

She was slumped over, blood trickling from her glossy lips. I grabbed her by her pointed ear and pleaded with her to sit up, thinking, No! I don't care if you look like you belong in Rivendell, you're my BFF and I don't want you to die!

Then she moaned, "Vegetables," and I knew there was hope.

"Perci," my dad said, "we have to….." His voice cracked as he slammed his fist into the steering wheel with frustration.

I looked back, and, in a flash of lightning, I saw a figure lumbering towards us on the shoulder of the road. It was a dark silhouette of the tallest woman I'd ever seen, like a runway model. She appeared to be wearing a fur coat, and some sort of weird necklace. Her hands were stuck out straight in front of her, like a zombie's.

I swallowed hard. "Who is – "

"Perci," my dad said, dead serious. "Get out of the car."

My dad threw himself at the drivers'-side door, trying to use his strength from his rowing-team days to get us out of there. I tried my door, too, but both were stuck. It looked like I was going to have to exit through the roof.

"Climb!" my dad ordered. "Perci – you have to run. Do you see that big tree over there?"

"What?"

Another flash of lightning, and I saw through the window what he meant: a huge pine at the edge of the nearest hill.

"That's the property line," my dad said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in a valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."

"Dad…you're coming with me, right?"

His jaw was set into a hard line as he looked away.

"No!" I cried. "Dad, you have to come with me and protect me! And help me carry Grove! I can't do this alone!"

"Vegetables," Grove moaned a little louder.

The woman in the fur coat drew closer, and I realized that it wasn't a fur coat. It was actual fur, coating her body. And what I thought were her hands stuck out in front of her….couldn't be hands, because her hands were swinging by her sides. Which meant the things sticking out in front of her stomach were…..udders?!

"She doesn't want us," my father told me. "She wants you. Besides, I can't cross the property line….I'm so sorry, Perci, Daddy can't save you this time. You're going to have to be a strong little girl and save yourself."

"But…."

"We don't have time, Perci. I'm so sorry. Go. Hurry."

I got mad then – mad at my father, mad at Grove the nymph, at the furry thing bellowing as it lumbered toward us, like a cow.

I climbed past Grove and out of the car. "You have to come and help me, Dad, come on."

"I told you – "

"Dad! I'm not going without you there with me. Help me with Grove."

I didn't wait for his answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grove from the car. Thankfully, she was pretty light. Not that surprising, since she was a preteen girl. But, I was a preteen girl, too, so I wouldn't have been able to drag her that far if my dad hadn't come to my aid.

Together, we draped Grove's bangle-laden arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through the tall, wet grass.

Glancing back, I got my first clear view of the she-monster. She was seven feet tall, easy, with more curves than a Kardashian – the biggest butt I'd ever seen and absolutely zero thigh gap – and every inch except for the udders was covered with thick, black-and-white-splotched fur. She wore no clothes except for a bikini – and I mean, an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini – which would have been funny if she wasn't so scary from the neck up.

She had snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, the ears of a beast, a brand tattoo pressed into the side of her cheek of some evil-looking symbol, cruel, black eyes, and a bell around her neck that seemed to be tolling my doom.

"What the hell is this cow-lady?!" I cried.

"A female descendant of the Mino…." Grove stopped herself. "O-of Pasiphae's son."

Did she mean the Minotaur? I was looking at the Minotaur's granddaughter or something?! But….that was just a story from Mrs. Brunner's myths. It couldn't be real….could it?

The pine tree was still hundreds of yards away. I glanced behind me again.

The cow-woman sniffed at the remains of the car. Couldn't she tell that we were fifty feet in front of her?

"Watch out," my dad warned. "Her kind's sight and hearing are terrible, but they hunt by smell. She'll probably sniff us out in a minute."

As if on cue, the cow-woman mooed with rage and lifted the Avon car clean off the ground, throwing it across the road. The gas tank exploded.

Not a scratch, I remembered Gabby saying. Oops.

"Perci," my father said. "When she charges us, you have to go for her udders. Those are her weak point. Do you understand?"

"How do you know that?" I gasped.

"I've been expecting an attack for some time now," he confessed. "I got overconfident, thinking I was such a strong guy, I could defend you if they came for you. I was too much of a man to accept that I couldn't protect my little girl by keeping her with me. I'm sorry."

"Dad, what are you –"

Another moo of fury, and the cow-woman started tromping uphill.

She'd smelled us.

The pine tree was only a few more yards away, but with Grove to carry, I might not make it in time.

The cow-woman closed in. Another few seconds and she'd be on top of us.

My father must've been exhausted, but he shouldered Grover. "Go, Perci! Separate! Remember what I said!"

I didn't want to split up, but I knew it might be my only chance. I swerved, and suddenly the cow-woman was right there in front of me. Her black eyes glittered with hate. She reeked of spoiled milk.

She raised her sharp cloven hoof-hands to rip me apart and charged. I ducked into a crouch and ran at her stomach, grabbing on to the pink udders just as her hoof struck the grass where I'd been standing a moment before, slicing it apart. She roared.

She kept running towards the pine – apparently she couldn't change directions once she had charged. I held onto the udder for dear life, jerking my head away as she tried to slap herself off of me. She couldn't slap too hard or she would hurt herself. But then she turned her gaze on my dad, who was running along beside us. He'd left Grove in the grass where he hoped the she-monster wouldn't notice.

"Hang on, Perci!" he cried. "I can't go any farther than this, so make sure you don't let go!"

But I nearly dropped the udder in shock as the cow-woman raised the hoof that wasn't trying to knock me away like a fly and grabbed my dad, pulling him by the neck into the air.

"Dad!"

"It's ok!" my dad cried, meeting my eyes. "I have to keep her hooves busy! I swore I would protect you, Perci! So you just keep holding on!"

I was trying, but milk was splashing out of the udders now, making it hard for me to maintain my grip. My hands were so wet with the dairy. I wasn't sure if I could hold on much longer.

But I forgot all about my own struggle as the monster closed her hooves around my father's neck and he dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, like a hologram. A blinding flash, and then he was simply…gone.

"No!"

Anger replaced my fear, and adrenaline surged into my limbs – the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mr. Dodds grew claws.

The cow-woman bore down on Grove, who was laying helplessly like a damsel, her long ringlets and floral-print maxiskirt strewn all around her in the glass. The monster hunched over, both trying to throw me off her body and to sniff my friend, like she was going to make her dissolve, too.

I couldn't allow that.

I climbed up the udders like a rock wall, spraying warm milk all over myself as I went. I made a flying leap up – how I did that? I don't know – and grabbed on to the bell on the cow-woman's collar and pulled. The band constricted and the monster choked. She couldn't breathe. I kept pulling.

The cow-woman tossed her head backwards, trying to throw me off. My back slammed into a tree and my teeth rattled, but I held on tight and pulled harder. She tried to claw at my leg, but I dodged too fast – I had no idea how I knew how to move so quickly.

The monster stumbled toward Grove, who moaned "Vegetables!" feebly, but I yanked the bell so hard that I shoved the monster in the opposite direction.

Her tail came up and smacked me and that time I went flying off of her, my head slamming into a rock. But, the force of my flying back was so hard that the bell ripped clean off the collar and came flying with me.

The monster lowered her head to charge me and Grove again. Drawing upon reserves of strength I didn't even know I had, I lifted the bell and swung.

It struck the she-monster right in the temple, and she went down like a ton of bricks. She roared as she fell but before she even fully hit the ground she began to dissolve – not like my father, in a flash of light, but like Mr. Dodds, turning to sand and blowing away in the wind.

The monster was gone.

The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like milk and I was shaking in my suede shoes. Tears stung my eyes. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief. I'd just seen my father vanish. I wanted to lay down and cry, but Grove was right next to me, needing my help, and no brave prince was coming to save us. So I managed, somehow, to haul her up and stagger down into the valley, towards the lights of the farmhouse. I was crying, mascara streaking down my face, screaming for my dad, but I held onto Grove – I wasn't letting her go.

The last thing I remember was collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at the stern faces of a familiar-looking old woman and a handsome boy, his blonde hair long like a surfer's. They both looked down at me, and the boy said, "She's the one. She's got to be."

"Silence, Andersen," the woman said. "She's still conscious. Bring her inside."