“Where is he, Pan?”
“Where is who?” he asked, trying to look innocent.
“I’m out of patience with you!” Gaia shouted. “Tell me where Aaron is right now, because if he dies, you die!”
Pan snickered. “I’m immortal. I can’t die. Another point in my favor, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you, and for your information, I can make your immortal life a living hell. I can trap you in the bowels of the earth. You’ll never see another sunrise or snowcapped mountain, never speak to another living soul—and you’ll never be found by gods or nymphs.”
“You wouldn’t. I’m one of your beloved creations, right? You wouldn’t hurt me. Besides, being with me would be so much more fun than being with your frail human.”
“If anything happens to him, I willhateyou. You wouldn’t want to be with someone who hates you so much they’d rather destroy you than look at you.”
“Sister.” Fate leaned in close to her and whispered, “Aaron’s energy is fading rapidly.”
“Pan! You have thirty seconds to produce him, or you will be surrounded by rock and molten lava—forever!”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.” Her eyes narrowed to slits.
A staring contest between Pan and Gaia ensued, with Karma counting down the last ten seconds. “Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…”
Pan half disappeared, but a moment before he could get away, Gaia latched onto his hairy leg with both hands and held on tight as he dragged her through the universe.
* * *
Aaron caught sight of something hurtling through space, coming right at him. Was it an asteroid? A meteor? No, it was…Gaia and Pan?
She clung to his leg and yelled furiously, “Where is he?”
“I’m taking you to him.” Then the satyr snickered. “But soon, you’ll have to make a choice. Him or me.” He pointed toward Aaron, whose hands slipped a little farther down the tree branch.
Gaia zeroed in on Aaron and called out, “I’m coming for you. Hang on!”
Pan laughed. “You’ll have to let go of me to catch him. He’s falling, you know. Any second, he’ll drop off the surface of my upside-down forest.”
She furiously hurled the goat into a tree and grabbed Aaron just as his hands slipped off the branch altogether. He grasped onto her in a hug, and she gently floated him back to the surface, creating a small patch of gravity where they needed it.
“Thank goodness I found you, darling!”
“Thank you. I felt like a bat hanging upside down in the dark like that.”
“This was no fault of yours.” She glanced up at the tree, where Pan was holding on to the trunk with his two arms and sitting on smaller branches with his hooves dangling. “You think you got away with it, don’t you?”
“I kind of did. When the world flips over, I’ll drop to the surface and be just fine.”
“Yeah, about that. I can’t let you leave this place. You’re not welcome back on Earth.”
“And how are you going to accomplish that?” he asked.
She let go of Aaron just long enough to shoot giant spider webs toward Pan. They wound up covering the tree.
He laughed. “Is that supposed to contain me? A spider web?”
“It’s from a Darwin’s bark spider from Madagascar. It’s ten times stronger than Kevlar. Go ahead. Try it,” she said.
He rolled his eyes.
